TBT: The Brutal Truth

Those who take as given another four years of Bush should consider the fate of the second Nixon administration. Nixon was likewise reelected in the midst of an unpopular war, on the basis of an appeal to backward and confused popular sentiments. If anything, his position at the time of his 1973 inauguration was more secure than that of Bush. Nixon was reelected with a landslide majority in both popular and Electoral College votes. More fundamentally, the underlying crisis of American capitalism—the US was still the world’s largest creditor nation—was far less advanced 32 years ago than today. Yet in less than two years, Nixon was driven out of office, under conditions of a massive eruption of anti-war protest and social battles by the working class.

A new mass movement of social struggle and political opposition will emerge out of the bloody wreckage of US military adventures abroad and the unprecedented assault on living conditions and democratic rights at home. The conditions that produced, two years ago next month, the largest international demonstrations against war in world history, have not disappeared. They have intensified. No one can credibly claim that there is mass support for Bush’s policies of war and social reaction. The fate of this administration is not yet decided. It will be determined by the political character of the popular movement that emerges against it.