A Challenge to Those Who Say, “But of Course You Have to Vote for the Democrats...”
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
How many murders must a single organization carry out before you are ready to call it an institution of mass murder?
How many invasions must it launch, how many millions of people in foreign lands must it slaughter, how many times must it threaten the world with nuclear war (and even use nuclear weapons), before you call that organization a bane to humanity and a dire threat to its very existence?
How towering must be its crimes before you raise the question as to whether there is something criminal in its very essence, and honestly seek to find the answer? And if you do find out, are you willing to go where your research leads and draw the appropriate conclusions?
As the accompanying chart shows, the Democratic Party is clearly second to none in the category of imperialist invasions and crimes against humanity and, if you total it all up, holds the world record for slaughtering and displacing people whose only “crimes” were to get in the way of U.S. imperialist interests. Yes, the Republicans certainly give them a run for their money, but any notion that somehow the Democrats are more peace loving or at least less interventionist is belied by the accompanying chart, which goes from the waning days of World War 2 on up to today.
So again, how much must the blood of those who are not Americans flow before you actually engage the CAUSE of the problem and what is REALLY necessary for its solution?
The source of these wars, the cause of these wars, lies in a system: capitalism-imperialism. This is a system in which a handful of powerful countries compete with each other to dominate and exploit the entire world. This is a system that promises a “good life” (for some) in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere—a life of privilege that rests on the bitter and grinding exploitation of the billions of people in the Bangladeshes, Cambodias, Mexicos, and South Africas of the world.
The wars waged in the accompanying chart were waged to secure and maintain American domination over the peoples of those countries and, even more so in the past period, against rival imperialists. The refugees now knocking at the doors of the imperialist countries are refugees from those wars, as well as from the ecological catastrophe and economic distortions and destruction wrought by capitalism-imperialism. And now the very imperialists responsible for the refugees’ flight callously refuse them entrance and, on top of that, use them as scapegoats for the benumbed and moronized sections of the U.S. populace.
There is absolutely no reason for the production of the world’s necessities to be organized on the basis of a system that can only function through exploitation. This system of capitalism-imperialism is totally unnecessary. Schemes to modify it cannot defy its most basic law: expand or die. This heartless and unforgiving logic plays itself out on every level and in every sphere of society, taking especially concentrated form in the wars on this chart. This system CANNOT be reformed; it MUST be overthrown, through revolution. (For why this is so and how such a revolution could be made, go here.)
And there is in fact a model and blueprint for a whole different way. Bob Avakian (BA) has critically summed up the experience of the Soviet Union and China when those countries were traveling on the revolutionary road, deeply analyzing their achievements as well as their errors in both policy and basic approach, and coming up with a new synthesis of communism. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by BA, concretizes and applies this new synthesis to the situation stretching from Day One after the revolution to the transition to a world without oppression and the destructive divisions and antagonisms between people.
Look deeply at what this party you vote for has done; and then lift your sights to what is urgently needed, and could be done, through revolution.
And No, Trump’s Promised Withdrawals Do NOT Signify a Better Course
For those of you who have exposed these crimes over decades but have now fallen into the wishful thinking that Trump, by virtue of his abrupt promises to withdraw from Syria and to draw down U.S. forces in Afghanistan, somehow represents a different course: Trump’s “disruption” of traditional alliances and commitments is almost certainly mere prelude to an even more aggressive stance, focused in different ways and proceeding from a different strategy, in order to make “America First.”
Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:
