A few bad ideas that some peddle, usually in the guise of a class, radical approach:

1. To explain the present impeachment fight as no more than an expression of an inter-imperialist rivalry between Russia and the U.S. over control of Ukraine.

2. To criticize the Democrats for supposedly reducing the stakes of impeachment to simply a national security issue.

3. To argue that a “real” approach to impeachment would throw “everything but the kitchen sink” into the articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee is now drawing up.

The rise of Trump has taught us that the formation of class understanding is a complicated process. It takes place not only at the “point of production, but well beyond it. It’s a political and cultural as well as an economic phenomenon. Years ago, actually decades ago, the writings of the British Marxist historians, and E.P. Thompson especially, helped me to rethink how I understand class formation and consciousness. Lenin’s writings, albeit in my second reading of them in the early 1990s — “What is to be Done” in particular — did too, while nudging me, at the same time, to take a fresh and critical look at Marxism-Leninism.

That support for impeachment didn’t move from 50 per cent to 60 per cent or more in the aftermath of the impeachment hearings doesn’t surprise me. What does is the assertion that these numbers are baked in and that the upper limit in support for impeachment has been reached. It’s too early to arrive at that conclusion.

I like to think of the impeachment process as a breaking dam and we are seeing the first flush of Trump’s criminality pouring out into public view in a new way. The hearings were a major moment in this process, but there is more to come, not least the formal impeachment document in December and the impeachment trial early next year. In the meantime, fresh disclosures and revelations of the misdeeds of Trump and all will continue to see the light of day. Things are fluid.

Politics becomes an art in present circumstances, much like it was at other grave moments in our country’s history, not least at the time of the Civil War. What this means, among other things, is that reflexive, small circle, comfort zone thinking should be retired by all who see Trump as a clear and present danger.

Racism – exploitation and super-exploitation, oppression, and ideology – is a constant and defining feature of U.S. historical development from nearly the moment of arrival of colonizing settlers to what would become North American shores in the 17th century. Indeed, it is fair to say that every aspect of the country’s historical process has been deeply and indelibly marked by racism, which obviously is more, indeed much more than a prejudice toward people based on their skin color.

But while racism and racial inequality have been essential cornerstones to the country’s development as well as the guarantor of political, economic, and cultural hegemony of its white ruling elites, the racialized structures, institutions, legal framework, language, symbols, mode of accumulation and exploitation, and, not least, the terrain and trajectory of racist and anti-racist struggle, have changed over time. In this sense slavery is not so much the “original sin” of our country as the first racial (or racist) order, albeit the most searing, brutal, and exploitative one, that took root at the pre-dawn and dawn of the country’s formation, stretched out over two and a half centuries, and co-evolved with contemporaneous racial orders during that time.

It also left its distinctive mark on racial orders that followed to this day. While it never formally announces its presence in contemporary life, it, nevertheless, stubbornly and persistently insinuates itself at the level of ideology and practical politics and economics.

Which brings to mind the words of William Faulkner, the great novelist of the South, who wrote, “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.”