As the sexual harassment scandal surrounding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo built towards his resignation, the revelations of his slimy behavior highlighted once again the complete and callous indifference of capitalist politicians – of both parties – to our needs. Although it was his hypocritical and predatory treatment of women in state government that led to his downfall, he had shown long before that he didn’t care about us. From his cuts to Medicaid and health infrastructure during the pandemic, to his unwillingness to raise taxes on the rich, to his protection of corrupt businessmen and officials during his tenure, to his acceptance of $5 million to write a book when he should have been addressing the needs of his constituents, he has shown that he has always been a politician of the 1%.
But others are no better. Just take Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida. They are doing everything possible to stop local officials in their states from taking basic precautions to keep their communities safe from COVID-19, instead blaming immigrants for the spread and encouraging racial profiling to distract attention from their epic failure to protect lives. Or look at Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who when Trump was in office accused Democrats of making too big a deal out of the virus, and who literally fled his state in the midst of massive infrastructure failure during the February storms, all the while promoting pro-corporate policies at the expense of working people.
We are all but physically assaulted every day by the politicians of both parties who either talk like they care about us, or spew misinformation designed to confuse us, all the while carrying out the agenda of the capitalist class (which is actually much less than 1% of the population). They are conscious of their hypocrisy, and they are carrying out policies that directly hurt or even kill us.
The odious and hypocritical actions of Cuomo are just the tip of the iceberg. Not only are there thousands more like him, but even if a few hundred of them were to step down, the “dark money” of the millionaire and billionaire capitalists who fund their campaigns would still be there, using their media to try and shape our understanding of the world and choosing our next “choices” for us.
We can’t expect real change to come from within this system that the capitalist class owns and their politicians manage. In order to make any real change, we will have to sweep all of the capitalist politicians and their financiers out of the positions of power, and we ourselves must reorganize society so that we make the decisions that affect all of our lives.
