Alt-Right

Frail Societal Memory


POST 1134

Memory, If Any

Today, the story of the Second World War stands at the edge of remembered history, as the participants of humanity’s greatest trial are at the end of long human life spans.

– Steve Schmidt, Danger Ahead

So, too, the memory of the Great Depression, driven by Robber Barons, whom today we call the 1% or the “obscenely rich.” There aren’t too many left who experienced firsthand the deprivations these enormously rich people caused the American people nearly 100 years ago, like the 25% unemployed, the houses foreclosed, the “Will work for food” signs, the Hoovervilles and all the rest.

On the other hand, there are plenty of us who should vividly remember the 2008-2009 financial debacle, wherein none of the 1% perps was held accountable. How come we let them get away with that? How come we put up with Dubya screaming that the sky was falling and that we had to bail out the banks “right now!”? That was another nail in the coffin of accountability in America, because bail outs are what we did and nobody was held accountable.

Nobody talks about that any more and reading these paragraphs may be the first time you’ve thought about this triple whammy to us in a very long time. It’s essentially a lost memory, which, as Santayana instructs, means that we are doomed to repeat it. Indeed, things are financially even more perilous now than they were in 2008 – 2009.

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on December 11:

Biden shifted the U.S. economy from 40 years of supply-side economics that had transferred about $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and hollowed out the middle class.

That legalized theft from you is what Trump promised to reinstate, so chant this out loud:

Make Robber Barons Great Again!
.

That’s what a plurality of Americans voted for. Somehow, we have failed to remember our shared reality. And it’s crazier than that. Here’s more from RIchardson:

Biden listed the numbers: more than 16 million new jobs, the most in any four-year presidential term in U.S. history; low unemployment; a record 20 million applications for the establishment of new businesses; the stock market hitting record highs.

With proper acknowledgment of Biden’s and the Democrats’ inept, inconsequential, dreadful communication, even our current reality has been flushed from our memory and we blindly go about upending ourselves by electing  a candidate who promises to end all of that improvement.

Kids in Iron Lung machines due to polio. Those of us who were kids then remember scenes like this. Click the pic for the story.

Here’s more largely lost memory.

I was a young boy during the great polio pandemic of the 1940s and 50s. Mothers were afraid to let their kids swim in a pool or play with other kids for fear of the contagion. When Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine became available in 1955 doctors’ offices were mobbed by moms and kids in line to get it. The same was true of the vaccines against measles and other terrible childhood diseases.

Before I could come to my university campus I had to show proof of having been vaccinated against smallpox. There was an ongoing worldwide battle to eradicate that horrible disease and that battle was largely won. Cue the international applause for vaccines. In your face, Robert Kennedy!

All that was in an era when vaccinations weren’t just good, they were miracles. And only people who see a boogieman behind every tree made stupid and wrong claims about the vaccines. Their equally ignorant descendants are doing it again now because we have so little societal memory of the death and suffering people endured long ago, or of the blessings of vaccinations. Those who lived through those times are rapidly leaving us now and are replaced by people ignorant about what happened, leaving them susceptible to the blatant and murderous idiocies of the know nothing blabbers.

RFK, Jr. lived through the same health pandemics as many of we older boomers, but apparently that worm ate part of his brain and compromised his memory and cognitive functioning so that he lacks good sense. Now he is poised to allow our kids to be threatened by those preventable, awful diseases once again by standing in the way of the simple processes that keep kids healthy. And those in our society who have no societal memory of the horrors of the past are succumbing to their love of knee-jerk tantrums and are believing what should be unbelievable. So, let’s all sound RFK’s call:

Make Polio and Measels Great Again!
.

Dirty little secret:

RFK, Jr. knows that the claim that vaccines cause autism was invented and broadcast by a British doctor (key word: “Invented”). When peer reviewers tried to replicate his findings, none was unable to do so. In reviewing his paper they found that he had copied/pasted sections multiple times to make his work look more exhaustive. In short, they determined that he and his work were frauds.

There is no connection between vaccines and autism. None. Decide for yourself why Kennedy would be proudly proclaiming what has repeatedly been debunked by experts – actual doctors and scientists. You know: qualified, reality based people.

They’re Doing It Again

On Monday, December 16 Donald Trump did a press conference. He isn’t the president, but CNN, MSNBC and Fox all gave him 40 minutes of free air time – i.e. attention. He didn’t have to pay anything to promote himself. As Heather Cox Richardson described his performance – yes, performance – she wrote that he spewed

. . . attention-grabbing threats alongside lies and very little apparent understanding of actual issues. His mix of outrageous and threatening is central to his politics, though: it keeps him central to the media, even though, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo on December 13, he often claims a right to do something he knows very little about and has no power to accomplish. The uncertainty he creates is key to his power, Marshall notes. It keeps everyone off balance and focused on him in anticipation of trouble to come.

Do you remember a time when this didn’t describe Trump every time he opened his mouth? No, you don’t. Not since the phony golden escalator and the paid phony adoring fans moment in 2015. The networks are still giving away billions of dollars of air time to Trump. All he has to do is to announce he’s going to say something and they roll over to give him the attention he wants – free. They don’t consistently do that for any other politician, not even the current President of the United States. It has been nearly 10 years of this cable news spinelessness and they haven’t learned a thing. They don’t seem to have a memory for how they were played.

It’s long past time when we should have learned to ignore Trump’s craziness, kept our balance and focused on ourselves, on We The People.

Just For Fun

Trump started back-peddling from his baseless campaign claim that he’d get food prices down.; He declared that during his Meet the Press interview on December 8. About that, Dan Rather said,

So it looks like all those people who voted for him, despite all the reasons not to, will be abandoned on aisle 6, in the hoodwink section. Because not only will Trump be unable to bring prices down from the day he “takes the oath of office,” most economists say his proposed policies, like imposing tariffs and deporting undocumented workers, would actually drive prices up — way up.

So, you with the red hat .  .  . you want fries with that SuckerBurger?

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

Our Problem


POST 1132

This Piece is Entirely One-Sided

Here’s why.

No Democrat is threatening violence on anyone. No Democrat is in a militia practicing to assault the Capitol Building on January 6, 2025 or is preparing to send Christmas cards with pictures of themselves brandishing an AR-15 and lusting over the blood of patriots. No Democrat is making death threats to poll workers or to Republicans who support Trump. No Democrat went to an election rally and applauded hateful and racist slurs or chanted about death to anyone.

And no Democratic leader is inciting anger and hatred or promising to terminate our Constitution and to crush our institutions that protect us and make the trains run on time.

That’s why this is one-sided.

We’re Running Out of Time
It isn’t over until it’s over.

– Yogi Berra – also Lenny Kravitz

You might like this version better:

The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

– Dan Cook, writing for the San Antonio News-Express, Texas, ~ 1976

And the fat lady ain’t sung – yet. The burning issue for us now and for the foreseeable future (that means always) is to keep the savages at bay, to prevent the Huns from sacking our country, to keep the fat lady silent.

We have truths that we proclaim to be self-evident but which some abandon as soon as there’s profit to it, and there’s great profit to be made by abandoning those truths, by shedding integrity and sacred oaths. That abandonment is what Trump, Musk and the Republicans are doing in order to make yet larger piles of gold in front of themselves.

Be clear that we are at terrible risk. This is a fight to the political death, where, in the end, either democracy or fascism will lie dead on the floor. At issue in this moment is how we fight for what is right, the patriotic fight, the fight for truth, justice and the American way, so that democracy prevails.

Can You Spot What’s Missing From This Picture?
.

That’s right: In this fight for the heart and soul of America, the Democrats are MIA. They’ve self-neutered. Customarily the Republicans/MAGAs bring automatic weapons to a fight and Democrats bring bean bags. Now the Democrats aren’t even showing up.

The Republicans are “flooding the zone with shit,” as the daddy-issue-encumbered and hateful Steve Bannon calls it. It’s the same thing Trump has always done – spew one outrage after another, whether in actions or lies, such that responding is an overwhelming task.

Far worse, now he has all MAGAs doing it, lying, making up shit as Bannon directs, claiming victories that aren’t theirs, demonizing everyone not MAGA, promising whatever they can think of but will never deliver – like lowering food prices. As they do that, the Democrats self-disable. What happened to that “protect and defend” thing in the oath they swore to? Why aren’t they rising to this occasion bare knuckled?

Democrats don’t seem able to understand going on offense. Enough of the cute golden retriever puppies. We need an army of pit bulls and they’re nowhere to be seen.

We need to employ political savagery. No genius is necessary to see this, because the nice guy Dems get the snot beat out of them over and over. We consistently need something far more visceral and aggressive than standard wimpy Democratic Party patty cake.

Consider the presidential debate. Trump declared that Haitians in Ohio are illegals in our country (false) and that they’re eating the dogs and cats of the local residents (false). Kamala laughed derisively at him. That would have been an appropriate come back at a cocktail party, but not in a political street fight.

She should have told him, “No! Either you’re a big enough fool that you believe whatever crap you’re told by conspiracy idiots or you’re lying right now. And I will not let you get away with lying to the American people!”

But she didn’t say that. No one else in the Democratic Party is fighting like that, either. They look like lap dogs.

Voters couldn’t be more clear about wanting a strong leader, a tough guy, but Dems consistently show them they’re amiable guys, polite guys who smile derisively when they should be throwing rocks through windows.

I love Jamie Raskin, but he sounds like the law professor that he is. That doesn’t reach working people.

I love Mallory McMorrow, but she’s a Michigan legislator and doesn’t have a national platform.

Hakeem Jeffries occasionally shows signs of life. AOC does that all the time, but the Dems muzzle her.

Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer both died years ago and nobody told them.

We don’t need Romney-esque, “Oh, golly, that’s unfortunate” pablum. The American people are primed and ready for an ongoing attack by Democrats in the name of We The People, but the Dems continue to refuse to fight.

Where are the snarling dogs with ripped flesh and blood dripping from their teeth? Where is the chorus singing the same song over and over, the one that actually reaches voters? Oh, right: that’s the Republicans.

The MAGAs are submarining our economy, our institutions and our Constitution and they aren’t even sworn in yet. Meanwhile, the Dems are silent or inept. Harris and Walz are nowhere to be seen, even though over 75 million people voted for them and want to hear from them. They want them to punch back, to attack over and over, but they aren’t even in the ring, much less taking a swing at the anti-patriots.
.

Thom Hartmann dove into this last week, in part detailing what happened at a fancy DC restaurant the night of President Obama’s first inauguration. The Republican movers and shakers and power brokers in attendance focused on throwing Obama’s presidency into a dumpster. From Hartmann:

After the meeting, Kevin McCarthy famously said of their commitment to obstruction:

“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority. We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.” [He was right. JA]

And, sure enough, they did. And continue to do so to this day. And the voters rewarded them, “shellacking” Obama’s Democrats in the next election.

Where are the Democrats today with that kind of spine? Where is our resolve to fight, rather than enable, fascists? What happened to our principles and commitment to democracy? [emphasis original]

Following that meeting these Republican snakes announced that job number one was ensuring that “President Obama will be a one-term president.”

That was their notion of their sacred duty in Congress: focus on trashing the opponent in order to help themselves. They had no concern for growing American jobs, the welfare of our vets, dealing with George W. Bush’s disastrous wars, healthcare – nothing. They were all about slash and burn, jam up the gears so that nothing would get done, this in order to make Obama look bad. That’s what Republicans did and it’s what they still do.

And Democrats can’t even call out blatant Republican lies.

That is our problem.

.

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, but she’s waiting in the wings, as Elon Musk asserts the power of the presidency.

  • Democrats: You’re way late.

  • ***** WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? *****

Required Reading

Jamelle Bouie’s brilliant piece, Don’t Surrender and Call It Compromise.

Rahm Emanuel’s wake up call, The Road Back to Power For Democrats.

  • _____________________________
  • PS: Feel free to thank me for omitting all the anger-dripping sarcasm I did not print here.
  • NOTE: No post this Wednesday.

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

Just A Little Insanity


POST 1131

Spend just one hour at the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL and then tell me if that’s the Great America we should make again. Consider the brutal slow murder of George Floyd or the self-appointed neighborhood guard George Zimmerman who murdered Trayvon Martin and got away with it, as did the murderers in the Tulsa massacre. Explain if that’s the Make America Great Again model we should emulate.

Explain 20 kids and 6 teachers murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School or the dozens shot at that Las Vegas concert. Explain how great America was then, that mythical America to which our red hatted citizens want to return.

Click me

We are steeped in violence and proved it yet again on Monday as a shooter first killed 2, injured 6 and then murdered herself, leaving two of the injured with life-threatening injuries. This happened at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI. That event was our 83rd school shooting (one every 4 days) and our 656th mass shooting (almost two every day) this year, with almost 19,000 shot dead and over 38,000 shot and injured. Those aren’t statistics. Those are people.

What’s your bet about what the Founders who wrote the Second Amendment would think about semi-automatic assault weapons being used to kill kids in schools? What’s your bet about whether they considered it a right to own large capacity magazines or telescopic sights or bump stocks?

Read the Second Amendment – all 27 words:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

I wrote “all 27 words” because our gun crazies and our Second Amendment lovers commonly ignore the first 13 words.

You can plainly see that the Amendment says that the only reason for the people to be allowed to keep and bear arms is to have a militia. But that job is taken and well done by our National Guard. They are the militias that are well regulated. The weekend, skulking-through-the-woods tough guy wannabes are not well regulated. We have no need for Rambo-at-home, so we have no need for private citizens to have a home arsenal.

I’m betting that the family and friends of the grannies who were shot to death at the Topps Supermarket in Buffalo wish that before that awful day there had been a bunch of infringement of the right to own guns. Same for the survivors and next of kin of Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

It is way past the point when we should have figured out that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” should be infringed.

Read this book – click it

We all understand the slavish obeisance of our elected officials to the firearms industry because of the financial largess bestowed upon these politicians who do the industry’s bidding. That has allowed the distribution of over 20 million very profitable AR-15s into coat closets and car trunks in America and over 150 million hand guns, many carried openly or concealed. It seems that enough of our legislators think that children being murdered in school is a small enough price to pay for the money they get for their campaigns.

Get this: If you have guns and don’t keep them unloaded and locked up, do not tell me how much you love your kids or any other kids because you just wouldn’t be believable.

All of this craziness has several names: Insanity; Immorality; Stupidity; Cruelty; Hypocrisy.

Make America Great Again is a useful campaign slogan, a jaunt in Jingo-land, but we don’t have a model for when America was great when it comes to citizen gun safety. It is insane that we haven’t even a history book memory of a time in America when we weren’t murdering one another. Guns make those murders so very easy. They don’t make America great.

I used to think those calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment were over-reaching, but no longer. I have grand kids in schools who have always had to do active shooter drills. Every kid in your town does, too. They think those drills are normal, but it’s insane that they have to do them.

And it’s insane that we are leaving our children and grandchildren a country awash in citizen blood.

So, one more time:

Click me

From Kirk Bangstat of Minoqua Brewing Company:

Our 2nd taproom in Madison is a mile away from the Abundant Life school shooting that occurred yesterday, and I spent a few hours last night with our customers endlessly going in circles about why it’s impossible for America to end gun violence in this country when most other developed countries have figured it out. [emphasis mine – JA]

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

U-Turn


POST 1130

From Wikipedia:

A kakistocracy (/kækɪˈstɒkrəsi/, /kækɪsˈtɒ-/) is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.[1]: 54 [2][3] The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century.[4] [emphasis JA]

That term was coined then, but we’re reviving that dreadful threat right now.

Paul Newman

Paul Newman

With obviously predictive value, here are two variations of Paul Newman’s Second Law:

Just when things look darkest, they go black.

– or –

It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black. (Might be from John McCain or Mao Zedong.)

CLICK AND READ THIS. Many thanks to JHA for the link.

This is going to be really bad. We are about to have a government run by the worst, least qualified, hateful, rule-of-law destroying, most unscrupulous citizens. That’s baked into this bitter cake, unless .  .  .

.  .  .  we ditch the hand-wringing, the hopelessness and the rest. Because it will be far worse unless we get to work to stop our headlong plunge into self-destruction. Here are two actions for you to take.

1. Drown Your Republican Senator in Snail Mail, Email and Phone Calls

Demand that s/he VOTE NO on every one of Trump’s anti-competent, anti-qualified, anti-democracy nominees. Look up when your senator’s term ends and tell them that you vow on your children’s lives that if they vote to approve even a single one one of Trump’s democracy destroying picks that you will do everything you can to defeat them next election because your children’s lives would be imperiled by those nominees.

Extend your influence by recruiting your family and friends, neighbors and people you meet when you fill your gas tank and the granny who you help by reaching something on the top shelf for her at the supermarket. Post on whatever social media you use. Do it all repeatedly. Put up a yard sign that reads, “Friends don’t let friends ruin our children’s future.” Tell them all to drown your senator with promises of firing him/her.

Got a connection to someone with a podcast, a pundit with a broadcast email following, someone with connections? Get them to promote the downfall of Trump’s attempt to be führer of the Fourth Reich by directing their audience to pressure their Republican senators to reach around back where their spine is supposed to be an VOTE NO on all those hateful, un-American candidates.

2. Focus on Your State

Focus on the states to kick out the gerrymandering perps, the voter registration cancelling manipulators, the operatives who closed so many polling places and eliminated ballot drop boxes making it harder for many people to vote. How ’bout we encourage everything we can to re-invigorate voting rights. All we have to do is campaign to send Republican state officials packing.

Plus, you need to send a check to The States Project, because they are all about getting all 50 states to actually practice democracy. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Need Motivation?

From Heather Cox Richardson:

If Trump has now abandoned the performance he used to win the election, Trump’s planned appointments to office reveal that the actual pillars of his presidency will be personal revenge, the destruction of American institutions, and the use of political office for gain, also known as graft.

We’ll be upside down and without brakes if we don’t start the U-Turn now.*

REBEL!

_________________________________________

* Newman’s First Law: “It is useless to put on your brakes when you’re upside down.”

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

What It Looks Like


POST 1129

Rebels in Damascus celebrate the downfall of Bashar al-Assad. Click me

We begin with a quotation from Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic about the conditions that precipitated the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

“There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair.”

We shed no tears for this brutal dictator and murderer, but don’t imagine that because this is not Syria, but is the democracy that is the United States of America, that we are somehow immune. We are just as vulnerable to the cruelty and brutality that arrive on the same train as lofty nationalist, chest-pounding rhetoric, exactly as happened in Syria, Russia, Germany, Italy and many more countries. Indeed, the soul crushing hopelessness always starts with the arrival of that jingo train.

Steve Schmidt describes what’s coming to us as the new administration rams its train of destruction into America.

” .  .  . the furies will be let loose by wicked and arrogant people who think they have been picked by the hand of god to lead their people into a storm of their own making.”

That is what has been promised to millions of ears that insisted upon remaining deaf to the real danger. That is what we’ll get unless we put the brakes to the locomotive of our political and cultural destruction.

That is the reason we must rebel, but most of us don’t know what that can look like or how to go about it. Several action opportunities can be found at the end of some of my recent posts (here and here), and now there is a wonderful overview available to you from a source from which you would not expect to find the action items for the rebelling we need right now.

President Barack Obama delivered his remarks at the 2024 Obama Foundation Democracy Forum a few days ago. This is a must read for clarity, context and specifics about what we must do.

Don’t look for an angry diatribe about the horrid, anti-Constitutional fascist poison sprayed maniacally from the inbound train of the incoming administration. Although that’s an accurate descriptor of what is facing us, look instead for what needs to be done to save our democracy, actions for both the short term (2026 and 2028) and for the long term.

We are at an inflection point only hinted at since the Civil War and it is going to take us generations – the long term – to make the changes necessary for us to have a country that includes all of us – like the Pledge of Allegiance, “with liberty and justice for all.” But the thing about the long term is that it’s made up of tens of thousands of short term actions.

The rebelling we need to do doesn’t include demonizing those with whom we’re sure we have nothing in common. Indeed, a slight scratch beneath the surface of most of us will most certainly reveal things about which we agree – like the thing that moves strangers to help tornado and hurricane victims without first checking their political, racial or religious credentials. That’s where we must focus.

Your assignment today is to read President Obama’s remarks. It’s a long piece, but even in this age that trains us to have a short attention span, I believe you’re up to the challenge. Read it, then sit back and think about how his message applies to you.

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

How We Fell Off the Sled – v 2.0


POST 1128

A short while back I wrote that We’ve Fallen Off The Sled because we really have been dumped from our metaphorical transportation to a more perfect union. I had a perfectly serviceable 9-point post detailing how we did that, but I’m quite sick of election postmortems (likely, you are, too), especially when all they do is point fingers and wring hands. So, I did the humane thing and shredded that post.

Still, having read analyses from pundits proved useful because it brought me to a blinding flash of the obvious:

The Democrats have been resting on their laurels for over 80 years!
.

There have been a few bright flashes during that long interregnum of idea famine, like Medicare and Medicaid, but those happened nearly 60 years ago. Biden did some FDR-worthy things with infrastructure, bringing back manufacturing and more. Then he proceeded to allow fellow Democrats to fail to wave their Party flag. They sat on their hands and let Republicans beat the snot out of them and their policies.

Where the hell is the Democrats’ fight? Where the hell are the Democrats at all? I believe you can find them with their butts on their laurels, basking in the glow of how right and good they are. But,

“Some American men feel the sun setting on them while reckoning others enjoy the warmth on their faces. And Democrats have left those people alone in the darkening shadows for a very long time.” Ira Leavitt, The Sound and Fury of American Antipathy

Why should those folks vote for Democrats?

The Republicans have been fighting against all of FDR’s programs and all other programs designed for the welfare of the American people for all this time. They’ve had a 50-year plan to eliminate all these policies at least since Saint Ronnie. The Democrats have no plan, not a 50-year plan nor a 50-state plan. They are nowhere. The Democrats quit trying 80 years ago. That is how we got Trump and his billionaire fascists and

That is how we fell off the sled!
.

We dumped ourselves off it.

What We’re Facing

A few years ago I was riding in the back seat of my favorite Uber driver’s car, engaged in a lively conversation, when he made a most stunning statement. I don’t remember his precise wording, but he invoked conspiracy craziness, saying that the Earth is flat, not round.  I asked where that came from, to which he replied that there was no proof that the Earth is round, or some such gibberish, and besides, it looked flat to him.

I casually mentioned orbital space flights, during which humans and machines have traveled around Earth in a circular pattern, not in a straight line or in a tight rectangular trajectory. He challenged that by saying that those flights could have been faked or that the astronauts were lying.

Let’s think for a moment about some the things that our science and reality deniers claim didn’t happen/were faked:

The moon landings

The assassination of President Kennedy

Elvis lives!

The Holocaust

The Sandy Hook murders

And, of course, there are the things that the deniers claim happened but actually didn’t, like the Pizzagate non-event. You may recall that in 2016 conspiracy loonies claimed that high level Democratic officials associated with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign were running a sex trafficking operation from the basement beneath a pizza shop in DC. An especially excitable idiot came from North Carolina with his firearms to put an end to that operation. He fired several bullets through the floor of the pizza shop. The only problems were:

  1. That building has no basement, so there never was a pedophilia operation or anything else going on below the pizza shop.
  2. Had there been a basement occupied by young girls, the North Carolina vigilante idiot likely would have wounded or killed some of them.

Some conspiracy zealots still hold that there was a sex trafficking operation there. It’s the same perversion of reality – belief in what has been shown to be false – as my Uber guy who, when confronted with the observed fact of a round Earth, simply claims that the observations are lies. That is the perversion such people believe. Think: space lasers.

All of which brings us to the main questions (really just one stated in two ways):

  1. How did we get to the point of denying facts, science, learning and intelligence?
  2. How did we get to the point where it’s okay to defend absurdities with reality-free claims – sometimes called “alternative facts” – and insist that actual evidence is a pack of lies? (No, Trump did not have the largest inauguration crowd ever. PERIOD!)

John Kennedy declared that “College is America’s best friend,” which you can reasonably interpret to mean that education is a good thing. It appears that we’ve slipped away from that best friend and now seem to be embracing vacuous ignorance as a virtue. Some of us have decided to refuse to learn what has been known for hundreds of years, that the Earth is round.

That is what we’re facing: Denial of reality. And it shoves us off the sled time and again.

Such people are obstacles on the path to a better America. Democrats, often their favorite targets, are going to have to get their butts off their laurels and get in the game, the one challenging the notion of America, if things are to get better.

Finally

We’ve had a few weeks since the election of continuing shock, battling dizziness, hand-wringing, hopelessness, confusion, thinking about where to emigrate to, and collective self-pity. It’s time to do as the low cost psychotherapists advise: GET OVER IT!

In fact, it’s time to pick a path to support truth, justice and the American way. Being self-congratulatory nice guys will not help in the battle to overcome the manipulation, hatred and cruelty of the MAGAs. Patting ourselves on our purity-infused backs won’t defeat the cowardly Republicans peddling the destruction of our Constitution and our democracy.

Right now Trump and his band of marauding Mongols are planning the destruction of our republic (see: Project 2025), but thus far don’t have any power, so their only marching orders are (to paraphrase segregationist George Wallace), “Chaos today, chaos tomorrow, chaos forever.”

Once in office, if Trump can go after those he thinks said mean things about him, how long do you think it will be before he muzzles Dorothy, the small and meek – or you?

Now we’re facing a possible Secretary of Defense – i.e., the person in charge of keeping us safe in a very dangerous world – who, according to multiple reports, can’t keep his d**k in his pants, can’t keep a drink out of his mouth and can’t keep his hand out of the cash box.  That such a person is a serious candidate tells us plainly that we’ve fallen very, very far from the sled.

Right now is the time to show America a better path. Roll up your shirtsleeves and get to work, because the battle to save America is underway. Get back on the sled and

Rebel!

In fact, step up, like Messman Doris Miller.

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The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

A Thought Experiment and Explanation


POST 1127
A Balancing Act

Everyone believes in freedom. Everyone wants it.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You can read Jefferson’s “Liberty” (yes,he capitalized it) as “freedom.”

Let’s make the assumption that we believe in Jefferson’s declaration of equality and freedom and we endorse the expansion of his declaration from “all men” to include, at long last, all women, people of all races, religions, sexual orientation, economic condition – everyone. That claim contains a conflict that is a fundamental of our country.

All men may be created equal in some respects, as in their value as a human being, but neither Jefferson nor we believe that we all were all born with the same innate talents and abilities. Some have great physical talents like athletes and dancers, talents that the rest of us cannot match. Some have the capacity for great intelligence, like surgeons, physicists and philosophers. And some have an impressive talent for amassing money.

We are mimicking Les Miserables with our astounding level of wealth inequality. It is greater than in France in 1789 and greater than just before the Great Depression, as our great rich have amassed more wealth for themselves than the total wealth of over 90% of us. They have and are embracing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but many are left to suffer, some in Dickensian poverty.

In other words, some have the great freedom that comes of great wealth and some have the greatly constricted freedom of just getting by or of abject poverty. Our system is based on an unequal distribution of freedom, this in spite of us all being “created equal” and having “unalienable Rights,” including “Liberty.”

What are we to do with this desire for both freedom and our claim of equality of all? We can level the playing field somewhat by taxing the wealthy and directing the proceeds to the common good, to things which will benefit everyone, including the poor, but that necessarily curtails the freedom of the rich. It’s a challenge that in this country goes back at least to post-Civil War times, when wealthy landowners objected to paying taxes designed to benefit the now-free former slaves with roads and schools. Set aside the moral implications of that statement and just recognize the very real conflict in the balance of equality and freedom.

Generally speaking, Democrats believe that the best thing is to do is to take some money from wealthy people and direct it to the common good, like education, healthcare, infrastructure, national defense and more. Republicans believe in freedom above all and they understandably decry government hands reaching for their wallets for anything other than national defense. Who’s right?

Of course, there’s more to consider in this thought experiment. Thom Hartmann has a fine piece explaining that crime isn’t caused so much by poverty as by wealth inequality. When people feel they’re being treated unfairly by a system that allows such extreme wealth and poverty at the same time, they react quite negatively. Were we to change the rules to achieve a more equitable economy, the logic goes, we would have less crime. It is unavoidable that such a modification would result in less freedom for some. Would we still be the “land of the free” if some were less free than before?

Trump and his coming Fourth Reich are way off the edge of the continuum in favor of ever-greater wealth for themselves and, of course, domination of everyone else. If you think the balance between freedom and equality (call it “equity” or “fairness’) belongs at a place other than off the freedom edge of the continuum, you have a problem.

Those coming into power soon have no interest in you having the freedom/equitable balance you believe is right. They only have interest in what serves themselves, which is ever-greater wealth and power. If you are to nudge that balance away from that far edge and toward something more equitable, wishing for that isn’t going help. You’re going to have to do something.

What’s this Rebel! Stuff?

It’s the verb form of the word, with the accent on the second syllable. It’s about you taking action against the usurpers, the thieves of our freedom, our democracy and what is good about America. Resisting is blandly insufficient. If we are to restore anything resembling the intentions of the Founders we will have to do what they did: Rebel!

To be clear, the Founders made war and I intend nothing of the sort. This is about non-violent rebellion. I advocate fiercely against any civil war that the MAGA violent ones seem to be gleefully anticipating.

This rebellion is about leaning heavily on elected officials to do the patriotic thing, rather than some “don’t primary me” selfishness. It’s about working hard to get liberal democracy candidates elected. It’s about protesting in the streets loudly and often, demanding the America we have been promised, which doesn’t include grift or graft and which doesn’t over-balance in favor of the grossly rich,

THAT kind of Rebel!

If we really want what we say we want, we’re going to do more than we’ve ever done. The promise of the destruction of our Constitution is in the air, made by men and women being put into positions of power by billionaire bullies. The longer we wait to take action, the steeper and more arduous the climb from the coming depravity will be.

Thomas Paine

From Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, The American Crisis, words which he declared to be Common Sense:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman”

The time for disorientation, apathy and the wringing hands is past. This is the time for action.

Rebel!

Here’s How

From Simon Rosenberg:

Call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not.

Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately and before Trump installs Patel to disable the process.

Further, it’s as obvious as it can be: the inept DNC needs new leadership.

One of the most effective Democratic state chairmen, Ben Wikler (WI), is running to become the DNC chairman. He’s done amazing things, like flipping the state Supreme Court to be more liberal, getting Democratic Gov. Tony Evers reelected, picking up 14 congressional seats and more. Check him out at BenWikler.com. And don’t miss Thom Hartmann’s endorsement of Wikler and explainer, America’s Future Hangs on a Democratic Party Decision .

Need motivation? Read Thom Hartmann’s How to Stop the Billionaire Takeover: Democrats Must Declare Class Warfare. He’s right. It’s time to

REBEL!

NOTE: See Michael Shaw’s comment below. Please add your ideas for action in reply to his excellent question.

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

We Do Know What’s Coming – A Sampler


POST 1126

Today we take a quiet Sunday to club Republicans over the head for their excellently done sellout of America and the American people and the world class hypocrisy of so many. Sadly, we do know what’s coming.

  1. As soon as Trump began his awful run for the White House in 2015 it was obvious what we were in for.  Recall his demonizing of Hispanics coming to this country, whom he described as drug carriers, rapists and criminal transmitters of disease. He said this to a small group of paid actors in the lobby of his building, recruited to cheer for him wildly. As soon as he got off the escalator he claimed there were thousands there. That was just his first official lie and a harbinger of his fraud to come. Republicans began to debase themselves before Trump almost immediately. We should have known what was coming.
  2. Then there were the impeachments. It was clear to everyone that he was guilty of those high crimes and misdemeanors, but Republicans in the House refused to vote against him. Only a small handful of Republicans in the Senate had the integrity to vote him guilty. The rest decided that they didn’t want to get primaried. Worse, they knew that a guilty decision would have prevented Trump from ever again holding any “office of trust” – we would have been rid of him. They chickened out. We wouldn’t be facing the frontal assault on our Constitution and our democracy now, had there been 10 more Republicans with a spine. Translation: The Republicans’ careers in Congress were more important to them than the fate of the United States of America or the oath they swore. Where have the patriots gone, you ask? They’ve been replaced by cowards and hypocrites. We should have known what was coming.
  3. Matt Gaetz was the most hated man in the House, mirroring Ted Cruz, the most hated man in the Senate who isn’t named Josh Hawley. Gaetz, a reasonably accused sex trafficker, high school girl schtuper, Ecstacy aficionado, Justice Department know-nothing and more, has removed himself from consideration for the job of A.G., a position for which he is profoundly unqualified. Perhaps now he can be prosecuted and get the cell of his pal Jeffrey Epstein. He’s being replaced by Trump’s defense lawyer and suck up (but looks good on TV – very important to Trump) Pam Bondi. We did know what was coming.
  4. Speaking of the Department of Justice, somebody please tell us what “weaponization of the Department of Justice” is. It sounds terrible, so it’s a great campaign slogan for Republicans to use to accuse Democrats of something bad. Isn’t the Department of Justice supposed to be weaponized against wrongdoing, like insurrection and theft of classified documents? Whatever evil “weaponization” means, I’m certain the Trump administration will do exactly that. They’ll prosecute everyone on Trump’s hit list and more just to harass them and drain them of money. We do know what’s coming.
  5. Sure, we believe Trump when he says he knows nothing about Project 2025 and will have nothing to do with its implementation. I mean, he said so, right? We do know what’s coming.
  6. Even if you follow news and politics only a little you likely saw that Jack Smith has dropped his indictments against Donald Trump for inciting insurrection, election interference, fraud, possession of stolen classified documents and more. That absurd Office of Legal Counsel memo (NOT law) from 1973 that says that a sitting president cannot be indicted and prosecuted is a justice killer, a rule-of-law violator, as is the 2024 Supreme Court issued “get out of jail free” decision. Combined with Merrick Garland’s unconscionable two years of foot dragging and Trump’s defense attorneys’ masterful manipulation of the courts to delay, delay, delay, Trump will have gotten away with his heinous crimes. Had you done any of the things Trump did, you would already have been rotting in a prison cell for a couple of years. It sure looks like a prime case of two sets of laws, one for rich, powerful people and another for the rest of us. We did know what was coming.
  7. Are you a woman or do you know and care about a woman? Coming are a national abortion ban, bans on contraception, prosecutions of OB/GYNs and a constant Christian Nationalist (which actually isn’t Christian at all) drum beat of reducing women to nothing more than sex toys, incubators and house slaves. We do know what’s coming.
Quote Adjustment Following the Election

From Salon.com, November 14:

In the most basic sense, the 2024 election can be understood as a referendum on the direction of America and the future of pluralistic multiracial democracy.

True, but that soft peddles the fundamental point. Let me help.

In the most basic sense, the 2024 election can be understood as a referendum on whether this is or ever will be America.

You Can Get Anything You Want at Alice’s Restaurant.

There is hypocrisy masquerading as justice and even as popular will, just as there was when Arlo Guthrie told his tale. Watch over the next few years – could be even faster if the MAGA barbarians are able to shred the entire Constitution sooner. Watch the MAGA faithful, the willfully ignorant, the dupes, the “I could never vote for a Democrat” non-thinkers, the “I want a strongman, not one of those woke types and for sure no woman” chest pounders and even those too lazy to get off the couch and vote.

Watch what happens as the hatred spreads and their freedom evaporates. They may cheer as the freedom of others disappears, but not when it clobbers them. Then, o’ golly, that won’t be fair.

Watch as they realize that the nice guy down the block has been ripped from his family and thrown into a concentration camp, his children left weeping. Watch as the cost of food and everything else skyrockets but wages are stagnant. Watch their eyes as diseases like measles, polio and smallpox make a big comeback, when the kid across the street is struggling just to breathe and the elderly lady next door has died with horrible sores all over her body and they realize that they might have been infected.

Listen to the hypocritical excuses, the lame, “It’s not my fault” exculpations. Watch as the testosterone overfilled, Bible thumping crowd begins to feel the pain of women dying in pregnancy, a threat that exists only because of their actions.

Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder knows what’s coming. He lays it out for you here.

Oh yes, we do know what’s coming.

Bide your time. And

REBEL!

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

What Will Happen – Part 2 of 2


POST 1121

Preface

This is Part 2 of 2 – Part 1 was published last Sunday, detailing some of what you can expect from the second Trump presidency, Some of what follows is snark or satire. Most is not.

Criminality

The sentencing hearing for the 34 criminal convictions of Trump in New York for fraud is scheduled for November 26. Expect some cockamamie, bullshit suspension of sentence. The conviction will stand, but it will be neutered and Trump will get away with fraud, election interference and screwing a porn star while his wife was giving birth and caring for his infant son.

The E. Jean Carroll case is on appeal, likely to be decided around the time Trump is sworn in with his hand on a Chinese made Trump Bible. Watch to see if the Bible is held upside down, as in Trump’s photo op in Lafayette Square in 2020. If the judgement award is upheld, the money will be paid to Carroll from the bond believed to have been created by Trump’s lawyers. Then expect an infinitely long delay to repay Trump’s attorneys. Like so many Trump lawyers and contractors have been, those guys (or whoever put up the cash) will be screwed.

Once in office, Trump will attempt to pardon himself in order to avoid eventual prosecution in the insurrection indictment and in the Mar-A-Lago classified documents indictment. His puppet district court judge in the Mar-A-Lago case, Aileen Cannon, dismissed the case on bogus reasoning (a staple of her judgeship) that the special prosecutor was appointed improperly. There are at least two cases that establish with great clarity that there is no basis for her ruling. Jack Smith has appealed her stupid dismissal of the case. Expect yet another appeals court smack down of Judge Cannon.

Meanwhile, as I said, Trump will attempt to pardon himself from this and all other crimes which he may have committed, which will include the insurrection indictment and the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case. His pardon, if allowed to stand (and I don’t know who would challenge it, since he will control the Department of Justice) will only apply to federal cases.

Meanwhile, there’s the Fani Willis indictment of Trump in Georgia for election interference, criminal racketeering, conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 election and felonious manifestation of stupidity. That’s the, “What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state,” case. This case will go nowhere because by the time Trump is out of office he will be mentally enfeebled and too much time will have passed for there to be public support for prosecution.

Several of Trump’s lawyers pleaded guilty to the Georgia conspiracy charges and some are disbarred. All are tarred and will have to go find real work. Maybe they can get jobs building the wall that Mexico won’t pay for.

These lawyers helped the big stinky fish to get away. That was a great deal for Trump, because he will stiff those lawyers. All it took to get his free legal defense was Trump’s promise of money and fame. The disgraced lawyers believed him and sold themselves out on the cheap.

Meanwhile, pardon or not, Trump will be President and therefore prosecution-proof because of that grievous 1973 memo from The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, which says that a sitting President may not be criminally prosecuted. It isn’t law, but it’s treated as if it were.

And, of course, there is the idiotic Supreme Court stay-out-of-jail-free decision from 2024 that transforms a president into an absolute, untouchable monarch. The Court decided that a bad boy President can never be prosecuted for criminal official acts. That way Trump really can shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it. It’s good to have one’s own personal Supreme Court justices.

Supreme Court

Thomas and Alito will resign and Trump will replace them with radical right wing operatives (no women need apply). Their young age will guarantee an extremist Court for generations. They will be fundamental to the Heritage Foundation march to permanent destruction of democracy and the enshrining of autocracy.

There will be no ethics codes with teeth imposed on the Court, the kind that all other federal judges must abide by. The Trump Court will lubricate the monstrous enriching machine for already fabulously rich people, as well as send all power to just a few unworthy individuals. Cruelty and discrimination will be enshrined in our laws, as rights and freedoms are incrementally taken from the people. Abortion, gun safety, public education and humane immigration will all vanish. No worries, though. Things will get worse.

Legacy

In his first administration, Trump rampaged through everything on which Obama had his fingerprints. Effectively, he tried to erase Obama from American history. Now it’s Biden’s turn to be Trump’s whipping boy. Expect his efforts to cancel every Biden success.

Trump will direct his Department of Justice to prosecute the non-existent Biden Crime Family. All that will come of that will be a high volume lies and innuendos from Republican posers. They will sound like champions of justice to the MAGA crowd and like lying idiots to the rest of us. Biden will have to secure legal counsel to defend himself against the Republican dishonesty, so Trump will crow about how he crushed Biden.

Foreign Relations

Expect Trump to do everything he can to undermine NATO, including removing the US from membership. Plus, he will treat NATO like one of his lawyers and refuse to pay what is owed. Given his compliant Senate and likely compliant House, they will allow him to terminate our membership or financially undermine the organization that has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years. Following that, look for Putin’s Russia to begin invasions of NATO member countries with relative impunity, because Trump has already told Putin to, “Do whatever the hell you want.” Accordingly, it’s safe to assume Trump will cut off military aid to Ukraine and allow the very worst to happen to those people.

Expect some kind of aggressive actions toward Iran, likely leading to a military confrontation in a battle to win the Penis Raving Insecurity Challenge Kingdom (PRICK). There will be further sucking up to North Korea and provocations of China. What could possibly go wrong?

Final Note

There is nothing in this post that you didn’t already know. That is how blatantly, screamingly, obviously awful this stuff is. And there is more and worse on the way. We have a lot of work to do. Meanwhile,

Don’t let the bastards get you down!

 

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

What Will Happen – Part 1 of 2


POST 1120

Preface

This is Part 1 of 2 of what you can expect in the second Trump presidency. Some of what follows is snark or satire. Most is not.

Expect Part 2 on Wednesday.

Healthcare

Bobby Kennedy will be in charge of healthcare – your healthcare. He doesn’t like vaccines, so count on our not being prepared for the next pandemic and for there to be a massive number of preventable deaths. And count on ever increasing diagnoses of measles, polio, tetanus, smallpox and more in our little ones because, again, Kennedy doesn’t like vaccines.

Expect an ongoing idiocy from Kennedy of quack practices and assaults on science, health and sanity. Expect an undermining of the USDA, compromising the safety of the meat you eat including Trump’s Big Macs. Expect, too, an attack on the FDA, compromising the safety of our meds. The list of Kennedy’s undermining of our national health and safety will be very long and galactically stupid, as he does as Trump instructs, “whatever the hell he wants.”

The Economy

Genius nut job Elon Musk will be in charge of our economy. He has pledged to cut $2 trillion from our national budget. He can’t cut our military spending or other mandatory things, which leaves only “discretionary” spending. He will cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Departments of Education and Energy and more. All programs designed for the welfare of We The People will vanish. Better start figuring out how you’ll pay for your healthcare, your meds, how your kids will get educated and more.

We’ll have cheap gas and accelerating global warming to depress and imperil our children and grandchildren. The list of the carnage Musk will create is long and terrifying, as he does, “whatever the hell he wants.” Ah, but we’ll have a balanced budget. Why should anyone care about you?

Trump will re-up his previous tax reduction gift to rich people and will expand it. He will promise great benefits to working people and some to poor people. They will be, “greater than anyone has ever seen,” but nobody but the rich and big corporations will receive enough for any benefit to be identifiable.

All economic indicators, the Dow, S & P and the rest, will plunge in value following Trump cashing out his portfolios. Same for his rich buddies who will be given advance notice. Once securities have hit rock bottom the rich will buy them up just as rich guys did following the crash in 1929. Ordinary people will be economically devastated, as jobs disappear and whatever savings they had for retirement disappears. You already know that we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends.

Freedom

Expect encroachment on the freedoms of any who are not White and on all women. All forms of contraception will be outlawed except the so-called rhythm method favored by the Catholic Church, Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists (who aren’t really Christian in their beliefs and actions). This method excels at systematically producing many babies, a la the Dark Ages. All forms of post impregnation medical procedures will be outlawed, with prison sentences imposed for affected women and for medical professionals who dare to treat a woman having a miscarriage. Someone will keep a tally of women who die because of these prohibitions. The numbers will seem like they are from a horror film.

Blacks, Hispanics, Jews and Muslims will be encouraged through intimidation to stay in their place and not be uppity. Or they can leave this country. KKK white hood outfits with nooses attached to the belt and torches to carry, as well as Gestapo and SS uniforms will be popular Halloween costume choices.

Women will be expected to be subservient to all males. Their roles will be limited to sex object, household servant, involvement in teaching young children and low level business positions. In no circumstance will they be allowed to have a position of any power in this perfect patriarchal America. What would you think of bringing back witch trials?

Ear worm warning: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA will play in all elevators and all music on hold. There will be no escape.

Guns

Gun deaths will continue to mount. The rate may well increase. There will be absolutely no direct or indirect curbs to reduce gun violence, as age restrictions for purchasing firearms and accessories and limitations on those with a violent history are eliminated. Trump may wallow in finger pointing about shootings in our large cities, which, of course happen, but they are at a much lower per capita rate than in rural states, AKA The Wild West. No matter. Trump will always tell us that cities run by Democrats are  the worst.

Miscellaneous Un-American Activities

It’s logistically insanely difficult to round up 11 million or more people and deport them. There may be Gestapo raids in various Hispanic neighborhoods ripping families apart. Expect rampant cruelty that is never prosecuted.

Look for prosecutions on fantasy charges against people Trump doesn’t like. The prosecutions won’t result in anything substantive, but they will impoverish the defendants, so Trump will be able to giggle with glee about how he crushed his detractors.

Expect thousands of civil servants, the people who make the trains run on time, to be fired and replaced by Trump suck-up know-nothings.

Look for conflicts of interest and outright grift and graft on an epic level. There will be no prosecutions.

The Trump administration will end when JD Vance invokes the 25th Amendment to replace him. Then things will get worse.

Expect that to happen just into Trump’s third year, which would allow Vance to stay for two more terms, assuming that there will still be elections and such an old fashioned concept as “terms.” If we no longer have elections, the timing won’t matter.

Dos and Don’ts
Do

Stay connected to others, especially those who believe in democracy. It’s critical to your sanity.

Grieve the loss. It’s real and it hurts.

Get up and get active. Nothing restores the spirit like taking action to make things better.

Fight to Make America Not Suck. Get a red, write and blue MANS hat. I don’t know where to find those. Go all entrepreneurial with that.

If there is an election in 2026, dig in with everything you have to elect anyone who will oppose Trump and will restore our democracy. We need control of at least one house of Congress to put a brake to the Trump Train of Destruction.
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Don’t

Don’t surrender to despair.

Don’t wallow in grief.

Don’t drop out.

Don’t succumb to “All is lost.” The fight just got much more difficult, so we must step up our efforts for truth, justice and the American Way.

And most important,

Don’t let the bastards get you down!

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Final Note

There is nothing in this post that you didn’t already know. That is how blatantly, screamingly, obviously awful this stuff is. We have a lot of work to do.

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The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
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  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
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JA


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

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