The Democrats Have Already Said They Will Accept a Trump Election as Legitimate
What Does That Mean?
And What Must We Do?

October 31, 2016

To start with the obvious, this is the most volatile and unconventional election in living memory. Anything could happen...  Read more

Why I Am Not Voting In This Election, Why You Shouldn't Either... But Why I Will Defend The Right Of Black And Other Oppressed People To Vote!

By Carl Dix

November 2, 2016

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The Elections Crisis and the Real Stakes in November

Point One: Donald Trump is an open, brutish fascist. This is not news. His racism, his putrid outlook toward women, his all-round piggishness—this has not only been known for a long time, this was his road to “celebrity” and then to the Republican presidential nomination. The more openly fascist he has gotten—including his open thuggery and outright slander, his open contempt for the rule of law and promotion of extra-legal violence against those who oppose him—the more free promotion he got from the media, and the more he steamrolled to the nomination of one of the two major parties. Even now when he is all the way out there, caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and demeaning women in the most crude and hate-filled terms, and even now when he has responded to this exposure by doubling down on his open misogyny and threats, the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party—again, one of the two major, semi-official and “legitimate” parties of this system—is sticking with him, or—at least not openly—refusing to break with him. And again—not only has all this about Trump been known for a long, long time, but it has also been clear for decades now that the Republican Party itself has, as a core element of its strength, nurtured and fostered a core base around open, unapologetic, no-holds-barred racism, xenophobia, misogyny, “America-first-ism,” and a proud and aggressive “know-nothingism.” Reactionary shit that the Democrats, by the way (or not so by the way), have refused for decades to call out as illegitimate or beyond the pale of discourse, or oppose in any meaningful way. Make no mistake: these veins, rooted in the founding, history, and current-day reality of the U.S., run very deep in both political parties and, indeed, this whole political system. This is part of why it is absolutely correct and important to insist that “America Was NEVER Great!”

Now, however, Trump has come forward to give expression to and further legitimize the most backward sentiments of these social forces and to mobilize them into a much more aggressive and openly fascist force. This reflects the fact that some of the ways in which those who run this system have held it together are no longer working, and there is a fierce fight between different sections over what must be done in response to that. Whatever happens in this election—and Trump could still win this, and, in any event, will receive tens of millions of votes, which will serve to endorse and legitimize his whole thing—those conflicts are not going away. The core elements of the ruling class which have grouped around and supported Trump will continue to stoke and rouse this base, working to unleash it against the masses—and against their opponents within the ruling class.

Point Two: The Democrats represent no positive alternative, but are merely rivals to preside over the same worldwide, massively predatory and murderous system of capitalism-imperialism. At the very time Trump was running wild last week, the Democrats were not only backing up their Saudi Arabian allies in carrying out horrendous bombing raids that killed over a hundred people at a funeral in the Middle Eastern country of Yemen, they were stepping up their own direct involvement in that war with missile strikes against forces within Yemen. Quiet as it’s kept, the “peace president” Obama has carried out bombing raids in seven countries this year alone, and ordered “special operations” (that is, secret military aggression, complete with assassinations, midnight raids, etc.) in many more. Hillary Clinton has added on with calls for even more military action and for stepping up the highly repressive policies and surveillance kept in place and heightened under Obama, to which she also contributed as senator and secretary of state... Read entire article

The Deadly Logic of the Lesser Evil

We had to vote for Obama and the Democrats, we were told, to put a stop to the great harm that was being done by George W. Bush and the Republicans. But did voting for Obama, and having Obama as president, prevent the fascism that has increasingly characterized the Republican Party from reaching a dangerously new level with the Trump candidacy? Obviously not. But why not? Because Obama and the Democrats, as well as Trump and the Republicans, are products and representatives of the same system of capitalism-imperialism, and that system has its fundamental dynamics and ways it has to function, which mean that anyone who rises to the top of that system must continually commit crimes against humanity.

Funneling good sentiments and intentions into voting for Democrats, time after time—accepting and “validating” the logic and assumptions of this system, rather than opposing the whole system and its endless crimes, presided over by both Democrats and Republicans—has made people complicit with these crimes and has contributed to the situation we are in, where an overt, undisguised fascist candidacy, embodied in Trump, is contending seriously to assume the leadership of this system, and it is now being insisted that only voting for Clinton, who is guilty of many despicable and monstrous crimes against humanity herself, can stop Trump and what he represents. As for the argument, “Well, yes, Clinton is not what we really want, she is actually quite bad, but she is ‘the lesser evil,’ and there are realistically only two choices—either Clinton or Trump—so if you don’t go for Clinton you are helping elect Trump,” this actually amounts to nothing more than the argument that, “As long as you accept the logic and ‘choices’ dictated by this system, you have to accept the logic and ‘choices’ dictated by this system.” Doesn’t the fact that this system has produced someone like Trump as a “legitimate” candidate, heading one of the two major political parties of this system—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the utter illegitimacy of the whole system? And the fact that Clinton and the Democrats will only oppose Trump with arguments that amount to insisting that they are better representatives of this same system, and can do a better job of perpetrating its crimes—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the urgent need to break with the logic and assumptions of this system and rise up against it and those who represent it, including Clinton as well as Trump?

August 1, 2016

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