Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler

Behavior

Thugocracy


In a stunning cave-in to thugs, Target, the retail department store, chickened out and pulled some of its LGBTQ-friendly merchandise from its shelves. The company has been offering such things for 10 years, typically in June, which is Pride Month. But stores have received threats of violence from LGBTQ haters, which puts both employees and customers at risk.

In a PR scrubbed statement, company spokeswoman Kayla Castañeda said, “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” That is to say, they surrendered to the thugs. This all came shortly after Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, had bragged about company actions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

I’ll say it differently: Target self-censored not because of law, but because of fear. Score one for the thugs.

We all understand the decision to pull merchandise that extremists apparently think warrants threats of violence. Both such threats and even violence itself are not uncommon experiences in the LGBTQ world. And make no mistake: threats of violence are themselves violence. But, Houston, we have a problem, because the thugs have figured out how to get their way using violence. And it’s worse than that.

Leaders in politics, religion, punditry and those performing public temper tantrums have instructed Americans to fear and hate LGBTQ people. People like Ron DeSantis, governor of the hate state of Florida, uses words like “indoctrinate” to make parents afraid of the existence of people who are different from them. With all that stoking of passions of hatred it’s little wonder that extremists have amped up both their violence and their threats of violence.

After all, we have politicians publicly encouraging the extremists to hatred and violence. Ask Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss about that. All they did was to be election workers and they were besieged with threats from the haters. The thugs banged on their doors, parked their lookout cars in front of their houses for hours in stakeouts and did even more to intimidate these women, to the point where they could no longer keep their jobs or even feel safe shopping for groceries. The thugs threatened them because Republican politicians lied, claiming a stolen election. Now those women live in fear all the time because the street thugs were incited by the Republican political thugs to threaten violence against innocent people.

Thugocracy. That’s what we have and as far as I can tell, nobody has a fix for this unless the inciters can be redirected or muzzled. But that’s a First Amendment problem that the haters deftly use to continue to stoke hatred.

And all the while they tell us they’re Christians. They hate and threaten and do violence just the way Jesus taught them, right?

No, not right! Jesus didn’t give any such instruction.

These false Christians do the kind of thing that Bill Maher warns us about. Some of the very worst atrocities in history have been religious wars or violence justified and incited by religion. Think: 9/11; The Crusades; our violence against indigenous people; hundreds of years of slavery.

Self-justification using religion is just the thing to justify getting one’s way and now it’s being used against LGBTQ people and Target by today’s thugs. If fascism comes to America – thugocracy – these guys will make great Storm Troopers.

If this progresses, expect lots of murders and your own self-censoring, as  you succumb to thugs, just as Target has done. Today’s nearly bare library shelves in some Republican controlled states have been made that way by self-appointed, ego-puffing guardians of extremist, delusional versions of correctness. The shelves will be restocked with new publications that have been scrubbed of anything that isn’t strictly White and Christian. The new books will contain nothing that even hints at actual history.

Just understand that this thugocracy business is real. It is vexing and it will not go away until we as a society demand that it go away and some strong and determined people strand up for truth, justice and the professed American way. You know: values, like democracy, human rights – all that messy stuff that makes our way of life possible. It’s quite unlike thugocracy.

Thugocracy Is The Official Platform

Thugocracy is the formally sanctioned, enthusiastically practiced, democracy crushing policy of the Republican Party. It smells a lot like fascism. See the next section of this post for more.

Their so-called negotiations with President Biden were in actuality designed to ensure that we will become the world’s biggest driver of economic and political pandemonium and its biggest economic cheat. Republicans tried to make this more likely by proposing to dump all the pain of budget cuts on low income Americans, which is now Republican dogma.

David Corn of Mother Jones, reports of their proposal that:

“The GOP position literally was this: We will allow the US government to pay its bills—which includes those run up by the Trump administration and a Republican Congress—and avoid an economic calamity, if you stick it to Americans who need help.”

But that’s just a bleeding heart liberal saying that, right? Not so fast.

Matt Gaetz, (R-Sex Trafficking Accusations) openly described Republican “negotiations” as hostage taking. And the budget proposal Republicans have offered refuses tax increases for the wealthy, cuts the ability of the IRS to go after high wealth tax cheats and it cuts programs for poor and middle class Americans.

And it is all done under the watchful eye of 20 ultra-extremists (not conservatives), any one of whom can bring down McCarthy’s speakership and all of whom want to bring down our government and our democracy.

That’s thugocracy in action by a Republican minority that has been given enormous leverage by a public minority of haters and grievance whiners.

Can you spot the thugs in this picture?

The Must Read of These Fraught Times
Thugs are working their fascist best to crush all you hold dear.
.

History Professor Heather Cox Richardson has found a way to get the message through to all of us. Her clear explanation is sourced from a U.S. government War Department pamphlet distributed to our troops in 1945, Army Times, Orientation Fact Sheet 64. It is titled:

FASCISM! [emphasis original]
.

Click me

There is chaos all around us, including the ongoing assaults on our freedoms and our rights and the minority control by thugs who refuse what We the People want. What do you suppose that’s really about?

Read Prof. Richardson’s piece quoting the original publication. If you would like to read the full, original 8-page pamphlet just the way our fighting men and women did when they risked their lives in 1945 to save our lives, you can find it here.

Course Note

To pass today’s course in citizenship and save our democracy for your children and grandchildren, you must know this material!

There will be a test.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    Click me

    JA


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

What It’s Really About – Part Two


It isn’t about

banning or burning books,

or refusing to do anything to stop the mass shooting carnage

or disrupting school board meetings by spewing hatred

or restricting or eliminating abortion services and other women’s healthcare

or marching with Tiki torches and swastika flags or moronically seig heil-ing while wearing black ski masks and sunglasses and carrying swastika flags. And no, there weren’t very fine people on both sides in Charlottesville.

or inviting despot Viktor Orbán to deliver a Republican Party keynote address

or banning DEI training or banning the teaching of CRT, even when and where it isn’t being taught

or manipulation of our courts

or discriminating against LGBTQs

or the ethics outages of the Supreme Court

or the cruelty inflicted on helpless people at our southern border

or holding hostage our nation and the world economy

or any of the rest of the deranged things the extreme right wing hollow heads have done and are doing.

We see the cruelties they create and we naturally respond. But often we dilute our own power chasing after the latest outrage, because it isn’t about those outrages. It is entirely about them crushing anyone seen as opposition. It’s about them “owning the libs.” It’s about using whatever brutality is at hand to confuse and enrage the liberals and even the moderates. It’s about using violence and the threat of violence to terrorize people, all for one single goal:

It is all about grabing and hoarding
all the power and all the money for themselves.
.

It’s about domination.

To facilitate that, they’re driving our government to fail – as with the idiotic, self-inflicted, wholly without integrity debt limit crisis.

They’ve been doing their power and money grab in plain sight at least since Reagan was sworn in on his happy-face version of discrimination and prejudice.

During the 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter he liked to pose the question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Many people weren’t better off, as we had weathered soaring inflation, the Arab oil boycott and more.

His supply side tax windfall for rich people was supposed to be invested to create jobs and better pay for workers, but it didn’t work that way. Supply side economics has never worked that way. It just sent more money to already rich people.

Except for the recent recovery from the pandemic, wages have been essentially flat for over 40 years and the average American’s net worth has declined. While that was happening, the net worth of the top 10% and especially the top 1% has multiplied many times over at your expense.

So, back to Reagan’s (slightly modified) question: Are you better off now than you were 40 years ago?

Answer: Nope.

But the rich have grabbed ever more power and money as our middle class has been hollowed out, because it’s your power and your money that they grab. See the RED font above.

An Example of How They Grab Power

Look at this Breaking News email headline from May 3.

Wait: The Ukrainians attacked Russia not on the battlefield in Ukraine, but inside Russia? In Moscow? In a “planned terrorist attack?” Who’s crazy enough to do that?

Answer: Nobody.

This is a standard bad guys tactic. They accuse opponents and enemies of nefarious stuff – most often of things they themselves are doing – and then they claim victimhood. Think: the Reichstag fire in 1933. Click this link and see for yourself what happened. The headline above is today’s version of the same thing.

Poor Vlad claims he’s been victimized by a Ukrainian drone strike on his capitol – they’re much like Putin’s drone strikes on Kiev – so he claims the right to hit back lethally. But in this case as in so many others, there is never any evidence to support his or any other abnormal psych victimization claim.

We’ve seen over eight years of Trump doing this and before that three decades of Republican extremists doing it, starting even before the performative and falsely named Tea Party bleated out their victimhood.

It’s a highly effective way to justify abhorrent acts to grab power and money. That is to say, it isn’t about the alleged victimizing attack. It’s about using false victimization as a cover.

It is all about grabing and hoarding
all the power and all the money for themselves.
.

These poor Republican babies claim they are victims of Democrats and all their out groups, like Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, Muslims, etc. You know: the non-White, non-Christians. Woe be unto the Republicans, as they suffer under the yoke of the libs! They use their phony victimization to extort our entire country, like they’re doing with the debt ceiling right now.

That is to say, they create victimization crises and then, in a massive leap of fiction, they tell us that only they can save us.

Legislators are focused almost exclusively on self-interest – getting reelected. That’s why moderate Republicans won’t stand up to the flamers – they’d only be primaried by a far right wacko. Here’s what all of this means for you.

Rallying, protesting, marching and the rest are most often exercises in trying to get elected representatives to change their behavior, which they are extremely unlikely to do. We largely waste our energy on lobbying these minor despots.

As I stated in my “NO!” posts last month (here, here and here),

ALL OF THE POWER COMES FROM THE VOTING BOOTH!
.

If you want change, stop chasing the symptoms. Instead, focus your energy on changing the legislators. As Barack Obama implored,

“Don’t boo: VOTE!”
.

And work hard to get others to vote. It’s long past time for tens of millions more of our voices to be heard from that powerful place, the voting booth, saying, “NO!” to the people who want to steal your power and your money. Mark your calendar to do that on November 5, 2024, because either you’ll take action or they will act on you. And you won’t like that.

And that is what it’s really about.

  • You can find What It’s Really About – Part One here.
  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

    • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
    • Fire the bastards!
    • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

      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 a lot 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.

      Click me

      JA


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

The Madness


Ed. note: Due to the Moms Demand Action – Advocacy Day ’23 yesterday, “What It’s Really About – Part Two” has been moved to this Sunday, May 21.

It’s been ten and a half months since the brutal July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park, IL that killed seven innocent people and wounded 48 other parade attendees. The wounded list includes 8-year-old Cooper Roberts, the kid who is now paralyzed for the rest of his life from the killer’s bullet that ripped into his back. Emotional injuries from that day were in the tens of  thousands. Many of those will never heal.

Click me

The blood stains on the pavement are gone now, as is the mountain of flowers and candles at the makeshift memorial that was created that week. Attendees long ago picked up their lawn chairs, picnic baskets, bikes and child-sized flags that were supposed to be waved at people on the floats. The ocean of tears has been rinsed away by the rain and the snow. The intersection of Central Avenue and Second Street looks normal now and you might not guess that it was a war zone last year.

A permanent memorial will replace the temporary one next to the Library on Laurel Avenue. Right now it’s just seven posts, each with an etched placard on top bearing a picture and a few words to remember each of those killed.

The memorial is alongside a small rose garden and a rock garden. About a third of the rocks in that garden have been painted by children and they are very much like those at the bases of the seven posts – you can see them in the picture – many with heart piercing words of love and loss. The children’s offerings seem to speak for all of us, saying “We will always remember you.”

Sadly, we have two such mass shootings every 3 days in America, so it’s easy to imagine many thousands of piles of rocks painted by children all across the nation.

That vision brought me to the Moms Demand Action – Advocacy Day ’23 in the state capitol yesterday to help make a statement that We The People want sensible gun safety laws to keep these killing machines out of the hands of the angry, the crazy, the self-deluded, the falsely patriotic, the narcissisticly aggrieved, the mentally ill and the compulsively belligerent, like the  Highland Park murderer.

Hundreds of people of all ages showed up to make a statement about the need for better gun safety legislation, both in mass and in small group meetings with legislators.

Hundreds of Illinoisans showed up to demand better, even in this state with better than average gun safety legislation. The speeches were inspiring, delivering the clear and insistent message that the progress that has already been made is just the start of what needs to be done. A couple of younger people spoke to the crowd, letting us know that the people of their generation are always wondering, “Am I next?” Imagine going to school with that knot in your belly every day.

An artist turned her hand to making clear the truth of what we as a society have done. Her display has over 30,000 orange flags, each representing a child murdered by guns just since Sandy Hook. Look at the picture – what you can see is a fraction of the total display. Now imagine if each flag were instead a healthy kid.

Over 30,000 orange flags should instead be over 30,000 healthy kids living their lives.

The misled guys and the tough guys believe that the Second Amendment means everybody can own any murder weapons they want. But read that Amendment – it doesn’t say anything about a right of private citizens to own AR-15s or extended capacity magazines. In fact, it doesn’t say that anyone can own a gun for any reason other than so that we have a well-regulated militia.

And we have that. It’s called the National Guard. We don’t need private citizens to amass arsenals of weaponry in their basements. Those gun owners aren’t part of a well regulated militia. They’re just guys with guns.

There is no Second Amendment reason for anyone to do concealed carry, much less to do it without a background check and safety training. Most of our state governments, though, seem to say, “Just strap one on, Bubba, and head to the bar for some beers. What could possibly go wrong?”

Oh wait: Buffalo could go wrong and a bunch of grannies shopping for eggs and bread could be murdered. Sandy Hook could happen and the bodies of 20 little kids and seven teachers could be splattered onto the school room floor.

And Highland Park could happen, making a horror so terrible, so awful, that brave, tough cops and FBI personnel had to bury their faces in their hands.

So, I went to Springfield yesterday to tell our legislators the obvious facts of what has happened and what will continue to happen if we fail to take proper action. I went to tell them that the misled guys and the tough guys are wrong and that they themselves are a clear and present danger to our country..

I went to tell them that We The People want the madness to stop.
.

Charlton, can we have your gun now that there are over 31,000 cold, dead hands so far just this year?

If you weren’t at the Illinois state capitol yesterday, no worries. This battle for peace and safety isn’t over and there will be many more opportunities for you to stand up for all those people who can no longer stand up for themselves and for all of us who don’t want to be shot.

The children in Highland Park left notes on those rocks to say that we will continue to stand for our fallen. They and we will speak for them and for all those who are being gunned down right now, even as you read this.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    Click me

    JA


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

What It’s Really About – Part One


The Diabolical Debt Ceiling

Everyone knows that if the U.S. defaults on its debt obligations that the sky will fall all over the world. We will sink into a recession that lays off over 8 million American workers, leaving them without a way to support their families. Interest rates will soar, making everything way more expensive and we will lose our place of leadership in the world.

All of that and far more is waiting for us right around the corner due entirely to the threatened Republican catastrophe scheme. Why would Republicans be taking us there? They want the same things for our country as you want, right?

Wrong!
.

As Jaemlle Bouie wrote, they don’t hate big government, at least not big government that benefits themselves. I’ll add that they really hate big government that they don’t control dictatorially.

Democracy is all that’s stands guard between us and a dictatorship.

And the Republicans prove to us every day that what they and what their cruel minority wants is absolute control. Dictatorship. They don’t want you to have a voice or power of any kind.

They worship at the feet of dictator Viktor Orbán in Hungary, holding their conferences there, and some of them even cheer Putin. Yes, Republicans are championing Russians who attack the freedom of others.

They gerrymander our voting districts to benefit themselves and to eliminate Democrats from legislative bodies, all the while taking power from those they don’t like.

They attack our press, our schools, teachers and knowledge itself.

They take rights from you time after time, including taking away your right to safety, to not be gunned down in a mass shooting.

They attack our justice system and call for impeachment of our pubic officials for no reason other than to undermine your faith and confidence in our institutions.

They manipulate the system to put ever more guns into private hands, including people who have known mental health issues.

And they work every day to dis-empower women. See the last quote in this post.

What all of that tells us is that what this terrorist minority of haters is working toward is to

bring down our government!
.

They tried and failed (barely) on January 6. But what do you suppose will happen if our economy and our place of world leadership are in tatters because we decided to stiff our creditors?

The thugs will shout from the rooftops that democracy – our government – has failed us and that only they can save us. Then all will be lost. Our delicate experiment in self-rule will be over and we will descend into a hundred years of darkness.

Kevin McCarthy isn’t bluffing when he threatens you, our country or our world. He and the crazies want a very different America than the one you want and they don’t care what rights and freedoms you lose, who gets oppressed or even killed or what injustices torment us, all in their pursuit of all the power and all the money. They want to subjugate We The People. They want Nazi Germany in America. Marjorie Taylor Greene, AR-15 in hand, will be the head of the American SS.

It is all about grabing and hoarding
all the power and all the money for themselves.
.

And that is what it’s really about.

Special note for skeptics: If this seems hyperbolic to you, I urge you not to take my word for any of this. Just look at the easily found historical models and compare them with what is happening in plain sight right now.

On-Point Must Reads

Thom Hartmann lays out with great clarity what the GOP really is, what it is doing to America and what it’s doing to you. His essay is subtitled, “It’s time to call a fascist a fascist.” Hartmann references FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace and his article about fascism published in the New York Times in 1944. It could have been written today. You can read it here.

Dana Milbank’s Washington Post essay, The Day Free-market Republicans Became Soviet Economic Planners is a fine exposé of Republican efforts to subvert our nation.

Quotes of the Week

From David Corn of Mother Jones:

“These days, Republicans have intensified their efforts to rig the system to help them gain and retain power, even when they attract the support of only a minority of voters. In Missouri, they are trying to pass a measure that would require a 57 percent majority to approve a ballot initiative [same in Ohio, except theirs would require a 60% majority] .  .  . a condition that favors the GOP. Republicans throughout the country are scheming to make it harder for college students to vote. In Texas, Republican state lawmakers are pushing legislation that would allow an appointee of the governor to overturn elections in Houston. And there are many other ways the GOP is striving to stack the deck in its autocratic [read: dictatorial] favor.”

  • – Our Land Newsletter, May 9, 2023

In reaction to the recent spate of mass shootings (we have 2 every 3 days), Sheila Markin writes,

“Wanna Stay Alive? Don’t Vote For Republicans”

“Mother’s Day isn’t dying—mothers are.” – click here and here

  • Watch for What It’s Really About – Part Two this Sunday, May 21.
Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

Potpourri v19.0


E. Jean Carroll’s Civil Suit

against Donald Trump for battery and defamation is nearly over. She presented her case and then Trump called no witnesses. The closest he came to testifying was in his deposition, played for the jury, where he defended himself by claiming that Carroll was not his type. That got me to thinking.

In his deposition he viewed a photograph and announced that the woman in the picture with him was his second wife, Marla Maples. He married her, so it’s safe to assume Marla Maples was his type. What’s interesting about that is that the woman in the picture isn’t Marla Maples. It’s E. Jean Carroll, who apparently looked to Trump just like his former wife. Apparently, Carroll actually was his type.

But if Carroll wasn’t his type, as he claimed, exactly what is the type of woman he likes to rape?

Four Proud Boys Were Convicted

of seditious conspiracy last Thursday. One key element of the conviction was that the leader of this group, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, was found guilty even though he wasn’t on the grounds of the National Mall or in the Capitol Building at the time of the insurrection. That speaks hopefully for charges to come against the prime conspirator, who also wasn’t in the Capitol Building during the insurrection.

For now, we’re left with some pertinent questions. First, are the Proud Boys still proud, now that it’s clear that they were dumb enough to let Trump use them as his pawns? Second, will they still be tough guys after 20 years in federal prison? Third, when it all goes down on Trump and they shave his comb-over and put him in a cheap, orange jumpsuit, will the Secret Service still have to protect him?

This is the third successful trial for seditious conspiracy prosecuted by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department. This stuff moves painfully slowly and, of course, we’re looking for indictments of Trump, Meadows, Stone, Cruz, Eastman, Navarro, Flynn, Bannon, Giuliani, Powell and the rest of Trump’s band of co-conspirators, both in and out of office. Jack Smith won’t want to run afoul of the 2024 primary activities, so I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer for indictments of the bad guys. So, stand back and stand by.

Various Republican Controlled States

are loosening child labor laws. Let’s see if we can figure out why.,

There has been a shortage of labor throughout our economy for years and that impacts our entire supply chain down to the service at your favorite restaurant. We’ve turned off the immigration spigot, so where will new workers come from?

We have cleverly decided that it’s a good idea for 10-year-olds to work the French fry machines at McDonalds. We have children in dangerous areas of industrial plants and lots more. And oh, BTW, making money may dissuade kids from completing their education.

Congress has refused to address comprehensive immigration reform for four decades and we are massively short of workers, so businesses have turned to the only people available. Our cowardly legislators would rather eliminate protections for kids than clean up our broken immigration system. They’d rather send our children to work than send them to school.

Ron DeSantis Is Protecting

not just Floridians, but all Americans from Chinese nationals buying real estate in Florida.

According to Ron’s plan, citizens of Russia, Iran and North Korea can buy real estate in Florida. So can Colombian drug lords, Guatemalan sex traffickers, convicted domestic American terrorists and mass murderers. Seditionists are welcome to gobble up land in Florida, as are mercenaries from the Wagner group, who are raping and killing innocent civilians in Ukraine every day in the name of Mother Russia.

But Chinese nationals can’t buy land in Florida, this for obvious reasons. Be sure to enlighten us about what those obvious reasons are in the Comments section below, because they just aren’t all that obvious to me.

The List of Justice Clarence Thomas’ “Indiscretions”

grows longer nearly every day.

Friday we were treated to the news that the extreme conservative Supreme Court justice whisperer Leonard Leo had funneled money to Ginni Thomas via intermediary Kellyanne Conway. Conway was then a pollster and later Trump’s “alternative facts” hyper-blabber. The money danced fairly-like to Ginni in roughly $25,000 increments and there is no indication that she earned it by doing anything of value. That leaves us wondering why that money got deposited into Ginni’s account and why it was passed to her in chameleon-like fashion.

And, of course, there was yet another Harlan Crow episode of generosity, as we learned that the child Clarence and Ginni were raising was sent to private schools paid for by Crow, this to the tune of something like $160,000. Now really, who doesn’t pay for somebody else’s kid’s private school? And Justice Thomas didn’t report either of those income streams, as required by both the law and basic judicial ethics.

Clearly, all the money and money equivalents lavished upon the justice and his extremist, tear-down-our-democracy wife may be legal and proper, however much verbal dancing that might require to convince us of such a thing. But this stuff, along with Justice Alito’s and Chief Justice Roberts’ relationships with money look suspicious and all of this is driving our trust in this critical institution ever downward.

If overthrowing the government is the goal, one of the sure ways to motivate the people to do that is to convince them of the corruption inherent in it.

Allen, Texas, a Northern Suburb of Dallas

is now known to us much as Uvalde, El Paso and Sutherland Springs are known.

A bunch of people were gunned down yesterday and at least 8 died and 7 more were injured at the Allen Premium Outlet Mall, shot by a bad guy with a gun. He was at last stopped by a cop, a good guy with a gun. We’re sure to hear about that from the gun crazies over the next few days and isn’t it just great that good guys have guns?

But the thing about the good guys with guns is that they are always way too late to stop the bad guys from killing innocents. Given Governor Abbott and his supplicant legislature, surely there were a lot of good guys with concealed carry guns in that Texas mall yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, most of them likely had little or no training in using a gun. How much help were those vigilantes? For an answer, ask the grieving families of the victims.

The governor, US senators and a few more with way more testosterone than sense have sent prayers. But think about it: thoughts and prayers are always a miserable confession that we waited too long to do what needed to be done. And we all know what needs to be done.

Columbine changed nothing. Neither did Highland Park. The same for Sandy Hook and Parkland and Uvalde and the Pulse Night Club and the Harvest music festival in Las Vegas and the Tree of Life Synagogue and now Allen, Texas. Prayers were sent for all, but the victims remain dead and their families and friends are traumatized for life with a pain that will never stop.

We can rally and protest and demand, but the Republican politicians are either crazed by a false interpretation of the Second Amendment or they’re in the pocket of the National Rifle Association or both. They will never do anything to protect We the People from murder.

If the legislators won’t change, then it’s up to us to change the legislators. We suffer two mass shootings every three days, so dumping those puffed up cowards can’t happen fast enough.

Think about that the next time you go to the mall or a movie theater or a house of worship or a music festival or send your kids to school. Will you make it home alive? Will your kids?

Quotes Of The Day

Only in America can a once-in-three-generations King’s coronation plus the Kentucky Derby be upstaged by — what else? — a mass shooting. – MSA

Everyone has a right to own a gun, but it must be a musket. – DE

.  .  .  the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. – Heather Cox Richardson

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

I’m So Old


I’m so old that I remember when passing the debt ceiling was just a box that Congress checked each year to ensure the full faith and credit of the United States. There was no conflating future spending with payment for past spending. There was no threatening of our economy. We just paid our bills.

I remember when abandoning world leadership, as well as abandoning our allies, was unthinkable, when Republicans insisted on muscular foreign policy and would never advocate for Russia or China.

And I remember when foreign autocrats, dictators and bullies were scorned and it wouldn’t even occur to a red, white and blue American to praise or emulate them, much less invite these thugs to deliver a keynote address.

I’m so old that I remember when promoting child labor or child marriage or defending statutory rape were unthinkable.

I distinctly recall a time when one country invading another nation’s territory, threatening its sovereignty and committing war crimes were universally abhorred, especially by Republicans, who would never condone, much less praise such actions.

I remember clearly when lying about voting fraud and election results were bad things and when actively promoting such lies was seen as treachery.

I remember a time when making death threats against fellow citizens was unacceptable.

I’m so old that I remember when there were profiles in courage to write about in books. And books were good things that only evil despots banned and burned.

I’m so old that I remember a time when having more rights was a good thing and something to defend and protect.

I remember when Supreme Court justices were held in the highest esteem by the entire country, this because they earned that esteem.

I’m so old that I remember when a president of the United States would never deny the reality of a deadly pandemic for months, then prescribe treatments that had absolutely no efficacy and some which would kill patients immediately. No president would accuse and ridicule our dedicated public health experts or reduce testing in order to make his numbers look better, all leading to over a million dead Americans.

There was even a time when a politician accused of crimes and about to be indicted for several more couldn’t possibly collect endorsements for his candidacy for the next election for president. And the notion of running for the presidency from a prison cell would have been universally considered absurd.

I distinctly recall when a mass shooting was murder, as were shooting someone who rang the wrong doorbell or who got into the wrong car or who pulled into the wrong driveway. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone then that such shootings were someone exercising Second Amendment rights or that “stand your ground” meant that it’s okay to just blast away. Back then private citizens possessing weapons of war was unthinkable.

I remember when both major political parties had clearly stated policies and program ideas to implement those policies and they negotiated to find a way forward. It was all based on agreed upon facts and observable reality. How quaint.

I remember when the American people weren’t so disgusted with politics that 41% refused to declare a party affiliation.

Click me for the story

I’m so old that I remember when committing business records fraud, making illegal campaign contributions, stealing government records, some highly classified, leaking top secret documents to adversaries, committing rape, defamation and numerous episodes of adultery, inciting a mob to riot against our nation in an act of sedition, soliciting vote count fraud and committing tax fraud were universally believed to be illegal and worthy of prosecution. Except for adultery, which is a civil violation.

I must be really old.

Quote of the Week
  • “Clarence Thomas has got to fall back. He is the definition of a cuck, which, if you don’t know, is someone who lets another guy pay for his mom’s house.
  • “Or, I know a lot of people are, like, isn’t a cuck a guy who watches his wife screw America? Either way, he’s gotta go.
  • “And I don’t think there will be justice on the Supreme Court until Clarence Thomas steps down and is replaced by Anita Hill.”
  • – Jena Friedman on The Beat with Ari Melber, April 28, 2023
Betcha you laughed at that last one.
Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

NO! v3.0


Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox

I wanted this case to go to trial to see Carlson, Hannity, Murdoch and the rest humiliated on the witness stand for their lies and their traitorous exhortations to sedition. That comes from the same driver as putting wrongdoers into the stocks in the town square in colonial days.

That isn’t just for the schadenfreude.* It’s for metering full punishment and sending a strong message to other liars. It’s a righting of the teeter-totter of fairness and justice over lying and cheating. It’s a re-dedication to right over wrong.

I’m not alone in that disappointment, yet there’s still a possibility. We may get the full meal deal as a result of the pending Smartmatic defamation lawsuit and the individual defamation lawsuits in queue against Fox and its larcenous mouthpieces. One can hope.

Shed no tears for Tucker Carlson for his departure from Fox. He will find a new White supremacist platform from which to spout his hatred and his lies. Let’s hope that he is penalized severely by the pending defamation lawsuits. Again, one can hope.

While We’re At It

Self-promoting blowhard Mike Lindell, the pillow pushing attention addict, just got his ears pinned back. According to the Washington Post, in August 2021,

[Lindell] claimed he had data showing Chinese interference [in the 2020 election] and said he would pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the material was not from the previous year’s U.S. election.

He called the challenge “Prove Mike Wrong.”

And somebody did just that. Then the guy applied to collect his $5 million. Oddly enough, Lindell didn’t keep his word and instead refused to pay, so the application to collect went to arbitration, per Lindell’s contest rules. Lindell lost and has to pay the $5 million. That’s the ear pinning.

WaPo reports further,

Lindell also faces a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems and a defamation lawsuit from one of Dominion’s former executives.

That’s two separate defamation lawsuits walking up to Lindell’s front door and ringing his bell. It’s looking like this is going to be a very difficult year for Mike Lindell. O’ happy day!

While it doesn’t always happen on the timetable we’d prefer, what goes around often does come around. Watch for this same sentence following each of the guilty verdicts against Trump.

It’s a good thing when our justice system says “NO!” to liars and cheaters.

But We Need a Lot More Than That

In a stunning piece by Josh Dawsey and Amy Gardner in the Washington Post, they detail a presentation at a Republican donor retreat by Cleta Mitchell. She is a lawyer, a fundraiser and she was neck deep in Trump’s 2020 election steal BS.

She told Republican donors that they have to eliminate early voting, vote by mail, early voter registration, and most clearly, she says the party must restrict access to the vote for young voters.

That’s what today’s Republican Party stands for – repression of opponents. Not policies that help We The People or which strengthen our country. Not new ways to meet our challenges or move us toward a more perfect union. All they have is bullying, violence and repression of opponents.

The Republicans are losing old White voters at a fast rate and soon the oppressors will be overwhelmed by Millennials and Gen-Zs, a fact which led to that exhortation for repression. Indeed, the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat 11-point election victory is evidence that our Millennials and Gen-Zs are the people we’ve been waiting for. That’s why the Republicans need to stomp on their rights and why we need to stop them from doing that.

It will take a lot of muscle to stop the oppressors and to protect our fragile democracy – our rule by all the people, not just old White guys.

Signing petitions is nice and protesting in the streets can be helpful and can feel empowering, but

ALL OF THE POWER COMES FROM THE VOTING BOOTH!
.

It’s long past time for tens of millions more of our voices to be heard from that powerful place saying, “NO!” Mark your calendar to do that on November 5, 2024.

A Little List of “NO!s”

Rachel Maddow’s A-Block story last Monday was about right wing broadcasters beginning with Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. He had what was far and away the largest broadcast audience ever. He spewed antisemitism, anti-democracy, calls to violence and at last the embrace of fascism. Then his plug was pulled.

Modern day right wing broadcasters have included Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones and yet more spewers. Each was at the top, right until they weren’t. Tucker Carlson is the latest right winger to fly high and then crash. Maddow’s report got me to thinking.

Other than their dedication to themselves, what these men have in common is a fountain of hatred. They stoked fear and hatred of the “other” and they fomented hatred in their audiences.

Sad but true: Fox News will have no difficulty finding a suitable White supremacist to replace Carlson and who will continue the hatred broadcasts that feed the fire in their audience and keep advertisers buying airtime.

That leads to Number 1 on our

Little List of “NO!”s
.
  1. “NO!” to the haters and the discriminators – you know who they are
  2. “NO!” to the liars and cheaters – you know who they are, too
  3. “NO!” to attacks on abortion services
  4. “NO!” to debt ceiling hostage taking extortionists
  5. “NO!” to cuts to SNAP (food stamps) and to Medicaid and to other programs that help our poor
  6. “NO!” to cuts to veterans’ benefits
  7. “NO!” to gerrymandering
  8. “NO!” to de-funding fighting the fentanyl/opioid crisis
  9. “NO!” to all voting suppression actions
  10. “NO!” to all who oppose gun safety improvement
  11. “NO!” to systemic wealth inequity practices
  12. “NO!” to fascism and autocracy
  13. “NO!” to school vouchers
  14. “NO!” to attacks on our democracy
  15. “NO!” to glorification of the Confederacy
  16. “NO!” to the NRA and its cowardly army of sycophants in Congress and statehouses
  17. “NO!” to the book burners and the enemies of education, learning, knowledge, truth and reality
  18. “NO!” to suppressing the teaching of the full American history
  19. “NO!” to Trump and Trump wannabees. I can’t believe it’s necessary to write that.
  20. “NO!” to judges blocking our federal agencies from doing what we created them to do, like protecting our air and water and vetting our medications
  21. “NO!” to attacks on citizen-led ballot measures like the one proposed by democracy thieves in Ohio right now
  22. “NO!” to global warming and climate crisis deniers
  23. “NO!” to those who opposed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, three sweeping laws that include investments in transportation and clean energy and that aim to promote American manufacturing of things like memory chips and electric vehicle components, and laws protecting same-sex marriage and cancelling student debt.

Fun Game: List all the Republican policies that deal with our challenges and help us to be a better country.

Okay. See if you can list just one.

Put your additions to this “NO!” list in the Comments section below.

___________________________

  • * schadenfreude – noun: pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune
  •      Apple Dictionary, v2.3.0 (284)
Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

Nixon Resigns – Then and Today


After the flood of lying, cheating, whining, denying, abandoning of his criminally loyal co-conspirators and all the rest of the cover up deceit, we at last learned for certain that Nixon had lied when he declared, “I am not a crook.” His “opening of China” might have been a good thing in itself and it might have been useful to make him look like he was a world statesman, but he lied. He lied about everything, especially the crook part.

It took a lot to get to that camel-load collapse to resignation, the final straw of which was the Supreme Court deciding against his hording of evidence. He was begging and pleading that the subpoena for his secret tapes be quashed because of some imagined presidential right to keep the incriminating materials out of the hands of Congress. “Nope,” the Justices unanimously said. The president has no privilege when the items in question are part of a criminal cover up.

Poof! Nixon’s protection from the disclosure of his wrongdoing dissolved with just a few signatures. All of it, except for the magically missing 18 minutes of recording that his ever faithful secretary, Rose Mary Woods, erased via gymnastic contortions. Choose your own description of what key evidence disappeared through her supposed abuse of her transcription device.

But with that Supreme Court decision it just wasn’t tenable for Republicans to stand by their felon, so Sen. Barry Goldwater and a few more Republican senators paid a visit to the Oval Office. They made it clear that they would vote to convict Nixon in an impeachment trial. The headline above is what happened next. Nixon got out of Dodge just ahead of the jury.

We can imagine that those senators were imbued with fine, upstanding moral convictions. It may be that they saw their duty to the Constitution and to their constituents and uprightly insisted upon honoring that duty.

And we can also look at the pragmatics of the situation and recognize that the vast majority of Americans were sick of the demoralizing spectacle of inane presidential excuses and the plodding pace of Congress in the face of his obvious criminality. We wanted Nixon gone.

Failure of the senators to make that happen by continuing to support Nixon was just not a good re-election strategy for Republican legislators who craved re-election, so they were forced to tell Nixon the truth: they would dump him in a public vote. I suspect that the dumping was less an exercise in doing the right thing and more an exercise in self-preservation. Voters have a way of making the path to lose an election quite clear.

Here’s the connective tissue to today.

We have over 6 years of elected Republicans succumbing to a plague of self-deception. It’s a near certainty that most of them know better, but they refuse to speak out against Trump and extremism, and they do so for practical reasons.

We’ve seen that those who did speak out lost their primary races to radical candidates, so staying mum about Trump or any extremist is a fine primary election strategy for Republicans with Wimpy Spine Syndrome. After all, it’s the extremist voters who show up in Republican primaries. Moral rectitude has no place there, it seems.

It was the voters, We The People, who at last forced the stalwart Nixon supporters to do the right thing 50 years ago.

And it is the voters, We The People, who, conversely, haven’t turned out to vote in big enough numbers to defeat the crazies and to ensure that our rights, our democracy and our Constitution are protected and defended. It is our failure to vote that has kept a minority of extremists in power over all of us.

Yes, it’s pleasing to blame and castigate Trump and his wild-eyed, angry sycophants worshiping at the Shrine of Hatred, but we are the ones who put them in a place to harm us all. The remedy for this terrible disease is as plain to see as it can be.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

Ignorance


My friend Dr. Mardy Grothe writes an interesting and insightful post each week. Indeed his offering is the first thing I read Sunday mornings.

His comments usually focus on literary issues in a most clever way. However, last Sunday he uncharacteristically dipped a toe in my accustomed pond. His piece is so good that I asked permission to share a portion as a guest essay here and Mardy graciously accommodated my request, much to your benefit.

You can find him at http://www.drmardy.com/. I recommend that you look for the “Subscribe” function.

This Week’s Theme:
“How Has the Ignorance of Others Affected Your Life?”

This past week news reports  detailed a Tallahassee, Florida charter school principal being forced to resign after [three] parents of students in her sixth-grade art history class filed a formal complaint about their children being exposed to a “pornographic” image. The image in question, it turns out, was a photograph of Michelangelo’s statue of “David.”

This kind of thing is now routinely happening in Florida, thanks to the innocuous-sounding “Parental Rights in Education” bill that governor Ron DeSantis pushed through his rubber-stamp legislature in July of 2022 (this was the legislation critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill). If you currently live in one of the American “red” states, expect similar ludicrousness to be coming to your area soon, as Republican-controlled state legislatures all over the country have begun to eagerly champion the cause of “Parent’s Rights in Education.” Sadly, we’ve now entered an era in which it has become easy to get a book banned or a teacher fired because something that reasonable people would consider acceptable has offended someone’s sensibilities. It all brings to mind an observation from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote in Proverbs in Prose (1819):

“Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.”

I’m sure you can recall from your younger years when you first witnessed some local ignoramus complaining about evolution being taught in public schools or offering a totally fallacious theory as the absolute truth. We called such people “crackpots” back then, and as I grew older, I learned that almost every neighborhood or community has at least one. All crackpots have one thing in common: there is simply no reasoning with them. A 1910 issue of Life magazine captured a truth about them when it cited an unknown author as saying:

“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”

Like all groups, crackpots have their “influencers” as well, and they have been successful in infecting countless others. Just think of the millions of holocaust deniers around the world. Or the millions of U. S. citizens who believed that a duly elected American president was born in a foreign country and was therefore ineligible to occupy the nation’s highest office. More recently, thanks to what is now routinely described as “The Big Lie,” there are tens of millions of Americans who believe that Joseph Biden is also an illegitimate U.S. president.

Ignorance has been historically regarded as simply an absence of knowledge, but this new kind of ignorance—a willful ignorance—is like a metastasis of the original condition. Thanks to the philosopher Karl Popper, it might be viewed this way:

“Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge
but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know,
issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind.”

This week, reflect on how the phenomenon of willful ignorance has shown up in your life, and how you responded when it did. As usual, you will find a number of quotations below to assist you in your reflections:

“To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.”

— A. BRONSON ALCOTT

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is great.”

— SAUL BELLOW

“Ignorance is an evil weed,
which dictators may cultivate among their dupes,
but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.”

— WILLIAM BEVERIDGE

“The highest form of ignorance is to reject
something you know nothing about.”

— WAYNE W. DYER

“It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power;
but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?
Knowledge slowly builds up
what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.”

— GEORGE ELIOT

“Stupidity’s the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.”

— WILLIAM GADDIS

“Ignorance is not bliss.
Ignorance is impotence; it is fear; it is cruelty;
it is all the things that make for unhappiness.”

— WINIFRED HOLTBY

“Reason obeys itself;
and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

— THOMAS PAINE

“Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind;
one of its characteristics is that
it doesn’t recognize itself as ignorance.”

— JANE SMILEY

“The people who are scariest to me are the people
who don’t even know enough to realize how little they know.”

— THOMAS SOWELL

For source information on these quotations, and others on the subject of IGNORANCE, visit: DMDMQ.
My Thought of the Week

“Ignorance 
is a problem to be corrected,
and not exploited for personal or political gain.”
Speaking of Ignorance

Click me

The Tennessee House of Representatives put another notch in their Ku Klux Klan lynching rope last Thursday. The super-majority Republicans were shocked, shocked! I tell you, to have witnessed three representatives participate in a peaceful protest with students who, not too surprisingly, don’t want to be shot dead by yet another school shooter, as had happened in Nashville two weeks earlier.

For their temerity to speak up for safety and to the horror of the proper decorum Republicans, two young Black men and one White woman, all duly elected representatives, were put on trial to be expelled from the House for their peaceful participation in a peaceful, albeit noisy, protest demonstration that was conducted because kids don’t want to be shot dead.

All three legislators did the same things during the protests, but only the two Black representatives were expelled. The White woman kept her seat in the House. Could this be a more blatant demonstration of racial discrimination?

Many of us had thought we might have moved past this kind of horrific display of racism, but of course, we were only fooling ourselves. Racism and White supremacy were on display for all to see and this was nothing less than a

legislative lynching

.

Perhaps the Republicans in the Tennessee House, working as they do in the city where 3 little kids and 3 adults were just murdered and in the state where the Ku Klux Klan originated, think they can get away with this. After all, not long ago one of their members recommended a return to lynching.

How is it that people still have to do this?

But they’re wrong.

The whole world is watching and condemning them. We the People won’t allow for their hatred to remain in control. That’s especially so for our Millennials and Gen-Zs and a few of we Boomers who still remember our idealism. Just imagine running a political campaign against the haters in the 2024 election. The campaign writes itself.

Isn’t it odd that people still have to raise a fist in a declaration for equality and respect? No, that didn’t end at the 1968 Olympics, because we are still a nation that tolerates systemic bigotry.

But the ignorance infusing that awful alt-right deed in Nashville on Thursday will prove to be counter-productive to the haters. You and I and so many of us will see to that.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

     

    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 a lot 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.

    JA


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

Woke, Parents Rights, Covid & Court Watch


“Woke” Update 2

Given the decades of Republican and so-called conservatives’ efforts to establish absolute power and wealth into the hands of (guess who?) the wealthy, including themselves, it seems this mania to attack whatever is “woke” was inevitable. It’s undefined by those same Republicans and so-called conservatives so that they can use the term just as playground brats would, to ridicule others.

Paul Krugman has given us some definition of what “woke” is, as used by these hateful culture warriors (the brats). In his essay Wonking Out: Conservatives Face a Rude Fiscal Awokening [sic], he explains,

“So now we know what many conservatives mean by being woke: It means showing any concern for and offering any help to, Americans who are victims of adverse circumstances.”

That means that many of We The People, those whose safety and security we claim to protect, are instead blown off by Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and the rest of the frothy-mouthed usual suspects.

Those suspects aren’t just brats. They are thugs.

Parents Rights

The so-called “parents rights” temper tantrums polluting our Republican controlled states have resulted in faculty firings, book bannings, book burning, race negating, history denial, bullying, board of education upheavals and more. These tirades long ago reached a level of refusal of learning that is gut wrenching to any thinking person. This is, in fact, a denial of education and learning.

Public education is for the public. All of it. It isn’t just for kids whose parents are an angry, frothing few. Surely, parents have the primary responsibility for their children’s education and should have a voice in what that looks like, even when parents don’t know much about educating kids. But public education isn’t just for a small minority of vocal thugs who want to force their narrow, angry beliefs on everyone else.

So, for parents who think the statue of David is pornographic; for parents who think Toni Morrison’s writings are racially offensive or harmful to their fragile White children; for parents who don’t want their kids to know that not every other kid is exactly like them; for parents who think their kids should be told only that Rosa Parks was a woman on a bus, this without mentioning that she was Black; for parents who want to micromanage every classroom and who just can’t abide a complete education for their kids; there are two simple solutions: either home school your kids or send them to a private school more in line with your narrow notion of education.

And you can pay the entire bill for either of those options with your own money. Vouchers transferring public education money to private schools are a scam and an offense to the Constitution.

But don’t worry. The public schools will be there for your kids when you run out of anger and money, just as the Framers intended – even if Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis and their private, for-profit school CEO buddies don’t like that.

Covid

“If you are up to date on your vaccines and you get treated with Paxlovid, if you get an infection, you just don’t die of this virus,” [Dr. Ashish Jha] said. “Almost every one of those [Covid] deaths [of un-vaccinated people] is preventable. And yet people are still dying [at the rate of 200 – 500 per day]. And that is the power of misinformation. That is the power of disinformation that we all have to work on countering.”

  • – Dr. Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House Covid response team,
  • speaking to an audience of physicians at a
  • conference near Boston, Friday, March 28

Even as our people die, Republicans in Congress and big megaphone blatherers continue to do diaper-clad political performances to incite an angry army of malcontents (dunno where I saw that, but I sure like it) to self-harming craziness.

It’s safe to say that we have an large part of our population that has been trained over decades to see themselves as victims of some other group of Americans, so they’re angry. They are angry to the point that they won’t do the simple things that are necessary to save their own lives, let alone the lives of Granny, their kids or the check-out lady at the supermarket. They prefer anger over continuing to live.

That’s a lot like our gun safety refusers, who love their guns more than they love their own kids – or yours.

And That Connects With .  .  .

The alt-right (aka, radical extremists) have been hyper-crazificating for at least three decades to get Americans to distrust and hate:

government

healthcare professionals

healthcare insurance

journalists

democracy

the media

all politicians with a “D” next to their name

all politicians regardless of party who don’t toe the extremist line

the courts

elections

any Democratic president

truth, justice and the American way

anybody not just like themselves

And if there are real, Earth #1 facts that refute the distrust and hate disinformation, it is labeled fake news or assigned some other form of reality dismissal. This is blind acceptance of propaganda to the point of self-reinforcing, evidence-free belief in the unbelievable. Here’s an example.

Take a look at this chart from a recent Gallup survey.

The study was done following Vice President Harris’ visit to these three African countries. You can see that roughly half of the respondents approve of our job performance there, which means that roughly half of the respondents disapprove.

Questions:

  1. What percentage of US adults can find any of those countries on a map, even if the countries are labeled?
  2. What percentage of US adults can name even one US policy regarding these nations?

Bolstered by their ignorance, half of surveyed adults disapprove of the work of our government. Hint: they were propagandized to disapprove, to believe the unbelievable.

Here’s another Gallup chart showing President Biden’s approval rating at just 40% (green). It also shows that 56% disapprove of his job performance (orange).

We can ask survey respondents the same type of questions as for the African countries and the results would yield the same kinds of answers: they really don’t know any reason for their negative opinions except that a lot of very loud, self-serving people have been exhorting them to distrust and hate, to believe the unbelievable.

Too many of our citizens have been trained that way all their lives. That sadly defines our challenge to restore our institutions, our values and our country to something that resembles a democracy.

“We live in an age of explicit disinformation—that is, disinformation that is publicly confirmed as disinformation yet still succeeds as disinformation.”

David Corn, Our Land newsletter, April 4, 2023

Court Watch

Perp walked, finger printed and indicted on 34 felony counts in New York.  √

That’s one.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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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.

    JA


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

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