Leadership

The Last Word


Reading time – 1:03  .  .  .

We stopped at the funky bookstore on the way to the island, where I picked up a novel by Gore Vidal. I had never read anything by Vidal and this book was on a stack selling at half price, so on a whim I included it with the selections already under my arm and mentally put it in the queue for beach reading.

Vidal was quite the controversial character and in addition to his books on history, culture and politics, his short stories, his plays and memoirs, he wrote a series of pulp fiction novels, including Thieves Fall Out, set in post-war Cairo. In speaking of men of treachery, a character in the book says they are, “Worse because they have no pity, only hate for the world they mean to own, to steal from the rest of us.” Sound like anyone you’re familiar with?

In speaking of the ongoing rebellion against the king, another character remarks, “Probably all a fake, staged by the government so they can lock up a few malcontents. Good play, too. Suggest it for other countries. Always a lot of sour apples in every country complaining. Fine. Let them complain. Then one day – boom! Say they started it. Lock ’em up. Do away with the lot. Only way to keep order.” Vidal describes this character as,”the last word in the Neanderthal mind.”

That was when I had an ah-HA! moment on the beach.

Our new normal is that we now have a month’s worth of president-related crises happening every day. There’s much to be said about this avalanche of crazy, including the peril that we may become accustomed to it and begin to ignore dangerous assaults on our safety, our values and the Constitution. It takes very little public apathy for Congress to go completely jellyfish and allow an arrogant, self-focused tyrant of a president to destroy all we hold dear. Will we wake up one day to hear the boom! as order is kept by a group of (mostly) men who represent the last word in the Neanderthal mind?

The answer, of course, is yes, if we allow that to happen.

Note that on Friday we learned that the Trump administration is considering stripping children from parents as a deterrent to illegal immigration on the U.S. southern border, this as about 700 children have already been taken. Neanderthal.

And it’s being done in our name.

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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:
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  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to 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.

Take Heart!


  • Reading time – 46 seconds  .  .  .

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

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

.

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

.

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

.

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

.

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

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

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

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

If You Ever Were a Kid


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

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

March For Our Lives – Chicago

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

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

Click me for the Sun-Times story

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

Are you starting to get it yet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hypothetical States of America


Reading time – 1:47  .  .  .

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

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

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

Until . . .

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

Until . . .

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

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

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

Because you care.

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

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

Copyright 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.

The 1960s and Now


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what politicians better figure out really fast:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See how personal this gets?

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

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

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

An Astonishing Ability To Do The Wrong Thing


Reading time – 75 seconds  .  .  .

Pathetic that he needed such notes. Note, too, the “45” on the cuff. Sad.

Russia invaded Ukraine so Obama put sanctions on them. Trump removed them.

17 people were murdered in Florida. Trump said congratulations to the first responders and told Jeff Sessions to look into prosecuting Hillary.

Kim Jong-Un launched a ballistic missile. Trump insulted him and indirectly dared him to do worse.

The FBI indicted 13 Russian hackers. Trump congratulated himself.

Trump bellowed that Mexico will pay for his wall. Now Trump demands payment from Congress (i.e. you and me).

Trump promised to protect the Dreamers. Trump pulled the rug out from under the Dreamers by removing executive order protection and now uses them as pawns.

Trump promised protection and even expansion of Social Security and Medicare. Trump signed a tax bill that is the first step to privatizing and limiting both of those programs.

Congress passed a law to sanction Russia which Trump signed. Proof of Russian hacking was offered (yet again) and Trump refused to sanction Russia as required by law.

Trump repeatedly meets with Russian leaders without any American present, not even a translator.

Trump promised to isolate himself from his business interests. That never happened and he continues his self-aggrandizement by charging hundreds of millions of dollars for security and transportation to Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. And Trump gets foreign dignitaries to stay in his hotels.

Trump held a “listening session” with survivors of mass shootings. It is astonishing that he had to bring a cheat-sheet along to know what to say (see the picture). Worse, he proposed arming teachers with guns, right in line with the NRA’s solution for increased gun sales. And what could be better than crossfire in the hallway of the school?

Of course, this list could go on and on, but the most important point is that Trump is not just completely untrustworthy; he is imperiling us. His hollow words to survivors won’t bring any safety to students or anyone else. And he is imperiling the United States by failing his primary responsibility to protect and defend our country. Tom Friedman’s article on this is mandatory reading.

Unlike Trump, I’m doing something for our safety. Mark your calendar on March 24 to join the national student protest. Then review this post and send a link to at least 10 others.

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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.

The “T” Word


Reading time – 3:13; Viewing time – 4:18  .  .  .

In Brené Brown’s new book, Braving the Wilderness, she quotes Harry G. Frankfurt in differentiating between liars and bullshitters. The liar rejects the authority of the truth; the bullshitter pays no attention to the truth at all. She also quotes Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

The BS effrontery was plain for all to see on January 30, as the President of the United States delivered the Constitutionally required report to Congress on the state of the union. The president delivered his practiced applause lines and – horror of horrors! – the Democrats did not stand and applaud.

Now, this is the reality show president, so for him to experience an absence of fawning adulation must have been terribly painful. Indeed, the next day he put his hurt feelings on his sleeve.

This from NBC News:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday called Democrats’ stone-faced reaction to his State of the Union address last week “treasonous” and “un-American” during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Cincinnati.

Trump described Republicans as “going totally crazy wild” during his remarks last Tuesday, while expression-less Democrats remained seated for the majority of the speech. “They were like death,” Trump lamented. “And un-American. Un-American.”

But their reaction, he said, was also something much worse.

Vaguely noting that “someone” called the Democrats’ reactions “‘treasonous,'” Trump said he agreed. “I mean, yeah, I guess. Why not? … Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

Definition: treason – the crime of betraying one’s country.

Apparently, failing to applaud Trump is the same as betraying one’s country, at least in the mind of the Great Thought Mangler. Is it possible, though, that treason is flowing from a different source? Wouldn’t undermining the fundamentals of our country be treasonous?

Some examples:

From The Onion, of course! Consider this as a placeholder for all the betrayals of this administration

  • – Violating the separation of powers
  • – Attacking the Justice Department, the FBI and the press in order to undermine an investigation
  • – Bringing to the inner circle of the White House people who CANNOT GET A SECURITY CLEARANCE, at least one of whom has been targeted by a Chinese influence operation and several of whom put themselves in a position to be blackmailed by foreign powers – and they all had access to top secret information
  • – Refusing to be loyal to allies and sucking up to tyrants, both large and small
  • – Threatening nuclear annihilation
  • – Double-crossing Dreamers and CHIPs kids
  • – Abandoning the people of Puerto Rico
  • – Blatantly disregarding the emoluments clause, making millions for himself, and
  • – Failing to protect and defend this country against invasion by a hostile foreign power

Not one of these actions is partisan in nature or even a policy issue and none is in dispute. Each is in direct opposition to the welfare of this nation and every one is poison to democracy. They are simple questions of right versus wrong, patriotic versus treasonous. This is about betraying one’s country.

From How Democracies Die:

Click to watch the interview of former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan about the Russian invasion of America.

“An essential test for democracies is not whether such [authoritarian] figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place.”

Congress, you miserably failed the first test. Protecting the FBI and the Justice Department may be the last chance to stand up and fulfill your oath of office. The only question is whether you will wake up to your responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and intercede to stop treason, the betrayal of our country.

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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.

Fable


Flag of the United States of America

Reading time – 2:10; Viewing time – 3:25  .  .  .

Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. It was thought of by many as the shining city on a hill. It was the best hope for millions coming there from around the world and proved to be a land of opportunity. It had many strengths and valuable resources, but the most powerful of all was its people. They had enduring values and a can-do culture that made them the envy of the world.

One day the people found that they had been frustrated and angry for a very long time. Their leaders had failed them, lied to them and stolen from them, so they looked for a new leader and chose one who roused them with words of anger and grandiose promises. He had many obvious flaws and he lied to the people repeatedly, but they didn’t care about the lies because he spoke to their decades-long frustration, so they elected him to be their leader. Then things turned very bad for the people.

They learned that this new leader had ties to an Evil Empire and he was beholden to that empire in very suspicious ways, including great sums of money. And he surrounded himself with many others who also had ties to the Evil Empire in suspicious ways. He dismissed allies and warmed up to vicious autocrats around the world, especially the leader of the Evil Empire. He had many contacts with that leader and refused to report the contacts to his own intelligence agencies or to the press of his own country, so the people had to look to the Evil Empire for the truth of what was happening in their own country.

He began to dismantle the country’s foreign service infrastructure and weakened the Justice Department with an ineffectual leader. He demeaned key government people and agencies, especially those looking into his affairs and who could unmask him. He fired many long time public servants and pressured still more to resign their posts. He constantly demeaned the press, those who could hold him accountable publicly. He bullied legislators and they knuckled under, refusing to challenge him.

Flag of the Russian Federation

He created great sideshows, including threatening nuclear war with a petty tyrant in order to distract the people from his wrongdoing. He packed government with those he could control and demanded loyalty to himself, instead of loyalty to the people and the country, as they had pledged. He caused his top intelligence people to meet with the top intelligence people of the Evil Empire. Then suddenly the people found that their flag had been changed to a very different red, white and blue.

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Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. You can read about it in the history books.

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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.

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

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