U.S. - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Choosing the Commander in Chief who will direct imperialism in World War III

Promising to get rid of George Bush Junior’s legacy, Obama was elected while surfing on a wave of optimism. But his "Yes we can" has left the working class and oppressed with "what have we done?" as Obama has cynically deepened imperialism’s agenda by continuing the Bush horror legacy in the Middle East, backstabbing the working class and oppressed by promulgating policies that have only exacerbated their impoverishment after the 2008 capitalist depression, and extending the U.S. influence further into Asia, Africa and rallied western European allies in imperialist encirclement at the Russian border, paving the way for a new war.

In the 2016 electoral campaign, the big question is indeed who will be chosen to lead imperialism in World War III? Will it be the notoriously coifed, big handed bonapartist Donald Trump? Or the heiress presumptive, war hawk, Hillary Clinton who counts on the self-proclaimed “socialist” Bernie Sanders with his fiery imperialistic rhetoric of alleviating human suffering to recruit the working class, the oppressed and the youth? The electoral arena in 2016 is playing out in the context of "Obusha" having aggravated the very same fundamental problems of American capitalism it was naively hoped by some that he would address while in office. The oppressed masses, disillusioned by policies that have resulted in their paltry pittance expropriation by the U.S. government to bail out the big banks, who have mostly grown only bigger, his supposed healthcare reform, which effectively has made the American population a captive market to private health insurance shysters, and the crumbs “Obusha” has tried to contemptuously, cynically scattered before the immigrant community, an attempt to cover up his justly deserved title  “Deporter in Chief”.

The 2008 depression, and its measures against the oppressed, concentrated even more wealth in the hands of the capitalist 1%, further sharpening the divide between the ruling and working class, impoverishing 6 million more workers into a state of abject poverty. Since 1980, upon the counterrevolutionary waves of thievery, imperialist wars and austerity, the presidencies of Reagan, Bush senior, Bill Clinton, Bush Junior, then Obama, have only been seemingly different strategies of execution on the behest of the ruling class.

One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president… Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is “modernizing” America’s doomsday arsenal, including a new “mini” nuclear weapon, whose size and “smart” technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is “no longer unthinkable” (John Pilger: Silencing America as it prepares for war. Saturday, May 28, 2016).

The chances that the American working class and oppressed have of winning anything from the current elections is as much as winning a lottery jackpot. The switch and bait game of rigged elections is in fact a Republican stampede under Trump, whose bombast only has ousted the racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia buried beneath the dog whistles and coded language of the Republican party; the continuation of imperialist wars of prior U.S. administrations that would turn a tidy profit for her cronies at Goldman Sachs and other American capitalist interests, dressed in vague language about  “human rights”, and, as ruling class feminist, masking her husband’s prior gutting of social  assistance programs for poor women, and denying her complicity in bolstering the TPIP and TIP as a continuation of her husband’s former trade policies. Aware of her lack of popularity amongst the working class, Clinton counts on the support of her ally Sanders, a true wolf in "socialist" clothing, who accomplished his assigned task in herding the masses toward the iron heel as he signals readiness to back his campaign and swiftly transition voters to her. After meeting with Obama in the Oval Office last Thursday to expedite the process in channeling his supporters behind Clinton, Sanders’ real job as a youth and oppressed recruiter was finally exposed as Obama put it in his own words when saying that “Mr. Sanders would play a central role in shaping the Democrat agenda” (NYTimes, 6/10/16).

Since Sanders political legacy includes backing Bill Clinton's illegal bombing of Serbia and Obama's terrorism agenda throughout this past eight years, his alignment with the rest of the democrats comes as no surprise. When still campaigning, Sanders signaled his intentions to intensify the new Cold War by declaring his support for a policy that would “beef up our troop level in that part of the world (Russia) to tell Putin that his aggressiveness is not going to go unmatched.” To emphasize his alignment with imperialism, he added, “We have to work with NATO to protect Eastern Europe against any kind of Russian aggression.” There is no doubt that his maneuvers are contrary to socialism. As taught by Marx, oppressors forge their own chains, and socialism, on the other hand, unifies workers and oppressed people who have nothing to lose but their chains.

From all ends, the 2106 U.S. election signals a more tyrannical blueprint approach of mass, capital and political control internally and abroad. The new order also confirms the empire’s reaction to worldwide capitalist developments as it tries to regain grounds lost during one of its worst capitalist crisis since the Great Depression. As the western economies crashed in 2008, the BRICS were formed under the control of China and Russia, integrating Brazil, India and South Africa. Not able to stomach a rival capitalist bloc, western capitalism is ramping up the stakes to crush the BRICK economies, engaging in a cold war that could turn hot at any time. The orchestrated partnership amongst the Democrats signals the party’s eagerness to expand Obama’s uses of military force to achieve “regime change” in countries that get in the way of U.S. desires and move in full blow in preparation for World War III. As categorically summarized by Obama when endorsing Clinton during his three-minute statement, “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.” As a war machine, the Democrats put forward its very well prepared squaddie. Hillary Clinton is not only “the top pick of corporations to do the job of every president: to be the CEO of the empire,” but is the 2016 presidential candidate with the closest ties to the American military intelligence apparatus. No other Foreign Policy secretary has gone as far as she has in ascertaining herself as a military leader who not only guarantees occupations, but also does it in a “quite clinical manipulation of power while masquerading it as a force for universal good.”

“It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue… Clinton declared that America had a “national interest” in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia. Clinton, the “women’s candidate”, leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine – literally, borderland — that Hitler’s Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton’s presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world’s ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close” (John Pilger: Silencing America as it prepares for war. Saturday, May 28, 2016).

As his imperialistic duty, the capitalist patron D. Trump comfortably articulates his commitment to perform a vast military escalation to guarantee a powerful front against the BRICS, if he assumes the presidency in November. By declaring “America First” the core principle of his foreign policy, Trump proclaimed that American “military dominance must be unquestioned, and I mean unquestioned, by anybody and everybody… It will be so powerful that nobody is ever going to mess with us.” This, while promising to restore American working class jobs outsourced to the neo colonial countries, Trump wants in fact pave the way for the American ruling class to push worker’s living standards to the same as those in the neo colonial countries.

The options presented by imperialism for the 2016 elections is a game of marked cards once again planned to silence the masses and intensify oppression around the world. It is up to socialist revolutionaries and the working class to denounce the fascist politics of Trump, and the belligerency of Clinton, supported by the cynical bankruptcy of Sanders. Let’s call workers, oppressed and immigrants from coast-to-coast to revive what was a history of heroic struggle and resistance of the American working class, including being the birthplace of modern May Day now celebrated internationally. The Sanders campaign, despite being a fraud, revealed the existence of a huge group of socialism sympathizers in the United States, thirsty for a revolutionary vanguard to together change the debate in America. We call all the working class, youth, and immigrants in general to unite and fight against another onslaught of capital. There is no option for the masses in the 2016 American elections. Let’s together organize the struggle and have our voices heard on the streets, in schools, in factories, corporations, public and private institutions across the country.