Don't Choose Between Oppressors...
Bury the Pig SystemRevolutionary Worker #1064, July 30, 2000
This summer, the machinery of official power launches its election season -- projecting its political circuses on the airwaves. Right now the cameras are focusing on Philadelphia, where the Republicans are staging their national convention. Next month they will focus on Los Angeles, where the Democrats will put on their show.
Like a drum roll before the main event, this season was opened by Governor Bush's cold execution of revolutionary prisoner Shaka Sankofa, despite the evidence of his innocence.
As the Republican convention was only days away, swarming police greeted the delegates by stomping Thomas Jones in the pavement of North Philly.
Welcome to America's official political season!
Despite all the staged rituals of hype and voting that will now take place, most key decisions are already made.
The major candidates, George W. Bush and Al Gore, were picked long ago in those backroom conferences where the ruling class makes its choices -- where the powerbrokers promote their favorites and moneybrokers hand over their millions.
The core politics of the future U.S. government is also largely decided. And remarkably few differences separate the two main presidential candidates.
Look closely at what these political forces stand for, and what they intend. Look at these conventions from the viewpoint of the kids in crumbling ghetto classrooms, from the locked-down prison pods crammed with the poor, from the dangerous crossings of militarized borderlands, from poisoned fruit fields and stifling factory floors. Look at these candidates and programs through the eyes of our brothers and sisters trying to survive and free themselves across this planet.
From that stand and perspective-- there is NOTHING here for us, in these convention halls, in this whole sick process of photo ops, policy debate, TV ads and voting booths.
There is no hope offered here for oppressed people. No future here worth living for the new generation. No hint of change for all those millions of people sick of a money-crazed society that seems determined to stamp out even the most simple compassion, community or solidarity among people.
We see our oppressors promoting their future leaders -- wrapping the cold machinery of exploitation in lies about compassion and opportunity. The road these candidates offer will continue to strangle the lives of billions of people across this world.
As they launch their slick political road show -- it is crucial that something radically different take the stage to expose and oppose them. The system has mobilized their police and FBI to stop this protest, and conscious people are mobilizing themselves to make sure it happens.
Bush--A Man for the Season
What is more "out-there" than a Republican convention?
The delegates gather, puffy and arrogant, in a flag-waving orgy to celebrate shameless greed and cold "traditional values."
They may tone it down a bit this year to avoid scaring the fainthearted -- but even so, these Republicans specialize in retailing ruling class politics to the most conservative sections of the population -- using the selfish language of dog-eat-dog.
The cuts of social services get offered as "fewer taxes for you."
The destruction of public schools gets offered as "cheaper private schools for you."
The dismantling of social security becomes "more stock profits for you."
The frenzy of prison building and executions becomes "mop up the streets for you."
This is reactionary politics with all the raw gimme-gimme of the Millionnaire show. And who fits these politics better than George W. Bush -- the smirking frat-rat son of the CIA chief, turned speculator-oilman, turned bloodstained executioner who now wants a world stage. Bush is truly a killer candidate for this killer system.
Can You Spot the Difference?
In the trappings and language of the political parties, the "cultural wars" of the U.S. go on -- with all the subtexts about "race and diversity" and how about best to solidify a stable, productive homefront for their worldwide system. But for all those differences, it remains instructive to see how small the gap is between the proposed policies of Bush Jr. and the program that the Clinton-Gore team has already been carrying out.
Bush supports the cutting of all kinds of social services. But Gore's crew has been there, done that -- slashing welfare for hundreds of thousands of single women.
Bush supports a privatized, even-more-stratified health care system. While Gore is promoting a health plan that is even more conservative than what Bush Sr. called for in 1992.
Bush supports tougher punishments, new prisons, more police. While, under Clinton and Gore, the prison population has already doubled from one million to two million -- as the faces become even more often Black and Latino.
Bush calls for aggressive U.S. domination in the world. But the Democratic White House has already approved $1 billion for intervening in Colombia. They take "credit" for pioneering NAFTA, which sank U.S. claws deeper into Mexico. They've energetically promoted all the instruments of imperialism -- including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank. They've demanded "privatization" worldwide and "knocking down of trade barriers" -- codewords for more exploitation by U.S. capital. They've funded a version of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars first-strike defense, embargoed Cuba and Iraq, and bombed countries from Afghanistan, to Sudan to Yugoslavia.
Bush supports restricting abortion rights. But, meanwhile, the Clinton-Gore Democrats have supported a policy of "legal, but rare" that has made abortions unavailable to millions of women -- especially poor, young or rural women. They have presided over an America where women's doctors are shot and their clinics are bombed -- and where the assassins and their networks go free.
Even on environmental issues -- like clear-cutting old-growth forests or reducing greenhouse gases -- were there any issues the "environmentalist" Gore was unwilling to compromise in the interests of profit-making?
The two campaigns have deep unity on a new social compact in the so-called "new economy" -- where job security is gone, where the upper strata get richer while broad stretches of the population get poorer, and where new gadgets are offered as proof that a better future is coming.
With so much unity, the debate has been lame and bizarre. Last month, Bush insisted that none of the 135 prisoners he executed had been innocent. Gore spoke up, right after the state murder of Shaka Sankofa, admitting that innocent people were being killed, and repeating his support for state executions.
These men are utterly loyal representatives of the class and the system they serve. They are both themselves "fortunate sons" of the ruling class -- trained all their lives in the inner circles of wealth and high government office.
No matter which team wins the election this November, America's ruling class will have one of its tested operatives in the White House.
It's a system thing
"Who the hell wants the right, the so-called right, to see which group of oppressors and exploiters is going to oppress and exploit you? We don't want that right -- it's not worth a damn! We want the right to be rid of being oppressed and exploited -- to put an end to the sham of democracy and the reality of dictatorship."
Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP
"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can -- and, owing to their social position, must -- constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organize those forces for the struggle."
V.I. Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution
It is not just the top candidates, but this whole election system itself that serves the capitalist system. This bourgeois democracy is rooted in a Constitution designed 200 years ago to protect the property, slavery and land-grabbing of the so-called "Founding Fathers." And it evolved into an modern apparatus designed to protect modern property, modern slavery and modern land-grabbing on a global scale. It is their preferred system and it has served them very well.
Some people, including Ralph Nader, propose cleaning up the current U.S. system without overthrowing it -- by entering deeply into the election process to promote reforms there. They suggest that cleaning up the funding of the election system can lead to a "real democracy" and make corporations "socially responsible." This is one huge illusion -- from beginning to end. It is like "taking the blue pill," and never really trying to escape (or understand) the Matrix.
These elections will never be a way of ending the vicious actions of U.S. corporations around the world. That is not what they are for. The modern imperialists -- who rob billions of people, kill anyone who stands in their way, bully whole countries and regions -- they don't suddenly turn to the masses of people every few years and allow them to decide key issues of power and policy. If voting changed things, or even raised consciousness, the imperialists would make it illegal.
Climbing into a voting booth doesn't make you powerful--any more than climbing into the back of a squad car makes you a cop.
All during this official election season -- as the struggle mounts to expose the politics of the ruling class, to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, to fight police brutality, and the countless other injustices that people face -- get down with the Revolutionary Communist Party and its youth crew, the RCYB.
Solving the intolerable suffering of millions of people will take revolution -- a radical, relentless, massive, conscious uprising from the bottom of human society to bring a radical new liberated way of life into being. Nothing else will solve the problems of the people. Nothing is more worth living, planning, fighting and dying for.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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