The stock market is in free fall. The federal government is in partial shutdown and nobody knows how long this will last. US foreign policy is unknown, while the executive branch of the federal government is completely in the hands of somebody who never was too swift to start with but is now rapidly losing his mind. “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security,” Tweets Trump on Christmas Eve. He probably thinks he meant that as an attempt at humor, but all jokes contain an element of seriousness. The tweet gives a sense of what the president is going through, alone and increasingly isolated… and increasingly deranged and dangerous.

Here is an article by CNN which gives an idea of the extreme political crisis of US capitalism. In the past, Oaklandsocialist has speculated that their crisis could be the worst since the US Civil War. It definitely is worse than the political crisis during the Vietnam War. Yes, in those years there was the anti-war movement and the Civil Rights movement, but at least then the capitalist class had a firm grip on all levers of government. That grip loosened a bit during the last days of the Watergate crisis, but while Nixon fired the head prosecutor, the main people in the administration remained.