Posts by: Jack Altschuler

Take Heart!


  • Reading time – 46 seconds  .  .  .

    Click me for the story – from The Onion, of course.

  • .
    • It’s hard to be hopeful when headlines are dope-ful
      • Of President Trump’s latest stupid.
    • “Take heart!” I implore, even as the Chief Bore
      • Treats our nation in ways that are putrid.
  • .
  • It’s more than just some who can see that he’s dumb
    • As he leaves yet another field tattered.
  • He keeps the world tense ‘cus he hasn’t the sense
    • To behave as though truth really mattered.

.

  • The key to his bullshit is not that he’s half-wit
    • Instead, it’s the point of his talents.
  • He hasn’t a care that reality’s there,
    • He just works to keep us all unbalanced.

.

  • That’s the way of the crazy who’s way beyond lazy
    • To deal with his sociopath nature.
  • He dumps his dysfunction on us, sans compunction
    • And gives away all of our future.

.

  • The President claims that he has a great brain
    • But that’s just a narcissist figment.
  • He tries to get by with another fat lie,
    • But we’ll catch him in Mueller’s broad dragnet.

.

  • So, don’t you despair, ‘though he’s sucked all the air
    • From the stage that should stir a great nation.
  • This guy’s going down for high crimes and he’s bound
    • For a Leavenworth style vacation.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Jax Jeopardy Game, Season 1, Episode 1


Reading time – 1:33  .  .  .

The category is U.S. Foreign Policy

For $250, your clue: Tora Bora in 2001

“Where and when did U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives have Osama bin Laden trapped, when President George W. Bush refused to commit the necessary forces to capture bin Laden and, thus, allowed him to escape? We’re still wondering why.”

For $500, your clue: To catch Osama bin Laden

“What was the reason given for the full scale invasion of Afghanistan?”

For $750, your clue: No

“Was bin Laden in Afghanistan when the U.S. invaded?”

For $1,000, your clue: To close down terrorist training facilities

“What was the next stated reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan?”

For $1,250, your clue: To defeat the Taliban

“What was the next stated reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan?”

For $1,500, your clue: To establish democracy

“What was the next stated reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan?”

For $1,750, your clue: To train Afghani troops

“What was the next stated reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan?”

For $2,000, your clue: Huh?

“What was the next stated reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan?”

For $2,250, your clue: A string of lies

“What was the justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq?”

For $2,500, your clue: Zero

“How many WMDs did Saddam Hussein have?”

For $2,750, your clue: Iraqi oil

“What would pay the trillions of dollars that the war in Iraq would cost, according to Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense?”

For $3,000, your clue: Pakistan

“What was the first country to be targeted by U.S. drones?”

For $3,500, your clue: Libya

“What is the most recent country to be targeted by U.S. drones?”

For $4,000, your clue: There isn’t one

“What is the plan for U.S. military disengagement from the middle east?”

For $4,500, your clue: Bomb them

“What is John Bolton’s solution for everything?”

For $5,000, your clue: The generals

“Who is President Trump not smarter than?”

For $7,500, your clue: Neither

“Who has the best plan for dealing with North Korea and Iran, Trump or Bolton?”

For $10,000, your clue: Diplomacy

“What do both Trump and Bolton not understand and refuse to use as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy?”

For $15,000, your clue: Never

“When will the U.S. no longer be at war?”

For $20,000 and the Foreign Policy Championship, your clue: China

“As a result of self-defeating U.S. foreign policies, which country will own this century?”

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Kids and Your Lamborghini


Reading time – 1:48; Viewing time – 2:32  .  .  .

It was just an accident of timing that Rabbi Tamar Manasseh spoke the day after the March For Our Lives. Just a coincidence, of course, yet poignant and significant, because not all the shootings of children happen in well-to-do, suburban schools.

Tamar’s work is done in her Englewood neighborhood, the deadliest part of Chicago – really, the deadliest in any city in America. What she does gets kids fed, provides a safe place for them to play and encourages them to stay in school. For now, though, set aside all the good that she does and let’s focus on some of the wisdom she offered in her presentation.

  • Do something because you can. Do something because you must.
  • I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to stand up and do what you know is right.
  • If you don’t speak up, the very worst will happen. Apathy is not an option.
  • I want you to live the best life you can.
  • Here’s Tamar’s metaphor for your life: You’re doing 20 mph in your Lamborghini. Get it out on the highway and open it up!
  • Normally, people don’t choose things that are hard.
  • Find a way to shine your light.

My experience is that Tamar is right, that normally, people don’t choose things that are hard. Which got me to thinking about what would be possible if for some unknown reason we did decide to do what is hard. In that spirit, answer these three questions:

  1. There’s a kid in Englewood who has what it takes to learn and grow and to then to cure Alzheimer’s Disease. Wanna fund his education?
  2. There’s a kid in Englewood who has what it takes to learn and grow and then to find the way to to cure cancer and even prevent it . Wanna fund her education?
  3. What do you think of the radical notion of investing in their neighborhood so that each of these kids survives to adulthood?

Have a look at Tamar’s website, Mothers Against Senseless Killings, and her FaceBook page. Feel free to offer your actions and your dollars in support of the love, peace and opportunity she’s bringing to these otherwise frightened children. And as you look at the pictures on Tamar’s sites, keep in mind that, but for an accident of the universe, you might be living in Englewood.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

If You Ever Were a Kid


Reading time – 2:32; Viewing time – 3:51  .  .  .

There is something peculiar about we human beings, in that we often don’t really “get it” unless we relate events to ourselves. For example, when we see the devastation of a hurricane in Houston, we don’t fully understand and have to see the suffering up close and personal to begin to imagine what it would be like for ourselves if we were in those circumstances. That’s what it takes for us to “get it.”

March For Our Lives – Chicago

So it is with March For Our Lives, as most of us have not been directly touched by gun violence. The Parkland community, all the people of New Town and Aurora and San Bernardino and Orlando and Las Vegas do get it because they’ve lived it. Here’s how you can start to get it:

  • If you have a child or a grandchild,
  • if you know someone who is a school kid, or
  • if you ever were a kid,

Click me for the Sun-Times story

then imagine someone with an AR-15 showing up and firing over 100 bullets in 6 minutes 20 seconds and killing and maiming dozens of kids you know. Just imagine the hallway in your high school that seemed so ordinary; then suddenly someone shows up and sprays bullets from his assault rifle into your friends and maybe into you and you’re lying in the blood.

Are you starting to get it yet?

Left column has names of kids killed this year. The reverse side is entirely filled with the names of the rest of the kids killed this year.

At the Chicago March For Our Lives, all the presenters were students. Here is what they want you to know.

“We call BS” – Emma Gonzalez – Click and watch the video

They are sick deep into their souls from the murders of their friends and family members. Their pain is etched into their faces and they suffer every day.

In case you’re white, they want you to understand that black and brown skin is not bullet proof and that they feel the agony of danger and loss just like you would.

They want you to know that they will out-live you and they will vote in huge numbers. Further, they will not stop until they get the safety they want for themselves, for their little brothers and sisters and for their children to come.

Some say enough is enough, but that isn’t right because there is no “enough” bullet-riddled children. There is only the reality of the suffering and dying that has no purpose. There are the suicides that are made so easy by the presence of a gun. There is the insanity that we tolerate only because it hasn’t come close enough to ourselves to feel it.

But it probably came close enough to your heart in Parkland, FL. And at Sandy Hook Elementary School when you found out those little 6 year old bodies had multiple bullets ripped through them. And at Columbine.

You probably “get it” because you were a kid once. You remember the classes and the hallways and you knew who the brooding, angry kid was. Maybe you can imagine that kid coming to school to wreak his vengeance for his imagined wrongs – maybe wrought on you just because you happened to be in the hallway between classes.

For our legislators: Don’t even think about offering thoughts and prayers or weasel-words. Get on the right side of history or start updating your résumé, because these people are going to send you home.

By the way, in the 17th school shooting in the first 80 days of this year – that’s one every 4 days –  a kid shot two students at Great Mills High School in Maryland five days ago. One of them was a 16 year old girl the shooter knew. She died on Thursday. She could have been your daughter. She could have been you.

Now you “get it.” It’s time for sweeping change.

All photos from March For Our Lives – Chicago, March 24, 2018.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Hypothetical States of America


Reading time – 1:47  .  .  .

Many thanks to contributing author M.S.A. for this particularly appropriate post in anticipation of the March For Our Lives event on, Saturday, March 24. Click a pic, find a march near you, sign up and GO MARCH FOR OUR KIDS!

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In The Hypothetical States of America there exists a law that allows most people to own and use explosives. They can own explosives that are capable of destroying property and killing people in an area of no more than a one hundred foot radius. Larger explosives are illegal. You must be at least eighteen years of age and pass a background check to possess explosives. Mental health professionals must report you to the state and federal governments if it is deemed that you may be a danger to yourself and/or others, in which case you cannot own an explosive.

After this law was passed there was an uptick in deaths and destruction of property due to the use of explosives. The people of The Hypothetical States of America (HSA) were concerned. “Our people and buildings must be safe,” they said. Over the subsequent years a ten foot reinforced concrete wall was built around all K-12 schools and colleges as well as houses of worship, stadiums and all state and federal government buildings. The cost was in the trillions of dollars. But at least the people of the HSA felt safe.

Until . . .

Explosives owners were furious. The National Explosives Owners of America (NEOA) was furious. There was so much of the Hypothetical States that was now inaccessible to explosives that owners were being denied their constitutional right to use explosives. The NEOA recommended to its members that they purchase a catapult. This would allow owners to once again exercise their right to use explosives wherever they wanted. The largest catapults were capable of lobbing an explosive eighty feet in the air. So the President of The Hypothetical States mandated a federal program to top all ten foot reinforced concrete walls with a ninety foot chain link fence at a cost of trillions of dollars. Once it was completed the people of the HSA again felt safe.

Until . . .

Explosions start happening in shopping malls, grocery stores and at neighborhood town hall meetings where “the explosives problem” was being debated. Americans once again felt frightened. But there’s nothing that can be done.

Just so this story is clearly understood, it was written several days after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. It  is an allegory of both the gun problem in the U. S. and the NRA. There is no Hypothetical States of America and there is no National Explosives Owners of America as far as I know. I hope this story strikes you as being just as ridiculous as our inability to fix our gun problem.

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We really do have a problem, so click on either of the pictures to get to the March For Our Lives website. There are over 800 marches worldwide, so enter your zip code, find a march nearby and GO MARCH FOR OUR KIDS NEXT SATURDAY!

Because you care.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Stop Watching the Sideshows


Reading time – 3:21; Viewing time – 4:23  .  .  .

The discussions drone on, with the current outrage over Trump’s cowardly firing of Rex Tillerson. I say cowardly, because apparently Trump tweeted the firing to the world hours before Tillerson found out about it from a third party. In other words, once again Mr. “You’re Fired” wasn’t man enough to confront someone – this time Tillerson – with the news that his employment was terminated.

Then, of course, there is the speculation about how long Tillerson’s firing was in the works and whether his recent supportive response to Theresa May’s finding that the Russians were behind the nerve gas attacks in England was the tipping point for Tillerson.

And there is ongoing hand-wringing over the revolving door that is the White House, how Trump can’t seem to keep people in place to do what needs to be done and also have the proper security clearances. And all of that, while true, is a sideshow, so stop watching it. It’s critical that we focus on the center ring in the Big Tent of the Trump Circus.

Trump is consistent in exactly one thing: doing what serves Donald Trump. And the most important thing Donald Trump needs now is to prevent us from seeing the connections between him and the Russians and their attacks on America. That is the center ring in the Big Tent.

It’s what explains his ongoing distractions and smoke screens, like his impulsive tariffs, his impulsive agreement to meet with Kim Jung Un, his impulsive verbal attacks on NATO, his impulsive rejection of the Paris Climate Accord, his impulsive ongoing attacks on the judiciary and the press and, of course, impulsively far more.

That Trump behaves this way is no surprise. He’s been in the business of causing outrage for a very long time and pundits who are horrified over the Tillerson et.al. exits are looking in the wrong direction. We knew what this snake was before we picked him up.

The right direction to look is at Republicans in Congress, those who are supposed to be a check and balance on the Presidency. Nearly all of them are metaphorically screwing themselves into the ground in an effort to somehow make Trump’s behavior okay. They’re laying down smoke screens like, “Oh yeah? Well here’s how some Democrat is worse,” as though even if true that would make Trump’s behavior acceptable. As bad as those Republicans may be, are those who don’t have the spine to address Trump’s un-American behavior at all.

Every one of them knows that Trump is a very bad boy who has done reprehensible things, many of which are likely illegal and possibly treasonous. Every one of them can see on open display Trump’s dereliction of duty, as he refuses to take any action to inhibit Russian meddling with our election coming just 8 months from now. That includes the Republican House Intelligence Committee members who have caved and sucked up to Trump with their blatantly valueless report.

Go ahead: answer for yourself why Trump might give Putin an open lane to skew our election. It’s the same answer to the question of why Trump gave Putin veto power over the choice for Secretary of State last year. You may remember that Trump declared his options to be either Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Putin nixed both, but allowed Tillerson to get the job because Putin likes Tillerson. That’s because Russia’s biggest oil deal ever was made with Tillerson at the head of Exxon shortly before the 2016 election. And the Republicans know all of that, too.

We’re left with a Congress that, through its verbal gymnastics of Trump explanations, paired with cowardly silence, is allowing Putin to control Trump and this country and our allies in Europe as well. We are being sold out by a subservient President and a spineless Congress.

So, stop watching the sideshows and keep your eyes on the Big Tent.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Behavior Geek


Reading time – 3:19; Viewing time – 4:36  .  .  .

When I see or hear behavior that stands out, one of my first responses is to wonder what’s behind that. For example, when Donald Trump demands a military parade and faintly lauds the Nazis in Charlottesville and insults Gold Star Families and imposes import tariffs that will create a net loss of over 100,000 jobs – and worse once our trading partners react – and he lies two-thirds of the time, I scratch my head about what drives those behaviors. That’s after I calm down. Fortunately, mental healthcare professionals have offered their expertise about Trump’s behavior by demonstrating that he exhibits nearly all of the telltale indicators of a sociopath (here and here and here and here and here). Voilà! The behavior geek in me is satisfied. Mostly.

That information helps to explain Trump’s bizarre acts to destabilize others (“I like being unpredictable.”) and his destructiveness of our country, often displayed multiple times per day. What it doesn’t do is explain why millions of people dismiss his anti-social behavior, saying things like, “That’s just Donald being Donald,” as though that makes okay his Access Hollywood admission of assault of women, his constant attacks on his predecessors in office and his refusal to aggressively interdict Russian efforts to subvert our elections and to impose sanctions. Why would those who wave the red, white and blue tolerate for even one second Trump’s obviously anti-American behavior, his grabs for autocracy, his dereliction of duty?

They aren’t all racists, homophobes and misogynists and they don’t all think that mass gun slaughter is just the price of freedom. Please, get over those notions and the need to demonize those who are different from you. That’s the disease that has swept our nation and you can self-inoculate against that virus. Seeking to understand is a really good way to do that. I really mean just seeking to understand. Be a behavior geek to see the world as they do so that you can understand them. Be clear, though, that doing so is not for the faint of heart.

I recently presented my Money, Politics and Democracy: You Aren’t Getting What You Want program and had a unique experience. The program is non-partisan and focuses solely on how the Big Money people are getting what they want, but We the People are not. I’ve presented this program to groups from all over the political spectrum and have never gotten push-back. But that isn’t what happened at this recent presentation.

There were people sitting at the edges of their chairs, wagging fingers, interrupting, and aggressively going off-point, seemingly unable to focus on the content. They seemed to want to defeat what they experienced as an attack on their cherished beliefs and I was hard pressed to avoid engaging in a verbal battle. I felt attacked and wanted to hit back. I refused that knee-jerk response, though, and repeatedly tried to redirect back to the primary point about Big Money in our politics, but to no avail.

At last some clarity came to me and when the room quieted I said that in that room we were a microcosm of America today. We seemed to be unable to simply talk to one another and be heard. There was refusal to tolerate different views and insistence on being “right.” And, yes, that describes what was going on inside me, too, as the near-chaos had ensued. It took a formidable force of will not to verbalize some of my reactions. That’s why that seeking to understand business is not for the faint of heart.

The only good that I see having come from that meeting is the clarity of what we in America have become. It isn’t pretty and I don’t get what’s behind it – the behavior geek stuff – not fully.

We have to look outside our smug bubbles in order to learn, so I’m looking and will report what I find in subsequent posts. For now, we all need to understand how self-destructive we’re being on a one-to-one basis and nationally when we demonize one another; when we refuse to allow others the same right of opinion as we demand for ourselves; when we hunker down in those smug bubbles. When we’re ready to peer outside our defended zones, things will begin to get better.

For now, stop listening to the haters.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

White House Veracity


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:26  .  .  .

The White House, power center of the United States, home of the leader of the free world, the influence center of global economics and source of a continuing flow of lies has done it again.

Hope Hicks, the 29 year old White House Communications Director, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on February 27, refusing to answer most questions. She based her refusal on an imaginary privilege, which roughly paralleled Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ refusal both times he testified before that committee. It is essentially an assertion that, “I don’t want to talk about it and the President doesn’t want me to, either.” There is no such privilege – that’s what makes it imaginary. Said ranking member Adam Schiff,

“That’s an overly broad claim of privilege that I don’t think any court of law would sustain. And I think the White House knows that. This is not executive privilege; it is executive stonewalling.”

Hicks did manage to say a few things to the committee. One of them was that her work for President Trump had occasionally required her to tell white lies. This requires some clarification.

When a woman asks, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” people of strict integrity might be forced to admit that, yes, they do. On the other hand, relationships can be fragile and they are likely the most important issue, so saying something more tactful might be the better course, something like, “They’re okay, but you might want to try a darker color.” Or, “No, you look great.” Those are white lies – lies told to spare someone’s feelings.

We have yet to hear such a lie from anyone in the White House. With over 2,000 documented Presidential lies in a single year, not one has been identified as a lie to avoid hurting someone. No press briefing, commonly packed with lies, distortions and misdirection has included white lies. Not a single cabinet briefing has included a white lie. It beggars belief that Hope Hicks, alone in a swamp of lies, would be the sole dispenser of white lies, this in the name of the President of prevarication.

No, she’s  just another West Wing liar and now she’s gone, like dozens before her.

And another thing  .  .  .

Jared Kushner, son-in-law to the President, unpaid handler of everything including middle-east peace, can’t get a security clearance. In fact, he will never get a top security clearance, even though for well over a year he has been privy to the most sensitive of America’s secrets. At the same time he’s held numerous meetings with top officials of other countries, many without another pair of American ears present, and he has discussed his private financial interests at the same meetings. He proposed setting up a private communications scheme with Moscow, with his base to be in the Russian embassy. And it’s been reported that the Chinese are working him in an influence operation. This too-smart-for-American-interests agent is ripe for being blackmailed and putting us all at risk.

At the same time Trump hasn’t allowed our intelligence services to do anything about Russian hacking of our elections and has refused to apply legally required sanctions on them. And during the transition his then national security advisor Michael Flynn, liar to the FBI and dabbler in Russian cooperation, promised to remove Obama era sanctions.

Trump unmasked an Israeli agent to the Russians. He’s had numerous contacts with Vladimir Putin without so much as an American translator present. He’s refused to appoint ambassadors to nations in key flash points around the world, including South Korea. And he has decimated our diplomatic corps.

There is far more, of course, but the key question is how many years will it take for the United States to recover from Trump compromising and even betraying of our country? Indeed, will we ever be able to recover?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The 1960s and Now


Reading time – 3:00; Viewing time – 4:24 .  .  .

Times were dark and we were heading down the dismal spiral of the Vietnam war. There was the draft and all the guys knew that we would spend a minimum of two years in the military. It’s just the way things were. And there was a problem with that.

World War II had been a patriotic cause to protect our country and the world from the most evil of all evils. It was a “good war”. Vietnam bore no resemblance to that and not many boomers were anxious to slog through rice paddies and get shot while serving in “Johnson’s war,” a conflict that had no patriotic reason. Most of us felt at risk. Mortal risk.

And that’s what lit the fires of protest, the shouting, the anger, the demonstrations, the confrontations with the establishment. Vietnam simply wasn’t a “good war” and certainly wasn’t worth killing others or dying for. If they wanted boomers to go to war, they needed a much better reason. Let Johnson be the first president to lose a war, we said. Better that than any of us losing our lives for no patriotic reason.

We were agitated. We were engaged. And we were completely misunderstood by older generations who simply couldn’t make sense of us. They wanted to know what all those protest songs were about. Why were we so angry and how come we didn’t do as we were told the way they had? And why didn’t we just abandon our resistance in the face of the titanic force of the way things were?

The answer, of course, is that it was personal. President Johnson was coming for me and he was going to get me killed for no good reason. It doesn’t get more personal than that and that’s the key point.

Like us, the astonishingly clear students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School feel that same mortal risk and they are agitated and they are engaged. They are protesting and they are demonstrating. And, just as for the boomers in the 1960s, it’s personal. They will not go away. They will not be silent. And they will not knuckle under to the titanic force of the way things are.

Here is what politicians better figure out really fast:

  1. This generation gets it and it’s personal and they refuse to wear a bulls eye on their backs.
  2. It isn’t just the students at one Florida high school; it’s every high school and college kid across the nation. If you doubt that, watch for the head count at March For Our Lives on March 24. Better yet, show up.
  3. These kids can and will vote. And don’t dismiss the high school sophomores and juniors: They’ll be voting in the 2020 election.
  4. This generation of Americans will vote in bigger numbers than previous generations and they will outlive all of us. They will get their way.

We boomers had our day, but there were some civil rights advances, the Vietnam war and the draft went away and our fire went out. We became complacent and learned to play the game.

Now, though, our Gen-Zs, like the kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, are politically aware and they are mobilized. So are many of the Gen-Ys. Together, they are the hope for our nation’s future.

President Obama told us in 2008 that, “We are the people we’ve been waiting for.” He was right. And on February 22, just 8 days after the MSD High School massacre he told that entire generation, “We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.” He’s right again.

Memo to politicians: Get on the right side of history or get run over.

Memo to Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the NRA: In your red-fanged address to the CPAC conference you said, “We are never talking about an armed resistance against the socialist corruption of our government.” Was your implied threat intentional?

Just know, Wayne, that as you rail against any and all actions that might actually make our students safer, rest assured that they aren’t advocating armed resistance against you either.

See how personal this gets?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Bullet-Head Zone


CPAC Conference, 2018

Reading time – 1:52; Viewing time – 3:03  .  .  .

In the wake of the slaughter of 17 students and teachers and the wounding of 14 others in Parkland, FL, Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the NRA, gave a speech to the attendees of the CPAC conference. This is the association that used to be the home for conservatives, but now is primarily composed of hair-on-fire righties.

In his speech he equated gun ownership with God, claimed that having guns is the most important of our rights and reasserted the official NRA certainty that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so let’s arm kindergarten teachers and have shoot-outs in the hallways.

Here’s what you need to know:

  1. Nearly every “fact” that LaPierre stated is untrue.
  2. His wholly unsupported accusations and opinions are based on a false and intentionally misleading interpretation of the Second Amendment. It was and is promulgated by the NRA in order to spike gun sales for the firearms industry. More on that in a future post.
  3. LaPierre’s job is to stoke righty fervor, so he gave a red meat speech to a hall of red meat eaters. That explains his tone.

These red meat eaters don’t represent American values, as 94% of Americans want universal background checks – that means for all transfers of ownership of all firearms. That includes when grandpa gives his old hunting rifle to his grandson.

Nearly all Americans, including the overwhelming majority of NRA members, want gun ownership prohibited for all convicted violent felons, mentally disturbed people, those on the terror watch list, domestic violence perps and the like. 74% of Americans want assault weapons and high capacity magazines banned. And nobody outside the NRA thinks a gun battle in the school hallway is a good idea.

Go ahead and watch LaPierre and listen to his fascism-worthy speech. Again, it’s his job to stoke gun fervor with high volume and he’s good at that. Just get that he and those like him are not just allowing, but are indirectly inviting more kids to get killed in our schools, more movie and concert attendees to be mowed down and more church, synagogue and mosque goers to be murdered.

I’ll say it again: A vote for an NRA backed candidate is a vote for dead children.

VOTE in your primary and in the general election on November 8. First check to see which candidates have taken money from the NRA (here’s a link to all NRA money recipients) and vote against these people. *

This is another chapter in the “Big Money controls Congress and you don’t count” story of the destruction of our democracy. You can shut down that story. And you can save our kids.

VOTE!

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    Click me

  • * This is actually tougher than it sounds. Have a look at this and note the distribution of NRA funds: only $1 million of the $59 million the NRA spent to warp our politics and our democracy in the 2016 election was for direct contributions. For example, the recipient list shows they gave Marco Rubio $9,900, but their total spend for him on TV ads and SuperPAC contributions was in the millions of dollars. So, when Cameron Kasky asked Rubio to promise to never take another dollar from the NRA, Rubio weaseled. Rubio is a great talker. Too bad we can’t trust him.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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