Alt-Right

Breaking Point, or


How Trump Successfully Diverted Attention From His Kidnapping of 3,000 Children

Reading time – 4:49;  Viewing time – 7:35  .  .  .

I’ve been pretty hard on Congressional Republicans in my recent posts, but I’m questioning if that’s still justified. Perhaps things are beginning to change, although Thomas Friedman doesn’t think so, nor does James Comey.

We’ve wondered over and over about which shameless Trump outrage would at last do him in; none has. Not the Access Hollywood grab brag; not the “nice people on both sides” Charlottesville racism; not the job-killing tariffs; not the attacks on our FBI and Justice Department; not his 6.5 lies per day; not the firing of James Comey specifically because Comey refused to truncate the FBI investigation into Russian hacking of our election and possible Trump campaign collusion; not the betrayal and abuse of Dreamers; not the attacks on our allies; not the kidnapping of children; no outrage has stopped the runaway Trump train. Now, though, I’m wondering afresh if we’ve reached a breaking point and I’m daring to be disappointed yet again.

Trump has consistently sided with Putin over our intelligence services regarding Russian hacking. Now, though, The New York Times is reporting that before the inauguration Trump was fully briefed by our top intelligence agencies leaders about Russian hacking and was even shown intercepted Russian military agent emails which show Putin himself was behind the entire effort to subvert our democracy. Still, Trump continues to refuse to forcefully lay the blame on Putin and punish him for his wrongdoing, much less take action to protect our 2018 election.

Is it possible that Congressional Republicans now have something in hand that is so not okay that they’ll stop being jellyfish? Well even some formerly silent Republicans are speaking out. You can read many of their comments here – it’s important that you have a look.

Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) wrote an essay that you’ll want to read: He begins,

“Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them”

Newt Gingrich is pushing back, however tepidly:

Even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is managing to counter the President and his refusal to accept the undisputed evidence of our intelligence community. Ryan said,

“They did interfere in our elections – it’s really clear,” Ryan told reporters in Washington. “There should be no doubt about that.”

“Not only did Russia meddle with our elections, they’re doing it around the world,” he said. “They did it to France. They did it to Moldova. They’re doing it to the Baltics. Russia is trying to undermine democracy itself, to delegitimize democracy, so for some reason they can look good by comparison.”

Shifting now to Democrats for one specific point  .  .  .

Having been Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about foreign affairs and has a question for Trump:

Great question. Which side do you think Trump plays for? And if you think it’s the USA, exactly what evidence can you offer to support your opinion? And, no, a MAGA hat doesn’t count. It’s just a hat.

If you’d like to revisit an accurate prediction of what national security would look like with Trump as President, have a look at this video from October 31, 2016 – at least watch 6 minutes starting about the 14-minute mark. You’ll find it an eerily and frighteningly precise description of what has happened since then. It’s not as though we weren’t warned.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) is onto Trump’s cave-in to Putin and is poking at what is in the back of everyone’s mind:

Trump is making the world demonstrably more dangerous with his every insult and lie about our friends and allies and with every suck up to Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi. He is isolating our country and destroying our protections. It is impossible now to avoid the key questions:

  1. What does the United States of America get out of Trump’s capitulation to Putin and his attacks on our friends? We have some answers to that question and they aren’t pretty.
  2. What does Trump himself get out of that? The answers to this question will illuminate all. Have a look at conservative Ross Douthat’s take on this.

If President Obama were selling out America the way Donald Trump is, can you imagine any Congressional Republican whose hair would not be on fire? The volume of the outrage would be deafening. The calls for impeachment and imprisonment would be continuous.

The thing is, in that scenario, the Republicans would be right. Their indignation would be justified. Their red, white and blue righteous fury would befit the wrongdoing.

But this isn’t Obama’s malfeasance; it’s Trump’s. So, where is the Republican hair-on-fire, the outrage, the indignation and righteous fury and the calls for impeachment and imprisonment? Perhaps they are starting, albeit slowly. Maybe we’re hearing the first crack of the breaking point.

The Republicans in Congress have both the power and the obligation to take action to stop this treachery, this betrayal of our country. Pray that Trump’s sell-out of the United States and all of western democracy is the breaking point for Republicans and that they at last stand up against Trump’s treason. Better yet, call them and demand that they do their job.

Trump’s deception, his double-dealing, his breach of faith and trust constitute a clear and present danger that threatens America. That is why over the past week you shifted your attention away from 3,000 kidnapped children; Trump is a master of distraction. Stay focused on democracy, because worse distraction is on the way and you may be tempted to forget Helsinki by next week. Don’t do it – for the sake of our democracy.

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Cold, Dead Hands


  • Reading time – 1:32; Viewing time – 2:17  .  .  .

Every Fourth of July I stick a flag on a pole and insert it into the back of my convertible. I commonly remove it on the 5th and this year it sat in the back of the car until this morning, when I picked it up to put it away. That’s when my neighbor called out something about showing it proudly.

He said that he had been in Denver for the Fourth and asked his son there why he didn’t display a flag on his house that day. His son said that waving a flag in that part of the country meant just one thing: supporting the far-right wingnut agenda, which he did not want to do. Hence, no flag.

Perhaps he isn’t alone in refusing to display a flag. Many of us are ashamed now about things being done in our name: things like kidnapping children and abandoning habeas corpus; things like slapping our friends in the face while embracing tyrannical world leaders; things like pardoning public lands arsonists in order to suck up to “the base.”

The problem with abandoning the red, white and blue because of the extreme wrongdoing of some is to abandon our country and cede it to the crazies.

And yes, I mean crazies. I DO NOT mean those who have other notions about how to achieve what nearly all of us believe in. This is about refusing to give our country to those who would wipe their dirty boots on those things we hold dear as Americans. So, here’s what I have for the crazies.

Perhaps you remember Charleton Heston’s defiance at an NRA convention 18 years ago. He declared that they (apparently government – he specifically named Al Gore) could have his gun when they could pry it from his cold, dead hands. While there isn’t much that I had in common with Heston, I’ll borrow his phrasing:

You can have my flag when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. And you better know that even then you’ll have to get past my kids.

I will not allow you to take the flag, ruin my country and claim it exclusively yours. My flag is on display at the front of my house every day. Deal with it.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Bad For America


Reading time – 1:53 seconds; Viewing time – 2:47  .  .  .

In yet another 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has allowed Trump’s Muslim travel ban to stand. And by the same margin the Court allowed Ohio to continue to purge its voter roles of poor people and people of color. 5-4 is the same margin by which the Court allowed Texas and North Carolina Republican gerrymandering to suppress minority voting to stand.

Click for the Snopes fact check

It’s highly unlikely that any of those decisions would have gone this way had Merrick Garland been on the bench instead of Neil Gorsuch. That is exactly why Mitch McConnell sees his lie-filled theft of choice from President Obama to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Court as his proudest moment.

This is yet another example of the dishonesty that undermines our values and drives Americans to distrust government. It’s another lie that is easily exposed, like what @edelweisspirat showed us last week in what is perhaps the greatest tweet ever to expose Trumpian dishonesty:

Well, yeah, Melania, we really do care. Why don’t you?

He’s captured in just a few words the insanity of what Trump and the far right use in place of integrity and good sense. Just get that the lies and dishonesty have consequences, like those 5-4 decisions that incrementally steal freedoms from Americans.

Things are about to get worse now that Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced that he will retire from the Supreme Court on July 31. McConnell has announced that he plans to jam through Trump’s nominee quickly, this in the face of his logic in 2016 that there should be no new Supreme Court pick in an election year in order to, “let the people speak.” Somehow, his disingenuousness that prevented Obama’s pick doesn’t apply now that there’s a Republican in the White House.

There is no Senate filibuster to keep another Trump nominated far righty from the bench, and that will almost certainly lead to accelerated loss of our rights. And that pick will be a stepping stone to authoritarianism: there will be no way to stop Donald Trump’s wrongdoing and our accelerated spiraling into fascism.

What a proud day this must be for those who favor bullying, dishonesty and disorder over democracy; who favor party loyalty and their own position over patriotism. It appears that the righty extremist ends justify their means. Good for them. Bad for America.

Click me

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Equivalents, Civility and Fire


Reading time – 4:12; Viewing time – 5:47  .  .  .

There are a bunch of links in this post. None is long. All are worthwhile (that’s why they are included). Check ’em out. JA

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It’s been a continuous flow in the open sewer that is the law breaking, ethics spurning, morals smashing of Donald Trump and his mob of democracy destroyers. So, when I came across the picture at the top-right corner of this post, I knew it had to be included here. But am I making a mistake? Read on.

The assaults on the institutions we revere, the attacks on whole races of people, the calls for violence against protesters, the dissing of our allies, the refusal to stop a foreign power from attacking us and now the kidnapping and abuse of thousands of children have left millions of us enraged. And that’s a problem.

Human Being 101: When attacked, we either fight or flee. It’s the kind of fight that is going on now that’s the problem and it’s my contention that we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by the way we’re fighting.

For a long time people on the left have felt attacked, and rightly so, as far right thugs have spewed hatred and lies. My notion is that the modern day onslaught of this started with President Reagan’s run for the presidency in 1980, when he was famously bashing all welfare and he called out a “welfare queen” on the south side of Chicago. When challenged repeatedly, he finally had to concede that neither he nor anyone in his campaign could name a single example of a welfare queen in Chicago or anywhere else. Nevertheless, his lie demonized powerfully and nobody missed that dog whistle to racism that made lefties furious.

Since then there have been the lies and vitriol spewed by Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Alex Jones and the Birther-In-Chief and likely you’re continuously angry about all of that. That’s the stuff that fires us into a fit of Human Being 101 attack mode, like Maxine Waters making herself the national cheerleader for public shaming.

Joe Wilson official congressional photo.jpg

“You lie!”

“Not true.”

Oddly enough, that’s the same kind of anger response that drove Tea Partier Joe Wilson to inappropriately yell, “You lie!” during President Obama’s address to Congress in September, 2009. It’s what drives all of Trump’s 27- 38%. The direction is polar opposite to that of lefties, but the shaming anger response is identical.

I abhor false equivalencies and other frauds, but this one, in principle, is no sham. Public shaming, humiliating, demonizing and hate spewing are wrong. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it. I get that we feel justified and powerful when we do that, but that’s just the hormones of rage in our veins. What’s really happening is that we are making things worse. That’s “worse” as in: counter-productive. We give righty hate mongers the justification to hate even more and we generate new recruits to their side as well.

Read Jonathan Martin’s article about this and be sure to see Michelle Goldberg’s brilliant piece to understand this better. Want to see how counter-productive this public shaming of righties really is for Democrats? Read this piece from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, because they’re spot-on. These essays make clear what being a slave to adrenaline and testosterone will do to us.

Just in case you don’t find the gun-to-foot picture above persuasive of the counter-productive nature of public shaming, read Frank Bruni’s piece, Public Shaming Feels Good. That’s No Reason to Do It.

if you want to honor your frustration and passion, read John Pavlovitz’s essay. Note that his anger is right there for all to see and feel; humiliation and shaming are not. Translation: Bring your anger, your frustration and your passion. But leave your hate and the need to hurt others far behind you. Maybe we can start to make things better.

So, maybe – no, for sure – I shouldn’t have included the White House picture above because all it does is to make things worse.

Public shaming is not only wrong; it’s politically stupid. Wise up, Democrats.

On the other hand  .  .  .

I’m every bit as incensed as you and not only won’t I allow bullies to beat me up and steal from me, I won’t allow them to do that to anyone else, either. That includes mothers with nursing infants in McAllen, Texas and poor people in North Carolina who want to vote. I still believe public shaming will likely be counter-productive, but maybe the real issue isn’t civility.

It’s all too easy to go too far on the high ground of civility, like this 1934 admonition to Jews to be civil with the Nazis. Get this: thugs only understand one thing: a harder punch in the nose.

So, let’s not be stupid about this. It’s not about civility. It’s about stopping the thugs who are destroying our country. It’s about setting things right again. It’s time to stop bringing spitballs to a gun fight. It’s time to fight back with equivalents plus one so that we hit back harder.

To Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of our tired septuagenarian leadership: Your sell-by date is long past. Give it up to someone with fire in their belly.

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Populism and Obi-Wan


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:06  .  .  .

Here’s Jax definition of populism: Mob behavior gussied up with a slick political cover.

Trump’s base is entirely populist, calling for extreme reaction to any issue and blunt force solutions to all problems. Think: Muslim ban; kidnapping children; building a $38 billion wall; embracing white supremacy and more.

Here are some characteristics of populism:

We are poor, innocent victims and that gives us the right to attack the imagined meanies who we fantasize have victimized us.

There is only “us” and “them” and we have to repress “them” or they will take over and victimize “us.”

There is always an enemy to demonize and dehumanize and blame for every problem. It’s never our fault and it’s never simply new cultural circumstances or the result of technological or global change. (See the cartoon below.)

All problems can be solved by hitting harder.

New thinking and fresh ideas are never contemplated or even welcome. Truth, facts and reality are no more than minor inconveniences, bumps in the road to greater power grabs.

Subtlety? What subtlety? We don’ need no stinking subtlety. We don’ need no stinking diplomacy. Or regulations to stop those who would exploit us. Or a press or justice system to hold leaders accountable. What accountability?

We are demanding of and slavish to an autocratic leader, a hero to worship, a strongman to idolize.

Perhaps democracy – rule by the people either directly or through democratically elected representatives – is an anomaly in human existence. Perhaps we are globally on the way back to monarchical, even dictatorial rule as our human default. The key is to envision what that looks like when we tear apart our hard won rights and structures, the foundations of freedom we’ve spent centuries building.

Our ancestors rebelled against the tyrant, King George III. You learned about that in your history classes, and his kind of tyranny is the world standard in the absence of democracy. In a monarchy, the people are rarely happy and most often are oppressed by the ruling class. That’s only attractive if you’re part of that ruling class. If you’re Dorothy from Kansas, not so much.

So, to the 27% of Americans who think that the government kidnapping of infants and children is okay, who think that shoving a thumb in the eye of our international friends is a good idea, who want to cozy up to tyrannical enemies of our country and who want to dismantle all of government and the judicial and press foundations that check executive excesses, you better be careful what you wish for. You just might get it and you will not like it and your grandchildren will curse you for your blindness.

Populism is driven by and generates great rushes of testosterone fury. It creates huge clouds of the sensation of being powerful, of sticking it to someone. But when those clouds lift we’ll be left with the tyranny of oppression.

To be clear, Trump and his minions are our challenge now. But to step back and look at a bigger picture, there is always a tyrant waiting to steal the reins of power and commit horrible acts and steal our democracy for himself. That can only happen if we allow the 27% to have their way.

I don’t have any notion that anyone can quickly change the visceral drive of the mobs that are the populism of this country. The Obi-Wan that is our only hope lies within the rest of us.

Click me for a larger image

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

If Only Someone Could Name One


Reading time – 2:15  .  .  .

It’s time to focus on Trump’s policies and policy actions and what they mean to us.

“America First” is more a campaign bumper sticker than a strategy, so that’s not a helpful guide. All I’ve been able to find are Trump’s various tactics to accomplish  .  .  .  something. Here are some examples.

I can’t name Trump’s foreign affairs policy. I do know that:

He moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby shoving a big U.S. thumb in the eye of all Palestinians and most Arabs and further undermining the possibility of lasting peace in the region. And he pissed off a lot of Muslims, creating a new recruiting poster for ISIS and al Qaeda. Not helpful to us.

He fired off a bunch of missiles at Syria, killing many people while avoiding hitting many of Assad’s chemical weapon stockpiles and production facilities, so the multi-million dollar fireworks show was essentially no help in stopping Assad from gassing his people. We did make some more fervent enemies.

He continues to play softball with Putin and his oligarchs, even after all the plain, visible evidence that Russia, an avowed enemy of the United States, cyber-attacked America. You fill in the blanks as to what that means to our democracy.

I can’t name Trump’s economic policy. I do know that:

He has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from some of our closest allies and trading partners (the EU, Canada, Mexico), incentivizing them to retaliate. That is to say, he’s started a trade war. It is forecast to raise prices in the U.S. and cost many thousands of American jobs. And that makes Putin smile.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump promised to bring jobs back from China. He recently visited with President Xi and oddly declared that ZTE, manufacturer of cheap cell phones that China uses to spy on America, had a problem and we had to support them and save 70,000 jobs – in China. Immediately thereafter China made a $500 million cash infusion to Trump’s private resort project in Indonesia. The results are fewer American jobs and unlawful emoluments for the president, which further erodes our system of justice.

Trump enthusiastically promoted and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which decreases federal taxes for most people for a short while and lowers taxes for corporations in perpetuity. 83% of the personal tax savings go to the super-wealthy and the Act will create $1.5 trillion of national debt. Do the math for your kids.

I don’t know what Trump’s civil and voting rights policy is. I do know that:

One of his first acts as President was to create the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity and make former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach its lead. Both the charter of the committee and Kobach’s personal purpose are to end the non-existent scourge of voter fraud by preventing lawful but poor or non-white U.S. citizens from voting.

Trump has tried three times to prevent Muslims from entering the U.S. That’s a subversion of the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion.

Trump’s immigration practices are designed to prevent anyone but white, European Christians from entering the U.S. To enforce this, he has instituted the practice of ripping thousands of children from their parents when they show up at our southern border to apply for entry. Are you okay with that, Mom?

And of course there is Trump’s tweeted temper tantrum against Samantha Bee for her crude statement about Ivanka, matched with his complete absence of criticism of Roseanne Barr for her most recent racial slur. Apparently, bad mouthing Ivanka is inexcusable, but racial hate speech is okay anytime.

I can’t name Trump’s policy regarding preserving and protecting our democracy. I do know that:

He has carried on an unrelenting demonizing of our system of justice and the agencies that ensure that we are safe, like the Justice Department and the FBI, this for his stated purpose of undermining public confidence in those agencies.

He has attacked our press with his stated purpose of undermining pubic confidence in our Fourth Estate so that the American people won’t believe negative reporting about Trump.

There’s just a snapshot in understated terms of Trump’s policies. My promise to you is that I’ll henceforth do my level best to avoid reactions to Trump’s temper tantrum tweets and his constant stream of lies. Instead, I will focus exclusively on preserving our democracy and on his policies. Now, if only someone could name one of those policies  .  .  .

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Babies In Jail


Reading time – 2:38; Viewing time – 3:13  .  .  .

You’re horrified at those nursing babies being ripped from their mothers’ arms by I.C.E. agents. You’re speechless and apoplectic at the same time over kids who have literally done nothing wrong being put into shelters that you know full well are jails. You may be old enough to remember abominable things like this being done by the Soviet Union, which you abhorred. After all, we were the good guys and didn’t abuse people. So, why is the Trump administration doing these reprehensible things in our name?

Have a look at my post about Trump’s negotiating strategy. It’s always about taking something away and forcing opponents to bargain to get it back, and he’s doing that right now using these children.

He has assaulted our sense of right and wrong and taken away our self-image of being the good guys. He has betrayed our belief in proper treatment of others, all in order to make Democrats cave to his anti-black, brown and Muslim – anti-shithole countries – immigration plan. Aryans – like Norwegians – he tells us, are okay. In the process he is traumatizing thousands of innocent children and their parents, many of whom are only applying for asylum from deadly violence and have done nothing wrong.

But we have.

We have allowed those with the crudest, most primitive, fear-driven impulses to have power. Yes, I’m talking about the 87% of Republicans who support Trump and give him the power to punish Republican opponents with a tweet. We set that up – we set ourselves up – by failing to show up and vote last November. Yes, the 87% hair-on-fire primitives voted. They always do because they’re always afraid and angry and motivated. The only check on them is for reasonable people to show up in bigger numbers.

So, if you want to see an end to outrageous manipulation and the terrible abuse of people, an end to using people as pawns to gain power and crushing them under heel in the process, you have to do two things and they’re very personal:

You have to vote this November.

And you have to work to inspire others to show up and vote, too. A good way to start is to share this post with 3 others.

Be clear that they’re continuing to take away voting rights. Last week the Supreme Court allowed the state of Ohio to continue to purge their registered voter lists of people who were guilty of nothing more than not having voted for two years and who didn’t respond to their post card. I don’t remember either of those actions being required by the Constitution in order to be eligible to vote, but that is where this nation is going if we let it. Use it or lose it.

If you don’t vote, permanent internment camps in the desert, over-filled with orphaned infants may be next, and Trump-pardoned Joe Arpaio may be the warden.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:
  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.
  3. Vote!

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Republican Juggernaut Against Government


Reading time – 2:10  .  .  .

In a recent conversation, a friend wondered why working-class voters vote for politicians and support policies that are at odds with their own interests. It’s my belief that these voters don’t think through the situation. All they recognize is that a program of small government and low taxes sounds good. That’s the promise that has been lied to them. But the promised decrease in taxes means that there is less money to pay for the services that taxpayers want. That’s the part they don’t see and nobody tells them it’s coming.

George Will has said for years that Americans want about $300 billion more in services than they’re willing to pay for. That, of course, leads to politicians telling otherwise sensible Americans that they can have those services without paying for them – just, “Vote for me!”

And we do. We all like something for nothing. And that’s what it looks like we’re getting as we vote for small government and lower taxes. It’s only later that we learn that our child’s school room has 37 kids, the books are 36 years old, the roof leaks and the walls are water damaged and the boys bathroom is out of service and the teacher has to buy the paper and markers for the kids, as well as the Band-aids for bruised knees. Then the teachers reach the point where their personally funding the education of everybody’s kids is unsustainable and they wind up in the rotunda of the West Virginia or Oklahoma state house carrying signs. That is when, in a stunning admission of failure, the governor says he doesn’t have money to pay them more or to upgrade schools.

This is what the people voted for, perhaps without recognizing those inevitable consequences. But the citizens of Kansas, the land of Gov. Brownbeck’s miserably failed experiment in state strangulation, could have told them this was coming.

We can be fooled very easily. George W. Bush sold his tax reduction plan by sending a check for $300 (or $600 if you made more money) to every taxpayer. That cash in hand – seemingly something for nothing – sold his  plan to give away billions of dollars to rich people. Slick politics, indeed. That blunder was magnified as he lied us into two wars at the same time, which meant that we not only had a bigger cost to run the country, but we had hamstrung ourselves with less revenue for the fundamental services Americans want.

Oh, wait – I forgot that the reduction of taxes on rich people would pay for itself because of the stimulus to the economy that Bush’s tax reduction would create. We’re still waiting for that windfall to reach the rest of us. Worse, our 115th Congress and President Trump just fooled us into this very same tax deceit once again with a tax plan that ensures that 83% of the tax reduction benefit goes to our ultra-wealthy citizens.

That false promise of small government and low taxes has brought us trillions of dollars of debt, a grotesque equity imbalance and our kids still aren’t getting a good education, except in high income neighborhoods.

The Republican juggernaut against government has consequences. Failing our children is one of them.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:
  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Voluntary Subjugation


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:16  .  .  .

Whatever may be the perverted mental issues that compel him to puffery and self-service instead of service to country and which eased his way to lie over 2,000 times during his first year in office, the real issue is not Donald Trump’s dishonesty. The real issue is Trump’s complete disregard for the truth, this in pursuit of what Trump sees is best for Trump in the moment. Nothing else means anything to him. Reality is just a minor obstacle to crush under heel. It’s what autocrats always do. Refer to Putin, Xi, Duerte, Erdoğan and others for examples.

Trump’s sudden pardon of “Scooter” Libby, the treasonous aide to Darth Cheney, wasn’t done for Libby’s benefit. It was done to send a signal to all of Trump’s co-conspirators that he would pardon them from their crimes that Robert Mueller is investigating. So, Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, Papadopoulos and the rest can stonewall the FBI investigators, be found guilty of who-knows-what crimes and draw the Chance card that reads, “Get out of jail free.” The entire Trump crime family will walk.

Trump is riding an angry, right-wing wave that began several decades ago. It’s made of millions of Americans displaying an extended middle finger driven by notions of betrayal that have been nurtured by first rate extremist manipulators. They stoke reptile brain reactions, impulses which are great in the wild when physical dangers are all about, but which are destroyers of our culture, our society and which corrode our entire republic.

Now the Trump-loving media types are fabricating fatuous, even idiotic fictions that demonize our laws, our system of justice and the dedicated people who do the hard and dangerous work to keep us safe and free. The self-righteous, far-right, alternative facts media people are slandering and defaming those who pose any threat to Der Fuhrer Trump. They are tearing down what we have painstakingly built over the course of two-and-a-half centuries to protect us. They are whipping the national reptile brain into a frenzy and doing great damage to our country. It’s the perfect complement to the making of an autocrat, a dictator, a despot, a tyrant. It is happening in front of your eyes and in plain sight.

Not long ago I wrote,

The worst thing, though, is the ongoing drumbeat of how awful our government is, including blatant lies by legislators and by polarized commentary by the likes of Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. That has led to a very angry citizenry. And that has led to the election of a president who is incrementally tearing down the very things that make this country work. Somehow, his supporters, otherwise good, solid folks, are so angry that they are willing to ignore Trump’s awfuls. They have and continue to be prepared to elect representatives and senators who spew vitriol.

Click for the story and to read the caption.

I have written elsewhere (here and here or click Fascism in the Categories list to the right) about the threat of creeping fascism in this country and have seen nothing to indicate that progress has been made to reverse the weakening of our democracy. The cowardice of Republicans in Congress who fail to check this American tyrant president encourages fascism, as predicted in 1944 by Henry Wallace, Roosevelt’s next-to-last vice-president.

Nuremberg rally, 1938

Have a look at what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has to say about this today and let the threat to our democracy that she exposes get under your skin. Think about how we’re going to stop that death spiral or we will have volunteered to be subjugated by a sociopathic tyrant.

We have been warned repeatedly by various clear thinkers that, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” That sounds a lot like Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. It also sounds a lot like Donald Trump’s rallies.

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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 2024 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 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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