[D66] Debat Clinton - Trump

[J.N.]

Clinton-Trump debate: A degrading spectacle
By Patrick Martin
27 September 2016

The first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was a
political and cultural abomination. It demonstrated, in both style and
substance, the thoroughgoing decay of American capitalist society over
many decades.

It says a great deal about the US political system that, out of 330
million people in America, the choice for president has been narrowed
down to these two individuals, both members of the financial
aristocracy—they last met face-to-face when the Clintons attended
Trump’s third wedding in 2005—and both deeply and deservedly hated by a
large majority of the population.

There was not the slightest intellectual substance or reasoned political
content to the so-called “debate.” No topic was addressed with either
intelligence or honesty. Both candidates lied without effort or shame,
slinging insults and prepared one-liners against each other while
posturing as advocates of working people.

The capitalist two-party system in America has never put a premium on
intelligence or truth. It has always been based on politicians who
represent the interests of a narrow stratum at the top of society, while
pretending to speak for all of the people. But by 2016, this pretense
has lost all credibility.

Trump is the personification of business gangsterism, a billionaire who
built his fortune on swindles, bankruptcies, the theft of wages and
deals with the Mafia. When Clinton charged him with profiteering from
the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, which touched off the
2008 financial collapse, he retorted, “That’s business.” When she
accused him of paying no taxes on his vast fortune, he boasted, “That
makes me smart.”

Clinton is the personification of political gangsterism, deeply
implicated in the crimes of American capitalism over a quarter century,
from the destruction of social welfare programs, to the criminalization
of minority youth, to the launching of imperialist wars that have killed
millions. At one point in the debate she declared that her strategy for
defeating ISIS was focused on the assassination of its leader, Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi. She alluded to her role in “taking out” Libya’s Muammar
Gaddafi and said she would make such killings “an organizing principle”
of her foreign policy.

Clinton came into the debate as the favorite of the media and the
American ruling elite, a tested servant of the financial aristocracy who
can be relied on to serve as the political figurehead for the
military-intelligence apparatus. She found her voice in the event as the
representative of identity politics in the service of imperialism,
making repeated appeals along racial and gender lines while threatening
Russia with war and presenting the crisis in the Middle East as
something that could be resolved by killing the right people.

Trump has attracted support by appearing to give voice to anger over the
catastrophic decline in the social position of working people, citing
plant closings, mass unemployment, rising poverty, the deterioration of
roads, schools, airports, etc. But he offers no solution except the
elimination of every restraint on the operations of big business:
slashing taxes on corporations in half and scrapping business regulations.

The fascistic billionaire made perhaps the only truthful statement in
the debate when he declared that American capitalism faced disaster
after a “recovery” that was already the worst since the Great
Depression. “We are in a big fat ugly bubble that’s going to come
crashing down as soon the Fed raises interest rates,” he said. This
recalls the remark by President George W. Bush during the financial
meltdown of September 2008, when he blurted out, “This sucker’s going down.”

The media apologists of the Democrats and Republicans blabbed both
before and after the debate about the need for fact-checking of the
candidates. But the entire debate was a lie, from beginning to end. The
falsehoods uttered by Trump and Clinton are picayune compared to the
overarching lie that these candidates offer a genuine choice to the
American people.

Whatever the outcome of the election, whether Donald Trump or Hillary
Clinton replaces Barack Obama in the White House, the next
administration will be the most reactionary government in the history of
the country, committed to a program of imperialist war, social austerity
and attacks on democratic rights.

The task of the working class is to prepare itself politically for the
struggles that will be generated by the drive to war and the deepening
crisis of world capitalism.


On 09/25/2016 10:49 AM, Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks wrote:
> Programma: Debat Clinton - Trump
> Zenders:   RTL-Z en CNN
> Datum:     27 september 2016
> Tijdstip:  1:00 MET
> 
> Het staat nog nergens aangekondigd maar ik vermoed dat
> de bovenstaande gegevens juist zijn.
> 
> Er komen hierna nog twee debatten.
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