Our steering committee met this weekend and discussed what’s on everyone’s mind: this election.
Here are some of our thoughts.
This campaign has featured the most vicious open in-fighting in the last 100 years of U.S. history
Trump has repeatedly called for locking up his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and has implied twice that she should be assassinated.
He has said that he won’t accept the results of the elections if he doesn’t win. He refuses to back down and this has caused more than a few of his followers to speculate on civil war if he loses. This is a very dangerous situation.
There are deep divisions between those at the top of the ruling class about the best way to run their empire. These are sure to sharpen in coming days, even after the elections. Whatever happens on Tuesday, we don’t expect a respite from the animus that has polarized the country on a terrible basis.
Is there potential for a deeper legitimacy crisis? Could those who run the system decide to make a leap towards fascism, and what would that mean? What is required of us now?
To get into some of the answers to these questions, we encourage our readers to dig deeply into these articles from revcom.us.
At this point, anything can happen — but the following we know:
There is a fascist wing of the Republican Party that has been working over a period of decades to consolidate power. Through Donald Trump they could succeed in winning the presidency.
We are told that to stop Donald Trump, we must vote for Hillary Clinton. But this is not a solution that will bring justice, or peace.
1. The Democrats have pledged to respect the results of the election if Trump wins. Clinton has never attacked Trump’s essential legitimacy, even while he has continued to attack her. She touts her qualifications to be commander in chief, as someone who is able to seek common ground and work with the neo-cons. Joe Biden himself said on CNN about Trump, “If he wins, I’ll extend a hand. He would be the president of the United States. Period.”
2. Clinton has decades of experience as a tool for the interests of this empire that is killing the planet and its people. She is a proven war criminal who played a key role in her husband’s administration, which imposed sanctions on Iraq that caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. She runs on her competence to lead a “super-predator” military that is currently waging unjust war on seven countries. She authorized drone strikes as Secretary of State that have killed civilian populations, and she pledges more support for these types of killings. Clinton threatens a “no fly” zone over Syria; similar actions led to the deaths of thousands in Kosovo and Libya.
Clinton’s promise to extend the legacy of Obama should be taken as a guarantee of expanding the endless war on the world. No less than the former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzei (previously a cheerleader for the U.S. occupation) said in the Washington Post this week:
“Just show me one example of a bombing that has taken Afghanistan one step closer to peace. Fifteen years on, do we have more Taliban or less, more terror or less? Is this really a war against terror, or is it something else in which the lives of Afghans don’t matter?”
Clinton and Trump are criminal choices, and we need to reject them both.
These lines from our Call to Drive Out The Bush Regime still ring true:
“There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into ‘leaders’ who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.”
“That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
Now is the time to think deeply about what it will actually take to stop the crimes of our government and to put our energies into bringing down this empire and stopping its systematic war crimes at the soonest possible time.
You will hear from us later this week.
Steering Committee, The World Can’t Wait