The Coming Storm

** This article was published on Socialist Action  November 9, 2016 ** Despite predictions to the contrary, Donald Trump has been elected the 45 th President of the United States.   What does it all mean? First the numbers.   44.4% of eligible voters (102.7 million people) did not vote.   The number of people who opted out is up three percentage points from the last presidential election in 2012.   Trump received 47% of the popular vote (59.4 million); Clinton edged him out with 48% (59.6 million).   Libertarian Gary Johnson received 4 million votes (3%), and the Green Party’s Jill Stein received 1.2 million votes (1%).   Other candidates combined garnered some 800,000 votes, or about 0.7%. So as usual, “none of the above” was the winner by a landslide.   Next in line was Democrat Hillary Clinton, who actually won the greatest share of the popular vote.   Nonetheless, Republican Donald Trump was crowned the winner, having benefited from a rigged system that substitutes

** This article was published in TruthOut October 13, 2016 ** Usually the US presidential debates are more about personalities than politics.   The phony Commission on Presidential Debates , deeply in the pocket of Democratic and Republican parties, serves as a fig leaf to mask the shamefully narrow discussion that passes for democracy in “The Greatest Country On Earth”™.   But living in the twenty-first century, we do not have to accept the limitations that those in charge would use to hem us in.   With technology at our service, we can present a real, broader debate. According to imperial decree, we are only allowed to hear from the two candidates that represent Wall Street and corporate America.   Both the Democrats and Republicans have a long history of supporting pro-corporate, anti-labor policies, with initiatives that promote racism, sexism, exploitation and environmental destruction.   How do we know?   Because together those two parties have been running the country for

** This article was published on Counterpunch May 13, 2016 With the imminent demise of the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, discussion has turned to what should come next. Some, including Seattle Socialist City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, have agitated for creating a generic "party of the left". But what does that mean?   As we shall see, it's a troublingly vague slogan whose beauty, if it exists at all, is solely in the eye of the beholder. But first, we must step back and survey the lay of the land.   Those inspired by Sanders campaign and those disillusioned with the two major parties come in various flavors. 1. In the first category, there are those who see the status quo—characterized by unequal distribution of wealth, endless war, rampant racism, unemployment, mass incarceration and diminishing expectations—as fundamentally unjust, while having no coherent analysis whence comes the injustice. These are liberals , progressives or