proletarianfeminism:

Notice that while we are girding ourselves to fight Trump, Obama is not. Do we see him boldly attacking Trump’s racist, mysogynist plans, his corrupt appointments, his corruption, his militarism? Nope. He’s making nice with The Donald. His attention has already turned to more important things, like his exciting plans for an opulent presidential library to praise his “legacy.” Funded, of course, by the capitalists he has served so well.

We can project onto Obama that he’s a tortured soul, wishing he could have done more to help people. But actually he’s had a hugely successful career, and he’s solidly loyal to monopoly capitalism. When multiculturalism served that cause, he was multiculturalism’s very incarnation. Now, smart man that he is, he understands that his new job is to help manage a smooth transition from globalist multiculturalism to a system where open white supremacist nationalism can be mainstream again. And like a true professional, he’s putting his personal feelings aside and taking care of business.

Much is made of the fact that, as he leaves office, Obama has commuted a few thousand particularly harsh sentences inflicted on people jailed for non-violent drug “crimes.” With their sentences commuted, those people still have a criminal record; still face a hard road of injustice. And he only commuted a small percentage of low-level drug sentences. But it’s something, right?

Consider this: a president’s constitutional power to pardon people is practically unlimited. Pardon, not commute. As in, wipe the record clear. There are millions of victims of unjust and racist mass incarceration who could be pardoned with a stroke of Obama’s pen. And there’s nothing Trump could do to reverse it. Obama could pardon Leonard Peltier and Chelsea Manning and other political prisoners too.

Why stop there? There are millions of immigrants who are directly threatened with deportation by the incoming regime. Trump has said he would begin the expulsion process by deporting 3-4 million immigrants who are “criminals.” Actually, the only “crime” committed by most immigrants is that they crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visa. Obama could pardon all of those people, too, before Trump takes office.

Obama, as of this writing, has actually pardoned fewer people than any president in history. (Except for James Garfield, who was assassinated three months into his term.) As a matter of fact, when a few Democratic congresspeople actually had the nerve to ask Obama to pardon the 750,000 vulnerable young immigrant “Dreamers” to protect them from Trump, he turned them down flat.

Obama isn’t Trump’s enemy, or his friend. He’s simply an operative working for a fundamentally reactionary, white supremacist system. As popular resistance to Trump builds, we have to struggle to turn it into a deeper mass understanding of that system instead of normalizing Obama or his sponsors. And we must find and unite with those who, based on that deeper understanding, are moving toward revolution; towards actually overthrowing white supremacy and capitalism entirely.

Notes on Trump (Bromma Dec. 2016)