Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Democratic Party floats proposal for a palace coup

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Democratic Party floats proposal for a palace coup

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

Far from appealing to the broad popular opposition to Trump that began to erupt in the days after his inauguration, the Democratic Party is fixated on avoiding at all costs the emergence of a movement of the working masses. That is why it appeals to the military/intelligence apparatus and the corporate aristocracy in its struggle with the faction of the ruling class represented by Trump.

The war between the two is a war of liars between two deeply reactionary factions of the same capitalist elite. The Trump camp seeks to pursue a different approach in the drive of US imperialism for global hegemony—putting off for now war plans against Russia in order to focus US aggression first on China.

Both factions would drag the people of the United States and the world into a third world war, with the prospect of nuclear annihilation. And there is no difference between the two on the need to escalate the war against the working class.

I don't think that Friedman's open letter in the NY Times has all that much to do with the Democratic Party as it has more to do with the struggle of the two factions as argued in the above quote. As an illustration, the vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act was rejected by a combination of both political parties even though its repeal has long been advocated by Republicans. Both factions of the ruling class simply did not think it was in their best interest to provoke more anti-government opposition, and instructed their puppets in Congress to vote accordingly.