Louis Prima Is Never Showing Up

If you've heard me tell this story before that's ok. I keep coming back to it as I watch our current events. It's told in the movie Big Night (1996). Two brothers, played by Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci, have emigrated to New Jersey to open a restaurant which is now on the verge of going under. The younger brother, Secondo, is in charge of the business side and appeals to the owner of a successful restaurant down the street. The owner, Pascal, played by Ian Holm, claims to be friends with Louis Prima and promises, if the brothers will throw a big feast, he will get his friend to stop by and turn their fortunes around by bestowing his blessing.

They invite everyone they know. But as the evening rolls on folks wonder where the guest of honor is. It is only as dawn approaches that Pascal's girlfriend reveals that the bandleader will not be dropping by, was not in fact even invited. Pascal's reaction to this is matter-of-fact, "I am a businessman. I am anything I need to be at any time".

The Republican Party is a tight weave between those of the propertied class who are most focused on the threat from below and that mass voter who is in passionate agreement that the working class must never hold power.

"So the Democrats have no ideas, no policy, no vision for the country other than total socialism and maybe, frankly, a step beyond socialism from what I'm seeing.(BOOING)"  Trump, Phoenix, Aug. 22

 But this alliance is a tense one because nothing is more necessary to the maintenance of our current relations of production than the insecurity of those who are so eager to uphold it. The linchpin holding it together right now is Trump's promise to restore American factory jobs. How is this believable? 

As a second generation real estate huckster Trump has been well positioned to tap into a persistent tenet of vulgar economics buried in his audience's view of global capitalism. In their shared conception wealth is obtained in the sphere of circulation, in the terms of the "deal" where the sharp party cheats the stupid party. Trump has learned this from a life collecting rental income but its endurance in public discourse is owing to the neglect and denial of labor as the source of value and unpaid labor as the source of surplus value.

Applied to international trade this results in the very strange idea that the national economy at the center of global capitalism, the U.S., the country and capital most responsible for the creation of the modern economic empire, has been drained of its wealth by the stupidity of its political class and the sharp dealings of its rivals. Even the Republican powerful gagged on this and were reluctant to admit, as 2016 developed, the need for such risky propaganda. What Trump saw and what the rest of the GOP did not was the level of desperation in their base remaining from the crash at the conclusion of the Bush administration.

Returning to our story. We can all understand when a celebrity of the stature of Louis Prima can't make an engagement, schedules being what they are. But that is not the situation here. Other than an initial flurry of reactionary proclamations to the applause and satisfaction of nativists and gun clubs it is every day more apparent that there is no broader program here. Whether or not Trump believed he could renegotiate the world economy and restore the American factory workforce to its post-war glory while leaving it bound hand and foot to the usual bosses nothing aside from rhetoric should be expected. Most of the working class never believed him. And for those that did disappointment will grow.