September 26, 2016

"IF TRUMP wins, America will become a nightmare."

This was the gist of the message I recently received in my inbox from Democratic Sen. Al Franken, by way of MoveOn.org, encouraging me to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prevent said nightmare.

The above assertion is certainly accurate. America under Trump would be a nightmare. The problem, however, is that the present America under the rule of the Democrats is also already a nightmare.

What else but a nightmare can you call a situation in which the government murders Black and poor people in the streets with impunity every single day?

When millions of families have been violently torn asunder by government agents who have raided their homes and deported them in the middle of the night?

When entire cities are being willfully poisoned by ruling class bureaucrats who deem safe drinking water to be a privilege rather than a right?

When Muslims and Arabs face hate crimes in the street and the government responds by organizing state summits offering instructions on how to "counter the violent extremism" emanating from Muslim communities?

When pilotless drones are conducting daily bombing raids and extrajudicial assassinations all over the world against countries and peoples that the government has not even declared war against?

When the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners?

When the U.S. just this past year became the world's single largest producer of oil and natural gas, even as the threat of ecological devastation via climate change becomes ever greater?

When millions of the poorest Americans are killing themselves and each other everyday through drug addiction, suicide and domestic violence?

When an epidemic of sexual violence continues to run rampant throughout the nation's colleges, armed forces and communities without abatement?

Whether as a result of unwillingness or inability to do anything about it, the simple fact is that the United States under the rule of the Democrats has been nothing short of nightmarish. They have proven to be a non-starter when the question is one of taking radical, extreme measures necessary to fundamentally eradicate the cancerous inequalities, injustices and oppressions at the heart of this so-called republic.

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And any party or politician who does not start their conversation by recognizing the fact of the prevailing nightmarish status quo (which did not begin with Obama, but did not end with him either), is someone who is incapable of either comprehending or remedying the scale of working-class suffering and pain which has thus far characterized 21st century neoliberal American capitalism.

Keith Rosenthal, Boston