These policies are not driven fundamentally by the political ideology of either the Democratic or Republican parties, which give them bipartisan support. This was evidenced in Monday night's debate, where Obama bragged about bringing alleged culprits "to justice" and Romney vowed "to kill them, to take them out of the picture."
Rather they are the outcome, on the one hand, of unprecedented social inequality within America. The gap between a corporate and financial aristocracy that monopolizes economic wealth and political power and the vast mass of working people has become so wide as to be incompatible with democratic forms of rule. On the other hand, they are the byproduct of the unchecked growth of militarism, as US imperialism seeks to offset its economic crisis and decline by using armed force to assert control over the world's strategically vital regions and resources.
The very fact that the detailed reports of a Murder, Inc. being run out of the West Wing of the White House have not prompted a public outcry and demands for Obama's impeachment is testimony to the collapse of democratic consciousness within America's ruling political establishment. Just as the economic practices of Wall Street and corporate America have assumed an increasingly criminal character, so the essential functioning of the state itself is ever more bound up with murder, brutality and extra-constitutional repression.
The startling revelations about the institutionalization of state assassinations under the Obama administration should impel workers and youth to consider very carefully what is happening in the US today and to draw the necessary political conclusions.
No matter which of the two capitalist parties emerges victorious on November 6, the immense dangers to basic democratic rights will only intensify in the wake of the election. Neither these rights, nor the jobs and conditions of working people, can be defended outside of a break with the Democratic Party and the preparation of a new revolutionary leadership and perspective in the working class for the great social struggles that are to come.
Crossposted at wsws.org
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