A Fact Check. I'd say the Socialists got this one right.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/5/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Democratic & Republican Conventions: A Socialist Fact Check
https://socialistaction.org/2020/09/03/the-democratic-republican-conventions-a-socialist-fact-check/
September 3, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
When capitalism’s twin billionaire parties convene every four years to
select their would–be head-of-state, it’s important to get the facts
straight. Critical readers in my near-octogenarian generation – the same
as Donald Trump’s and Joseph Biden’s – should have a basic familiarity
with historically established facts. I leave it to younger observers of
these two historic parties of the ruling rich to research for themselves.
The Democrats nominated Donald Trump as their presidential candidate;
the Republicans nominated Joseph Biden, or was it the other way around?
The Republicans are known as the billionaire party of war, racism,
sexism, poverty, tax cuts for the rich, climate catastrophe,
environmental destruction, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass deportation of
immigrants and big capital, while the Democrats are the billionaire
party of war, racism, sexism, poverty, tax cuts for the rich, climate
catastrophe, environmental destruction, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass
deportation of immigrants and big capital. The differences are important!
The facts are important! Here some fact checking is in order, lest my
“lesser evil” friends charge me with misrepresentation.
WAR
Both parties nearly unanimously approved the 2019-2020 war budget of $1
trillion annually, counting the unmentioned extra money for the CIA’s
secret wars. To be more fact-checking precise, the Democrats upped
Trump’s original war budget request by some $40 billion which the
Republicans graciously accepted. Trump’s war party continued in slightly
different forms all seven U.S. wars, most of them initiated by Barack
Obama. Yet Obama declared he was a man of peace and was accordingly
given the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump has declared that he is a man of
peace and will bring some troops home. Maybe he too will win the Nobel
Prize. Obama maintained the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the
world. Trump, a “fucking moron,” according to his former Secretary of
State and former ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson, proposed to a private
National Security Council meeting that the U.S. increase its tactical
nuclear weapons capacity “one hundred fold.” Trump proposed to the
Congress a sixth arm of the U.S. military, the Space Force, to weaponize
outer space. By a vote of 377–48 the Democratic Party-controlled House
of Representatives approved the bill creating the Space Force, passing
it on to the Senate. Trump signed this largest bi-partisan war budget to
date.
Electoral College
The Republicans stole the 2016 election with resort to the
anti-democratic Electoral College system, wherein the Southern states of
the old segregationist slaveocracy can garner enough delegates for a
candidate to win the presidency without winning the majority of all
votes cast in the nation. The Democrats, on the other hand, held sway in
the Electoral College for 75 years by resort to their control of the
racist segregationist former slaveocracy Dixiecrat states up until the
Nixon era. Before Nixon, the Democrats held sway by running a Northern
“liberal” for president and a Southern racist bigot in the V.P. spot to
“balance the ticket.” When the overtly racist Southern Democrats jumped
ship to the Republicans in the 1960s, the Democrats looked to the heirs
of the “Old South” to win elections and ran former Georgia
segregationist Jimmy Carter for president. Al Gore Jr. — son of Al Gore
Sr., a historic Tennessee racist bigot — was also slated for the
Democrats’ top spot as was Arkansas’s Bill Clinton, whose Southern roots
were touted to win the white racist Southern vote.
Complicated? Yes, but the end result is that both parties maneuver to
govern in the interests of the billionaire elite. The Democrats are the
party of these billionaire elites while the Republicans are the party of
these billionaire elites. My fact-checking here is more explicit.
According to Forbes magazine, Biden’s billionaire supporters total 131
while Trump’s total a mere 99.
Climate crisis/Global warming
Trump is the candidate of the oil monopolies while Biden is the
candidate of the oil monopolies. Trump, the Republican, is a climate
crisis denier. He withdrew from the UN’s COP-25 in Madrid, Spain. With
regard to the U.S. imperialist war against Syria he bragged, “We got the
oil.” Obama-Biden were the world’s greatest frackers. They granted the
oil monopolies unprecedented rights for offshore drilling. They drilled
the Arctic Circle. They killed 500,000 people in Syria to control the
oil. They supported the fascist-led coup in Ukraine to secure fracking
and pipeline rights in Eastern Ukraine.
Immigration
Trump is a racist bigot, demanding a wall to keep immigrants out while
banning Muslim immigrants. Obama-Biden deported three million
immigrants, more than any president in U.S. history before or since.
Criminal Justice
Trump and his Republicans are openly racist bigots. Obama, Biden and
Clinton orchestrated “criminal justice” legislation that created the
present-day near slave labor prison-industrial complex wherein the U.S.
ranks first in the world in the number and percentage of its people in
jail – the majority Black, Latinx and Native American.
Tax cuts and “economic stimulus packages”
During 2008-9 recession Obama’s Democrats, allied with the Republicans,
engineered the largest corporate bailout and corporate economic stimulus
package in U.S. history. During 2020 recession, Trump’s Republicans,
joined at the hip with the Democrats, engineered the largest corporate
bailout and corporate economic stimulus package in U.S. history. Again,
the differences are important!
Unemployment
Using the U.S. Department of Labor’s “Labor Force Participation Rate,”
under the Obama-Biden Democrats, the percentage of eligible workers
without jobs stood at 35 percent. Under Trump’s Republicans, the figure
today stands at 39 percent. Under both parties, today’s “employed” are
increasingly part-time, low wage, “gig” or “casual” workers with few
benefits or positive future prospects.
Labor rights
Under the Obama-Biden Democrats, labor rights, pensions, overall social
services and the percentage of unionized workers declined to historic
lows. Under Trump’s Republicans labor rights, pensions, overall social
services and the percentage of unionized workers declined to historic lows.
Tax cuts for the rich
Under the Democrats, tax cut legislation for the rich reached new
heights. Under the Republicans, tax cut legislation for the rich reached
new heights.
Civil liberties
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act that
allowed the military to indefinitely detain without charges terrorist
suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States.
Trump threatened to deploy the military to do the same in Portland and
other cities.
Personality
Here the Democrats have a distinct advantage; Trump is an openly racist,
sexist, anti-abortion, homophobic, warmongering, science-denying bigot.
While Obama-Biden-Clinton were closeted racist, sexist, anti-abortion,
homophobic, warmongering, science-denying bigots. My “lesser evil”
friends might take issue with these last categorical assertions. I would
respond that any serious fact checker will find that the rights of the
oppressed, the rights of women, including the right to abortion, have
been substantially diminished regardless of which billionaire party is
in office. The same with warmongering and climate catastrophe, with the
Democrats, a Cheshire cat grin always in place, to beguile unwary
observers.
Break with the twin parties of capital!
Today, and especially during capitalism’s election-time charade, as
witnessed during the DNC and RNC orchestrated hoopla, we see the drive
to impose a Potemkin Village world, a “Truman Show” reality, a happy
world of compliant citizens accepting the status quo without question.
This charade is running on empty. The COVID-19 pandemic and the mass
mobilizations of the nation’s most oppressed — often multi-racial
mobilizations of youth — have exposed the horror of systemic U.S. racist
brutality for all to see. The DNC media hucksters for four days posed
themselves as the instant caring cure to remedy centuries of monstrous
slavery and across-the-board capitalist racism and social oppression.
The Republicans too had their cure, showcasing Trump’s family entourage
and for a few minutes his one Black administration official, while
blaming “violence” on “outside agitators” on the far left, socialists
and antifa. Both parties lied with impunity to advance their wing of
their predatory system into the White House.
That rapacious capitalism has no solutions to the multiple crises
confronting humanity is testified to by the unprecedented millions in
the streets crying out for justice, affirming Black Lives Matter, while
denouncing capitalism’s systemic racism and its myriad inherent evils.
The central task confronting socialists today is how best to win the
confidence of and unify this newly-radicalizing generation toward a
fundamental break with the twin racist-imperialist capitalist parties.
For the first time in a long, long while, the fighting forces to do so
are in motion as never before. They have appeared in the streets in
unprecedented number – estimated at 15-26 million – and won the hearts
and minds of tens of millions more. They carry with them the potential
to achieve wondrous victories that can be coalesced in new and
independent forms of struggle aimed at a direct challenge to capitalist
rule, including the organization of a mass, independent Black political
party and the rebirth of a fighting labor movement free from its current
stifling bureaucracy and advancing on the class struggle road. Join us!
Join Socialist Action! Vote Jeff Mackler for president in 2020!
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Robert G. Ingersoll
“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never
inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not
know—the Church does neither.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll,
