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Another round of police shootings in Baton Rouge have given heightened expression to the growing illegitimacy of the US imperial state. Three cops were reportedly killed by a Black US veteran, who himself was slain by the authorities in a gun fight. The scene mirrored the Dallas shooting of police officers just a week prior. Media corporations and police departments have used the shootings as an opportunity to criminalize the young movement against white supremacy and the police state in the US. However, the crisis of US imperialism has increasingly found political expression in this period and no amount of corporate media lies can mask it.

First, the struggle against the murder of Black Americans by the police has developed into the most advanced political movement in the US. This struggle has for the most part been non-violent in character. However, the US imperial state has not responded non-violently to the calls to end police terror in the Black community. In 2015 alone, 1,134 Black men were murdered by US law enforcement agencies around the country. This number translates to one Black American killed by the police every eight hours.

The quantity of homicides by the police alone has ignited a level unrest that is ready to explode into a rebellion against the domestic army of the US imperial state. It should come as no surprise that individuals living in this context would take matters into their own hands and shoot back. In the 1960s, Black Americans targeted by the police rebelled in Detroit, Watts, and numerous cities across the country. A similar situation is brewing in 2016, except this time the police are armed to the teeth with high tech weaponry courtesy of the US military. The corporate media and Washington understand the gravity of the situation and have worked around the clock to demonize Black resistance to police violence and deify police.

US imperialism's counterinsurgency war on Black people is not the only part of the system that is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. In a recent report by the New York Times, the Business Roundtable has expressed grave concerns about the prospect of a Trump Presidency. As a coalition of capitalists in possession of trillions in profit, the Roundtable has distanced itself from Trump's anti-trade deal rhetoric. The capitalist class has been forced to admit that Trump has tapped into the "losers" of post-industrial,low wage capitalism. Trump has thus alienated one half of Washington's two-party corporate duopoly from its corporate masters.

Free trade agreements have become an indispensable tool for the management of capitalist crisis, making Trump’s rhetoric a problem for the capitalist class. So-called free trade agreements submit the will of entire nations to US capital. Trade deals such as NAFTA and CAFTA have allowed corporations to write economic policy in hostage nations and super exploit their productive labor. The Democratic Party has refused to take the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement off of its party platform. The TPP, if passed, would create a private judicial body that corporations could use to sue sovereign governments for impeding future profits. Trump's rejection of the TPP and trade deals generally has exposed the Democratic Party as the truest expression of the ruling class. But the capitalist class needs both parties to exist in some form or the entire system loses its legitimacy. Trump’s successful campaign has thus done a great disservice to the ruling class.

The elites in the Business Roudtable are not concerned about Trump's racist bigotry, but how his popularity reflects popular anger with the US capitalist economy. This anger has been channeled into anti-immigrant sentiment on the one hand and resentment toward economic policies such as trade deals on the other. While Bernie Sanders has conceeded the election on the Democratic Party side, Trump has not given any indication of doing the same in the Republican Party. The capitalist class will endow Hillary Clinton handsomely with millions in campaign cash to "dump Trump." But the damage has been done. The Republican Party will never operate in the same way after 2016.

On the weekend before the Republican Party National Convention, Washington watched one of its closest allies nearly fracture by way of coup. A section of the Turkish military attempted to oust President Erdogan and framed the coup as a restoration of democracy. It appeared President Erdogan's domestic repression of dissidents and policy of using the Turkish mainland as a safe haven of terrorism had fallen out of favor with the people and military alike. However, the coup took place shortly after Turkey announced an easing of relations with Russia. There was also no clear popular support of the coup, as thousands took to the streets to reject it.

The power struggle within the Turkish government reflects the broader crisis of Erdogan's imperialist strategy. Erdogan's authoritarianism and support of war against Syria has left him vulnerable to future coup attempts unless he continues to move closer to Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian government. This would endanger Turkey's status as NATO member and EU hopeful. Erdogan's flirtation with the reinstatement of the death penalty in Turkey has already received condemnation from the EU and NATO. The US has also failed to come to Erdogan's defense following the unsuccessful coup, leading Erdogan to blasting the US for its support of the accused coup mastermind Fetullah Gullen.

What Turkey, Trump, and the blow back against the police all have in common is their root cause. US imperialism's terminal decline has been the catalyst for each of these developments. US imperialism’s junior partners such as Turkey are rapidly losing legitimacy in domestic and international spheres of influence. Police repression of Black Americans has its roots in both racism and capitalist crisis. Increasing numbers of Black Americans are becoming disposable to a capitalist system that no longer requires its labor. Trump has spoken to the racist fears of a white working class population that has been betrayed by US imperialism. The privileges of imperialism have been largely stripped from poor white Americans. This has left them furious with the established order.

Oppression breeds rebellion, but social relations under US imperialism have complicated the character of resistance. The rebellions signified in the rise of Trump and the lone wolf attacks on the occupation forces of private property have filled the political vacuum left by nearly three decades of imperialist decline and crisis. Joblessness, war, and police state terror are all products of the general crisis of imperialism. In the midst of these conditions, revolutionary political thought and action has been repressed violently by both corporate parties in the US while the right has been coddled and protected by the ruling system. So it should come as no surprise that lone wolf individuals are shooting back at the police or that right wing forces have waged open rebellion against a system that no longer works for anyone except monopoly capital. It is how the left organizes to fight back against monopoly capital and the state that will determine whether the right wing authoritarian process occurring throughout the world can be defeated.