‘“There was polite applause, but a lot of people didn’t clap,” said a club insider privy to the exchange. “There was a lot of talk that [Supreme Court Justice Anthony] Kennedy sold out,” allegedly having agreed to retire from the bench in exchange for President Trump’s picking his conservative former law clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed him.’

The Bohemian Club
It’s the very tops of the capitalist class that attends their annual retreat.

Who was saying this? Was it the “left” liberals who were saying that Kennedy sold out? Nope. It was the elite of the capitalist class at the Bohemian Club’s annual retreat in Sonoma County, California, according to SF Chronicle reporters Matier and Ross.

Matier and Ross continue: ‘In contrast, over at the Owl’s Nest encampment, we’re told TV pundits Chris Matthews, David Gergen and David Brooks lit up the crowd, especially when Brooks lamented the “loss of honesty, truth and civility” during the Trump era, calling it a “disaster and threat to democracy.”

‘“The entire camp erupted into applause,” says our spy.’

Pay Attention!
The working class movement, and socialists within it, should pay the closest attention to what is happening within the ruling class – the capitalist class. This anecdote gives a glimpse. It is a window into the general mood among our enemy. It shows that a large sector of them is deeply unhappy about having lost control over their presidency.

All too many on the left confuse things. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with supporting “national interest”, which really means the interests of the capitalist class. Nor with “patriotism”, which simply means identifying with those interests. Without following what is happening within the ranks of the enemy, we cannot get a sense of what is developing. This will leave us unprepared.

Unfortunately, all too many socialists ignore this obvious truth. All too many think that what’s happening under Trump is simply a heightened version of what happened under Obama or what would have happened had Clinton gotten elected. They refuse to even consider this crisis within the capitalist class.

Oaklandsocialist has repeatedly reported on Trump’s role as a money launderer for the Russian oligarchs/mafia, starting with this article in April of 2017. We have commented on how money laundering is rampant within the real estate industry and that this is the reason why the capitalist media is so reluctant to take up this issue, even as much of it is so vigorously attacking Trump. In fact, over the last 16 months, there have been only 5 reports on the issue, two of which were not in the mainstream capitalist media:

We list these so that readers can see the facts for themselves.

• There was the original report in whowhatwhy.org in April of 2017.
• There was a report in the SF Chronicle last April.
• The left liberal New Republic did a report in July.
• This was followed up by an interview on MSNBC with the author of the New Republic article.
• Finally, the New Yorker did a piece.

Update: We have just received this document which apparently was the basis for the SF Chronicle article linked to above. One of the co-authors, Dennis Aftergut, is a former high level federal prosecutor.  It lays out some of the most basic facts. See: 180122 Trump Organization_

Further Update: Aftergut’s memorandum was sent to US Congresswoman Jackie Speier on January 9, 2018. On December 15 of this year, the SF Chronicle published an article by Speier on this subject.

All of these lay out the facts as plain as day.

“We just don’t care”
The reluctance of the capitalist media to fully reveal this issue is understandable; it’s too dangerous. But how to explain the lack of interest on the part of the socialist left? “What concern is it of mine if Trump is being directed by Russians?” wrote one person on Facebook. “We just don’t care (that Trump may have collaborated with Putin)” wrote another. Another wrote that paying attention to this is simply “cheering on the Dems”. “Why does it matter if America lost control of its president?” asked another. Another wrote that paying attention to it is “defending the FBI” and another implied that this whole issue is just a case of “our own ruling class… trying to take our eyes off them.”

Others, although they don’t openly say this sort of thing, are saying the same thing in action by their refusal to seriously consider what is happening within the capitalist class.

New Period
They have tried to carry on as if what we’re seeing is just an intensified version of what we’ve seen all along. It’s nothing different from what we’ve seen in the last 200 years, as one wrote. All they see is the relations between the classes; they are unwilling to look at what is happening within the ruling class. But that should be of central importance. If the mainstream of the capitalist class cannot control its own presidency, and if that president has succeeded in moving ever closer to direct one-man rule, that represents a huge change for how capitalism as a whole rules in the United States.