0 Shares 0



0

0







In predictable fashion, the Orlando shooting has recharged the dead-end debate on "gun control" between the Democratic and Republican Parties. House Democrats have spent the majority of their time following the shooting pushing a measure that, if passed, would restrict access to guns for those on Washington’s "terrorist" watch list. The Democratic Party has become the truest political representative of the US ruling class. This was made painfully clear after the one day sit-in staged by House Democrats on June 22nd. The sit-in amounted to little more than a spit in the face of poor and working people in the US.

The sit-in was framed as a morally pure act on behalf of the American people. Yet the bill the Democrats are fighting for will do nothing but expand the War on Terror surveillance apparatus. If passed, gun access will be restricted for people who happen to be on the "terrorist" watch-list. This is the same watch-list that has virtually placed the entire Arab and Muslim community in the US under heavy surveillance. The vast majority of individuals on the government's radar for terrorism identify as Arab and/or Muslim.

The War on Terror has never been a fight against terrorism. It has always been an all out counter insurgency war. The War on Terror has targeted dissidents such as Lynn Steward, who was sentenced to ten-years in prison in 2005 for defending an Egyptian cleric wrongly accused of a terror plot. She was released in 2013 on compassionate release after being diagnosed with terminal Breast Cancer. The War on Terror is the same war that sanctioned the hundreds of indefinitely detained prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and spurred drone warfare. In 2011, Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son were killed by US drone strikes in a span of two weeks. Both were US citizens and targeted by the Obama Administration's "kill list," which itself is a product of the War on Terror.

What should be even more infuriating is how so-called gun control legislation has taken precedence over the myriad of crises afflicting working people in the US. The same Democrats sitting -in for gun control are the same politicians that voted against an amendment to demilitarize the police in 2014. The sit-in's leader, John Lewis, was one of the members of Congress that voted against the amendment despite his often-cited history in the Civil Rights movement. Gun violence only matters when it does not involve the police or the military. The entire Democratic Party establishment has said little and done nothing to curb the daily police lynching of Black Americans or the thousands of people abroad that have been killed by drone strikes in the Middle East and North Africa from 2008-2014.

Endless war and mass Black incarceration are part and parcel of the crisis of capitalism. The masters of the system, the monopoly banks and corporations, need both in order to enforce its low-wage, racist regime on the entire planet. Capitalism's rate of profit has been sent into a permanent downward spiral . Production has become too costly and labor too exploited for capitalism to absorb the windfalls of overproduction (under consumption). Layoffs, prisons, and wars are all the oppressed have to look forward to in the coming years unless the system of capitalism is tossed into the dustbin of history. The ruling class understands this better than most workers and has employed the Democratic Party to clean up the mess.

The Democratic Party's role as clean-up crew for capitalist crisis explains why, beginning in the 1980s, it became the truest political organ of the ruling class. The Democrats have waged no sit-ins for falling wages or the fact that a Democratic Party President facilitated the largest wealth transfer from workers to the bosses in US history. There have been zero no sit-ins for the millions of dead in Iraq and Afghanistan at hands of the US military state. The Democratic Party did not protest the 8.7 billion dollar food stamp cut Obama enacted in 2014. There have been no sit-ins against the trillion dollar student debt bubble or for affordable housing and healthcare generally.

Conditions in the US and globally are ripe for a rebellion against the forces of capital not yet seen in history. The Democratic Party's primary role is to ensure domestically and international tranquility for a suicidal system. Party favorites Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been paid massive sums of money over the course of their careers to crush dissent. The sit-in is a distraction meant to do just that. Such a ploy was motivated by the crisis of legitimacy being experienced by Washington in the 2016 elections. The Clinton campaign has been exposed for the fraud that it is. For her to be victorious, the entire Democratic Party apparatus has to refurbish its brand as the "liberal" wing of the two-party system.

The task from here is to dump the two-party system, not just Donald Trump. Working class people, especially the Black working class, must be organized into an independent political force. The Democratic Party will continue to be seen as the "lesser of two evils" unless a viable alternative is built. This will require time, energy, and political will on the part of revolutionary-oriented leaders to engage with the people. The crisis of conditions will inevitably produce moments that open up more political room for such engagement to materialize into a movement. And dumping the Democrats all together will be a vital part of the process of social transformation in the US.