[Peace-discuss] FW: The Democratic Party Obsession with Capitalism and Militarism Will Grow Worse by 2020

[David Johnson]

Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that
<https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/317639-pelosi-town-hall-q
uestion-on-capitalism-wasnt-planned-report> she is a "capitalist" seeking to
undermine even the most marginal of progressive policies advocated by the
likes of Bernie Sanders. Pelosi's
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/02/stop-fiscal-madness-dems-urged
-vote-down-brainless-republican-idea-pelosi-plows?utm_campaign=shareaholic&u
tm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork> "pay-go" policy recently voted
in by House Democrats ensures that any increase in federal spending is
offset by an equal number of cuts. In other words, "pay-go" makes Medicare
for All or the Green New Deal impossible to fund under current arrangements.
Of course, Pelosi is a wholly owned representative of the medical industrial
complex, the military industrial complex, and Silicon Valley, all of which
<https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors?cid=N00007360&
cycle=2018> make up her largest donors. 

 

 

 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/democratic-party-obsession-capitalism-and
-militarism-will-grow-worse-2020>
https://www.blackagendareport.com/democratic-party-obsession-capitalism-and-
militarism-will-grow-worse-2020
 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/democratic-party-obsession-capitalism-and
-militarism-will-grow-worse-2020> The Democratic Party Obsession with
Capitalism and Militarism Will Grow Worse by 2020

 <https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Danny%20Haiphong> Danny Haiphong,
BAR contributor

  

16 Jan 2019

 
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<https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2019-01/Haiphong__845
x400%20%281%29_1.jpg> Image removed by sender. The Democratic Party
Obsession with Capitalism and Militarism Will Grow Worse by 2020

The Democratic Party Obsession with Capitalism and Militarism Will Grow
Worse by 2020

The Democratic Party is a political trap designed to capture the most
progressive constituency in the United States: Black America.

"The Congressional Black Caucus has sided with the forces of imperialism
when it comes to war, surveillance, and the police."

For a movement, especially a Black left movement that has yet to emerge in
this period, the critical task is to develop mass consciousness of the fact
that U.S. imperialism is incapable of providing concessions to the poor and
oppressed. History has shown that the Black left has always been in the most
favorable position for bringing this reality to light. After all, Black
workers struggled to throw off the yoke of slavery only to find themselves
mired in the murderous jaws of Jim Crow and mass Black incarceration. A
significant shift occurred in the Obama period, one that ultimately marked
the culmination of three decades of a complete assault on the Black
condition through neoliberal capitalist and white supremacist policies. The
Black left has been decimated by the assault and has yet to recover from the
economic and political ruin imposed by U.S. imperialism.

It is from this vantage point that the Democratic Party's obsession with
capitalism and militarism must be approached. The Democratic Party is
accountable only to its donors on Wall Street and in the military industrial
complex.A splintered and weakened Black left and left-wing political
movement in general in the United States has taught us invaluable lessons
about the Democratic Party and the two-party duopoly more broadly. The
so-called "Blue Wave" of the mid-term elections of 2018 has been more of a
low tide that has continued to drown Black America and poor people
generally. Nancy Pelosi is the new Speaker of the House and Elizabeth Warren
is the first Democrat to announce her bid to replace Trump as president in
the 2020 election. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was sworn in on
January 3rd, complete with fifty-five seats.

"The Democratic Party is accountable only to its donors on Wall Street and
in the military industrial complex."

This modest "wave" of Democrats is sure to bring with it an even bigger wave
of militarism and capitalist plunder. This is not to say that the Republican
Party represents an alternative. The Republican Party has been known as the
White Man's Party for good reason and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Pentagon and monopoly capital. However, this epoch of U.S. imperialism is
not like any prior. At no other point in U.S. history has the two-party
duopoly experienced a crisis of legitimacy of this magnitude. And at no
other point in history has it been more apparent that the Democratic Party
is a political trap designed to capture the hearts and minds of the most
progressive constituency in the United States: Black America.

The words and policies of the Democratic leadership reveal the danger of the
trap. Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that
<https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/317639-pelosi-town-hall-q
uestion-on-capitalism-wasnt-planned-report> she is a "capitalist" seeking to
undermine even the most marginal of progressive policies advocated by the
likes of Bernie Sanders. Pelosi's
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/02/stop-fiscal-madness-dems-urged
-vote-down-brainless-republican-idea-pelosi-plows?utm_campaign=shareaholic&u
tm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork> "pay-go" policy recently voted
in by House Democrats ensures that any increase in federal spending is
offset by an equal number of cuts. In other words, "pay-go" makes Medicare
for All or the Green New Deal impossible to fund under current arrangements.
Of course, Pelosi is a wholly owned representative of the medical industrial
complex, the military industrial complex, and Silicon Valley, all of which
<https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors?cid=N00007360&
cycle=2018> make up her largest donors. Her so-called political opponents in
the party are little better. "Socialist" Ocasio-Cortez voted in favor of
funding the Department of Homeland Security with the first vote of the new
Democrat-led House despite her promise to fight to "abolish ICE" once in
office.

"Pelosi is a wholly owned representative of the medical industrial complex,
the military industrial complex, and Silicon Valley."

Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi speaks and acts more like Reagan and has
never tried to speak to the conditions of Black America. Neither did
Elizabeth Warren until a month ago. In mid-December, Warren spoke at Morgan
State University's commencement ceremony where she outlined her position
that the government was
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-president.h
tml> "rigged" against Black people. The speech was made in obvious
preparation for her announcement of a 2020 presidential run that came just
weeks later. Yet while Warren talked a big game to begin her effort to
galvanize the Black vote, her record of action is less impressive.

Warren has often spoken of being a
<https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2018/08/16/elizabeth-warren-capitalism-b
ill> "capitalist to her bones" and her politics are even further to the
right than Bernie Sanders' pseudo-socialism. As BAR editor Margaret Kimberly
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-elizabeth-warren-and-trap-b
lack-voters> explained in first issue of the new year, Warren is no friend
of single payer healthcare or any of the modest reforms that Bernie Sanders
proposed in his 2016 campaign. Warren has no substantial record of
addressing the issues of police brutality and mass incarceration which are
so fundamental to the condition of Black people in the United States. And
just as she is an enthusiastic champion of capitalism, Warren is a stalwart
of militarism. Warren supported Israel's military assault on schools and
hospitals in Gaza
<https://theintercept.com/2014/08/28/elizabeth-warren-speaks-israelgaza-soun
ds-like-netanyahu/> during the 2014 invasion and voted for the massive
<http://www.leftvoice.org/Elizabeth-Warren-Votes-for-Massive-Increase-of-War
-Budget> increase in the military budget in 2017, a budget that was far
larger than the one Trump originally proposed.

"Warren has no substantial record of addressing the issues of police
brutality and mass incarceration."

The Democratic Party's thirst for war and unbridled capitalism is set to
worsen in 2020 and there exists no better measure of this than the
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Fifty-five CBC officials were sworn in
earlier this January, which
<https://www.theroot.com/from-big-daddy-clyburn-to-wakanda-salutes-the-bigge
st-1831498896> The Root called "the tip of the spear in the resistance
against Trump." Maxine Waters greeted her fellow CBC members with the
"Wakanda" salute. It is fitting that Waters would reference a Hollywood film
that promoted "diversity" as the equivalent of Black uplift. The truth is
that the CBC has used diversity to actively collaborate with the U.S.
imperial state in the destruction of the lives of Black Americans and their
allies for decades. The CBC has sided with the forces of imperialism when it
comes to war, surveillance, and the police, with 29 CBC members having voted
in favor of a law last year that made the police
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/black-caucus-sells-out-its-constituents-a
gain-cops> a protected class in America. CBC members can be depended upon to
put on a show of "diversity" while working hand over foot to show their
loyalty to the monopolists and militarists in control of U.S. imperialism.

Diversity is a cruel con game employed by the Democratic Party to delineate
who is and isn't "fit" to rule the system of imperialism. The white racist
ogre Donald Trump is unfit to be president by the calculations of Democrats,
yet these same Democrats refuse to admit that it was their party that placed
him into office. Instead, so-called evil Russiahas been blamed in the
never-ending Russiagate saga for the Donald's rise to political stardom even
though Russian history and its current political trajectory is categorically
different from that of the United States. The United States is the
birthplace of whiteness and its "purebred" capitalist system has only itself
to blame for the current political and economic crisis embodied by Trump.
However, there is no room for investigation when the political discourse in
the United States has been reduced to what typeof individual should hold
political office and whether Washington is under constant electoral attack
by the Russians.

"Russiagate has given people in the U.S something to blame other than the
rulers of their own system."

Diversity and Russiagate are interrelated. The former has been employed to
make the rule of imperialism more effective under the auspices of "diverse"
oligarchs such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Russiagate is the spawn
of diversity's failures. Diversity did nothing to intervene in the declining
living standards of working and poor people, especially Black people.
Rather, it complimented the system's race to the bottom. Now that the War on
Terror has lost legitimacy, and the two-party duopoly along with it,
Russiagate has given people in the U.S. someone and something to blame other
than the rulers of their own system.This won't last forever, as Russiagate
and its architects in the ruling class are built to wage war, drive the
system into economic collapse, or both. The real question of 2020 is whether
a truly left political insurgency will develop in opposition to the
obsessions of empire.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He
and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the forthcoming book entitled American
Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News- From
the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror(Skyhorse Publishing). He can be
reached at wakeupriseup1990 at gmail.com.

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