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Trump in El Paso: The culprit returns to the scene of the crime [wsws.org]:

Trump is, to put it bluntly, an accomplice of murder. But the significance of the events goes beyond Trump himself. The shootings and the response to them marks a turning point in American society.

On Tuesday night in New York City, the sound of a motorcycle backfiring caused thousands of people to panic, stampeding through Times Square in fear that yet another mass shooting was underway.

First, the US government has ritualized state violence and carried out 30 years of permanent war. The US government has unleashed unprecedented levels of violence on countries like Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and Pakistan. The police, using the weapons of the wars abroad against the domestic population, kill more than one thousand people a year without facing punishment.

A whole lexicon of state violence—including words like “disposition matrix,” “shock and awe,” “extraordinary rendition” and “officer-involved shooting”—has developed over the last two decades, expressing the degree to which violence has become embedded in American life. Now this violence is blowing back into American society with extreme force.

Second, massive levels of social inequality dominate all aspects of political and social life. The rich have acquired unprecedented fortunes and transformed themselves into the most criminal and corrupt ruling elite that has ever existed in human history, showering themselves with endless wealth and rewarding every form of financial criminality.

Trump represents the rotten combination of all of capitalism’s most criminal elements: Wall Street, real estate speculation, casinos, TV entertainment, the military and long dealings with the Democratic and Republican parties.

Third, the political establishment works to suppress any progressive expression of social opposition to inequality and war. Above all, the entire state, media and trade union apparatus is engaged in the suppression of the class struggle.