Resist

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 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Theocracy Is Just A Tool


What do you think about the Framers, the guys who hammered out the Constitution in a locked room with windows nailed shut and, obviously, no air conditioning, this over the course of the very hot Philadelphia summer of 1787? Are they the forebears of all national bedrock, the seers with the ability to establish the true way for whatever might come over the course of centuries? Or were they just normal men, each with his own foibles, stumbling along just as you and I do, simply doing the best they could do to conjure the needs of a new nation?

If you think the former, then you’ll surely align in some measure with the so-called “originalists” on the Supreme Court, who imagine they can see into the minds of the Founders and that we should adhere to what these justices see. That isn’t entirely unsupported, as the Federalist Papers contain a wealth of insight into their intentions, as do the the letters and other writings of some of the Founders.

If you think the latter, then you likely believe that the Constitution was intended as a series of guideposts and was intentionally left incomplete and subject to modification. The amendment process supports that view, as does the obvious fact that nobody in 1787 could have envisioned many, perhaps most, of the inventions, world changes and societal needs that have arisen over the course of the intervening 236 years.

Now, though, we are at a terrible crossroads, where many are openly denying reality, some are committing violence and a screeching minority is doing its best every day to eliminate the very democracy envisioned by the Founders. Worse, some of the howlers have their hands on the reigns of power and, worst, some howlers sit on the Supreme Court. That puts us in danger of losing what the vast majority of We the People want and believe in. The demand that this country should adopt Christian nationalism is a prime example of the danger we face, and that’s just a smoke screen for what the howlers really want.

Whatever one’s individual beliefs and practices regarding religion or God, we are intended to be a secular country. The Founders wrote about that and the First Amendment is its legal foundation, as it says,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise thereof; [emphasis mine]

The courts have established that the First Amendment also intends that we have freedom from religion. It’s a right, as in: guaranteed. But we haven’t been completely faithful to refraining from wedging religious beliefs into our public rules.

“Under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. “In God We Trust” has been on every piece of our currency since 1957. We were in the Cold War then and had to differentiate ourselves from the godless commies to show that we were the good guys. Clearly, those insertions meant that God was on our side.

So, since 1957, every time we pay a buck for goods or services we’re confirming that we believe in and trust in God. That’s quite unfair to a lot of our people and is a self-evident violation of the intent of the First Amendment.

We violate the First Amendment every time we give public money to religious organizations. George W. Bush called them “Faith-based institutions” and doled out taxpayer cash to them. Issuing school vouchers to redirect money from public education to private schools, many parochial, is another example. More on that in a minute. There’s something very hinky about those freedom of and from religion violations, but there they stand, wearing the imprimaturs of our laws and of the Supreme Court. The drafters of the First Amendment would be baffled by that. It appears the some justices aren’t the originalists they claim to be. That malleability goes further.

In Jessica Mason Pieklo’s piece, How Conservative Justices Are Driving Us Toward Theocracy, she writes of the Court,

First, they have responded in kind to the Republican Party’s lurch to the far-right and open embrace of anti-democratic principles by issuing more and more substantive decisions on its shadow docket. Second, the Court’s conservatives, led by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, have started actively rewriting decades of legal precedent to help pave the path for even more regressive anti-democratic policies to emerge from states that are held in conservative gerrymandered capture.

She goes on to make the point that efforts to establish this country as a Christian nationalist theocracy are a giant step toward eliminating democracy altogether and to the establishment of autocracy – religious fascism.

Katherine Stewart was quite direct in making this point in her op-ed in the New York Times, posted on the heels of the Supreme Court stomping on our rights in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion:

Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project. … Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.

The democracy attackers use many means to warp our country. A favorite is the aforementioned de-funding of public education, as by vouchers. They use these to transfer public cash to private schools, including the funding of religious schools. Perversely, they then attack the very pubic education system they have then under-funded, saying it is failing, claiming privatization is the cure. That’s your tax money transferred to religion and to very rich guys.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is doing the same thing to the Postal service by having trashed all the high speed sorting machines and hobbled mail delivery. The theocracy thumpers now claim that The Postal Service should be privatized because it doesn’t work properly. I’m guessing that these guys think God is on their side and that a theocracy would deliver the mail on time. Regardless, privatization would deliver the cash to rich guys. Even without full privatization, the logistics (i.e. delivery) company DeJoy used to run has been paid over $286 million by the Postal Service, and he still has a 30% stake in the company.

Snap your brain onto the most important issue: the point of all the sanctimonious Christian nationalism talk isn’t about Jesus. Indeed, the point of killing Roe and threatening to ban contraception isn’t about religion or pro-life.

They’re tools for ending our democracy for the benefit of rich and powerful people and for those who baffle themselves with their own BS, believing they’ll be sitting at the Big Kids’ table.

Back to the opening question about your belief in what the Founders intended.

If you think of yourself as an originalist, you’re forced to believe in democracy and a secular country, because the Framers specifically wrote the framework for democracy and excluded the possibility of Christian nationalism.

If you think of yourself as believing in choice number two, working to conjure the needs of our nation within the Constitutional framework, begin your thinking with the clarity that we Americans don’t like having others’ views jammed down our throats.

Either way, it’s clear that this is supposed to be a secular democracy. We the People really do believe as Thoreau advised,

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

That pretty well cautions against destruction of our democracy or establishment of a Christian or any other theocratic nationalism forced on We the People. Indeed, the Framers specifically didn’t want any part of that, having escaped the yoke of King George III and the Anglican Church.

In the acts of primitive rage of our extremists, they make it clear that they want to establish Christian nationalism and destroy democracy. Well, you know,

.  .  .  when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out

– Revolution, John Lennon

To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men.

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox

______________________________

  • 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, so don’t bug me about it.
    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 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Dracula Today


Now it’s your turn.

Bad Moon

John Fogarty and Credence Clearwater Revival sang about it decades ago, perhaps prescient about the dangers that surround us today.

I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightning 
I see bad times today
    
Don't go around tonight 
 'Cause it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

I always needed an interpreter to understand Fogarty’s words. For example, I thought he said that there’s a bad moon “on the right,” not “on the rise.” If he had sung it the way I heard it, he’d be exactly right for today’s America, although his way is pretty accurate, too.

That bad moon on the right brings hatred, lies, hypocrisy, lost integrity and an imminent threat to our very democracy and threats of violence and death to our fellow citizens. But you know that, just as Fogarty seems to have known it in my misinterpretation of that line in his song.

We have 6 days left to stop that bad moon on the right and make the difference that must be made.

American Psychosis

Yes, of course we’re psychotic. That’s what explains all the reality denial and our pronounced sociopathy, like that self-deluded thug smashing Paul Pelosi’s head with a hammer. We’ve been down this Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole many times and somehow we’ve survived it. All we had to do was to tolerate the death and destruction and voilà! everything was just fine again.

Like the Civil War, when half the country violated its sacred word, violated its oath and attacked the other half of our country. We only had to tolerate over 600,000 dead and many times that number wounded, hobbled, disfigured for life or insane.

Like over 86 years of Jim Crow lynchings – 4,743 of them according to the NAACP – and those are just the documented lynchings. And, of course, there was the terrorizing of millions.

Like the hatred and violence unleashed on various immigrant groups, like the Catholics, Irish, Italian, Chinese and Jews.

That’s just some of what we’ve tolerated.

See Note 5 and the final graphic below.

In David Corn’s book American Psychosis he recounts the cruelty and flagrant dishonesty of America’s alcoholic senator, Eugene McCarthy (R-WI). A fellow senator, Millard Tydings (D-MD), described McCarthy’s claim about the State Department being infested with communists, saying his charges were “a hoax perpetuated on . . . the American people” and “perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of the Republic.”

Nevertheless, Republicans back then “viewed McCarthy as a potent weapon to deploy against Democrats.” McCarthy supported “a popular revolt against the upper classes,” and “accused the Truman administration and Democrats of being traitors to America. He had no evidence, only accusations.” Put a bookmark in that: no evidence, only accusations.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was campaigning for the presidency in 1952 and was to give a speech in Milwaukee. Included was a paragraph excoriating fellow Republican McCarthy, the insanity of McCarthyism and the spinelessness of the followers of his hatred. That paragraph said that to believe McCarthy was to believe that the government was being run by “men whose very brains were confused buy the opiate of this deceit,” meaning the deceit of McCarthy.

But Eisenhower needed Wisconsin votes, so he never spoke those words in public. In fact, even as he deplored McCarthy, he remained silent for years about McCarthy’s hypocrisy and the cruelty he set upon good Americans and the very fabric of American values. Even the Supreme Court took a swing at what we profess to be our values by ruling that the First Amendment did not cover communists. Surely you’re seeing the parallels to today.

Trump is our McCarthy, the liar, the manipulator, the hatred spewer, the accuser of wild conspiracies without evidence. So, too, are his imitators, suck-ups and opportunists for votes who are doing the same thing, just as happened in the 1950s.

Were Sen. Tydings alive today we surely could show him what a real hoax on the American People can look like. He’d have a new take on “perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of the Republic,” the Nazi-MAGA scourge.

Like the Civil War, lynchings and McCarthyism, our present psychosis – our blood sucking Dracula, in Halloween-speak – will not go away on its own. We’ve already tolerated too much death and destruction and America’s Dracula will continue to attack us and suck the life out of this republic until we take action.

This national vampire must be fought into a coffin and a stake driven through its foul heart so that it can’t drain all the blood from America. That’s what you’re going to do next Tuesday.

From Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) yesterday:

But I’m also sad this violence [against Paul and Nancy Pelosi] isn’t more surprising — just as I wasn’t surprised by January 6th.  This is what happens when we’re taught that those who disagree with us are existential threats to our survival; when we label our own tribe good and the other evil; when we fail to call out the bad behavior of our own “side” out of loyalty or denial.

We’re hearing calls of sympathy, empathy and caring for the Pelosi’s from Democrats. The Republicans are made of other stuff and prominent individuals are making up horrible conspiracy stories, they’re blaming the victim and refusing even a hint of concern for the Pelosi’s. Likewise, they haven’t concern for any of the Democrats or their families who receive a near constant stream of death threats prompted by Republicans’ dreadful demonizing. Republican politicians can’t even muster a, “Sorry that happened to you.”

Think about that when you go to vote on Tuesday. Think, “A stake through its heart.”

————————————

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The 2022 Pond Scum Awards


Pond Scum Award #1

The 2022 Pond Scum Awards

Elon Musk put in a bid to buy Twitter some months ago. Then he tried to slime out of the deal when it didn’t look too good for him anymore. However, even in the face of right wing extremists constantly vaporizing integrity, good sense and reality, a contract is still a contract (for the moment). Musk and his co-investors ponied up the cash and Musk has already started the corporate executions. He did that right after his bathroom sink “look at me” stunt, apparently as if to say, “I bought it – let that sink in.” Turns out that does sink in – in a really personal way.

I have a day job delivering leadership keynotes and workshops. I do those in the lofty hope of ending the motivation for any employee to ever again utter that horrible, life sucking sentence, “My boss is a jerk.” If I keep this up long enough perhaps I’ll have made a modest dent with my Fully Alive Leadership offerings. Here’s the connection of that to the change in Twitter ownership.

David Hogg is a survivor of the horrific mass murders at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL and a spokesperson for Never Again.

I have Twitter accounts for both my leadership work and for these posts, both in the pursuit of reaching more people. Nobody knows if Twitter is useful in that way, but I do know that I don’t want to contribute in any way to Elon Musk inviting extremists to spew hatred, lies and vitriol. I want nothing to do with a platform that invites Donald Trump to further radicalize violent people and move us to abandon democracy and to embrace authoritarianism.

So, this is my last post to be linked to Twitter, as I will be closing my accounts there permanently.

Will Musk lose sleep over my exit from Twitter? Of course not. But I would lose sleep if I thought I were helping to enable evil that is unscrupulously masked as free speech.

CRITICAL DIFFERENTIATOR: The first amendment guarantee of free speech has to do only with preventing government from restricting our speech. It has nothing to do with Twitter or any other non-government public platform and the speech they allow or disallow. Those decisions are no more than company policies. None of us has a free speech right to publish on any of those platforms.

A boy and his sink enter Twitter HQ in San Francisco. It’s a proud moment for all plumbing.

So, Musk can make all the self-serving, self-congratulatory claims he likes about Twitter and free speech. That’s just a disguise for appealing to extremists in order to maximize his return on his dubious investment. And if his new Twitter handle is “Chief Twit” – he picked that – well, I agree. And he gets this 2022 Pond Scum Award.

Anyway, that’s what I sink.

Adios, Elon.

Pond Scum Award #2

My pal Jim Nathan is nothing if not an excellent unearth-er of great political commentary in the form of cartoons, pictures and clever statements. Here’s one he just sent to me:

Here you see a group of self-satisfied, ego-puffed Republicans congratulating themselves like a bunch of bratty high school juniors having successfully towel snapped all the freshmen boys in the locker room. These congressional embarrassments are so very proud that the only thing they accomplished (other than all the destruction, like trashing high speed mail sorting machines in order to slow down your mail service) was to give rich guys a huge tax cut and to stiff you.

Somebody has to explain to me why middle-class Americans would want to give power to these selfish dopes. These guys are so very worthy of their very own 2022 Pond Scum Awards.

Pond Scum Award #3

Here’s another pic from Jim:

First, that’s right. Second, a generation later your grandmother didn’t fight to be in charge of her own body just so you could sit at home in November, either.

The Pond Scummers shown in the pic in section #2 above are threatening to take away your freedoms, even all forms of birth control. There’s no telling how many more freedoms they will take away from you if they get their scummy hands on power. There is only one way to stop them, to prevent them from making you powerless:

You have to vote for people who will protect your freedom and your rights.
.

You cannot count on any Republican to do that. They are unpatriotic and they are insane for power. They’re still lying about the 2020 election. They’re promoting idiotic child trafficking and cannibalistic child eating conspiracies. They are stupid-claiming that the only possible outcome in any election is that either they win or that Democrats cheated and stole the election.

These people are unpatriotic and they are insane. You must not vote for any Republican. Those guys are 2022 Pond Scum Award winners, all. Here’s why:

  1. Republicans have no ideas and no policies to tackle inflation or any other challenge. They have admitted this. They have abandoned you to struggle in the face of national challenges entirely on your own. This is literally true.
  2. Republicans are spineless sycophants of Trump who chicken out of speaking truth. They want to take away your freedom and your rights just so they can grab more power. And they spew hatred, racism and antisemitism every day. This is literally true.
  3. Republicans want to end our democracy and make this country a dictatorship – Seig Heil, Trump! That would make you a powerless peon. This is literally true.

And you don’t want any of that!

That’s why you have to vote for sanity. Vote for Democrats because:

  1. They aren’t hateful, hypocritical thieves and liars. They won’t pick your pocket and give your money to rich people and they won’t make your kids ignorant and stupid. This is literally true.
  2. They believe in democracy and will protect and defend it and the Constitution – just like you would. This is literally true.
  3. They have ideas and policies in place to make your life better. E.g. gas prices are already falling, major new job opportunities are on the way and your bridges and roads are already being repaired. Every Republican voted against all of this. This is literally true.

Go vote for Democrats, just as your great-grandmother, your grandmother and your mother want you to. Make their work and their sacrifices mean something enduring.

And the answer is YES! Pass this along to every voter you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

————————————

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Guest Essay: Elections Have Consequences


Boyhood pal, smart person and activist Frank Levy cares about justice, fairness, inclusiveness, freedom, rights and more. Come to think of it, he’s a lot like you in that way. That’s why I asked his permission to share his recent FB post about what we must do to make sure all those good things we care about actually are ours.

Just to be clear, Frank’s message is motivated by the destructive fact that Republicans consistently vote against all those things you care about. For example, they had to be shamed into passing the PACT Act to help our veterans harmed by exposure to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that happened after they first killed the bill. That’s a fact – the Republicans voted against our vets! That and so much more are why it’s mandatory to remove these anti-We-The-People politicians from public office.

Frank’s post follows. Read it slowly and let it sink in, because he’s right. And note his number “10”. He’s right about that, too.

Elections have consequences. Legal, untainted elections make a difference. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2016, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett would not be sitting on the Supreme Court and Roe would still be the law of the land. Elections have very real consequences.

If Joe Biden had not been elected, Merrick Garland would not be Attorney General and no one would be prosecuting the police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor.

There are JUST 86 DAYS until the November midterm elections.

If we are to have any chance of keeping our fragile and imperfect democracy alive, Republicans at all levels of government [the people who oppose what you support – ed.] must be soundly defeated in November.

If we are to have any hope of passing a national law allowing access to safe and legal abortion, Republicans must be defeated in November.

If we are to have any chance of passing meaningful and sensible national gun laws, Republicans must be defeated in November.

If we are to have any chance of expanding the Supreme Court, Republicans must be defeated in November.

If we are to have any hope of retaining the right to marriage equality, retaining legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, interracial marriage, access to birth control, the right to vote, and the right to free and fair elections, Republicans must be defeated at every level of government in November.

If we are to have any hope of living in a thriving, diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just America, each of us must do everything we can to ensure Democrats win state and local elections and increase their majority in the House and Senate.

Here are some things each of us can do to help ensure that Democrats defeat Republicans at every level of government on November 8, 2022:

  1. Make sure you are registered to vote.
  2. If you are not registered to vote, register to vote now.
  3. Make a specific plan to vote on November 8, 2022 or sooner depending on election laws where you live. [Now comes the “10” thing – Ed.]
  4. Convince 10 people you know who don’t normally vote to this time register to vote, to make a plan to vote, and to vote Democratic on November 8, 2022.
  5. Convince each of those 10 people to convince 10 of their friends who normally do not vote to, 1) register to vote; 2) to make a plan to vote; 3) and to vote Democratic on November 8, 2022. Easy as 1-2-3.
  6. Get involved with one or more of the national efforts listed below to get out the Democratic vote.

https://naacp.org/actions/power-your-vote
https://democrats.org/take-action/
https://www.rockthevote.org/get-involved/https://statesproject.org/
https://swingleft.org/

Ed. Notes
  1. Now that Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hidey-hole and contraband warehouse have been searched by the FBI and sensitive government documents have been recovered and secured, the incitement to violence from elected Republicans and talking empty heads has exploded. So, too, have threats of violence from far right militants. Their self-righteous fantasies of 1776 won’t go away any time soon and their promises of savagery must be met with appropriate protections provided by the proper authorities. That means we need people who believe in the rule of law and who deploy those we count on, like the FBI and police. So that all of us will be safe, follow Frank’s advice and elect Democrats. Our children, grandchildren, our families and friends – we’re all counting on us.
  2. Extra Credit Questions: Some of the classified documents Trump stole are TS/SCI*, so critical to our national security, that neither the DOJ nor the National Archives is allowed to even catalog them. Like things that include the word “nuclear”. And Trump kept them in unlocked boxes in an unlocked, unguarded basement at unsecure Mar-a-Lago. What could possibly go wrong?  Here are some extra credit questions about that.
    1. In how many ways has Trump already imperiled our country by using these stolen documents as bargaining chips?
    2. What do you imagine he thinks he can get for them? To start your thinking, consider things like a Trump Tower in Moscow. Or Budapest. Or Pyongyang. Or Tehran. Or refuge for him and his crime family in a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.

    3. Click me

      Explain why Americans who consider themselves super patriots would froth at the mouth and threaten to kill FBI agents, Democrats and election workers to put this (at best) careless, cheating  moron back in the White House. Earn 5 extra points for each of the following included in your answer: narcissist; authoritarian; despot; over 30,000 lies; “very fine people on both sides”; double-down; criminal; the wall; con-man; unpatriotic; insurrection; sedition; martial law; Mexican “drug dealers, criminals, rapists”; fraud; election interference; jail; autocrat; liar; Muslim ban; babies ripped from mothers’ arms; “my Negro”; infantile; “acting” cabinet appointees; private phone for classified conversations; prison; racist; traitor; money laundering; Russia; suck up; toadies; golf; fake electors; sycophants; thief; tantrums; “do us a favor, though”; “Mexico will pay for it”; high chair; “very stable genius”; Lafayette Square; alternative facts; American Carnage; grab women by the p###y; “losers” buried in Arlington National Cemetery; stopped-up toilet – “toiletgate”; Ivermectin and bleach; Big Lie; “But her emails“. Use ’em all for 250 extra points!

  3. !KANSAS! Read Ed Gurowitz’s take on the message to us from !KANSAS!
    1. Ed’s message comports perfectly with Frank’s.
    2. Hint: This isn’t about Dorothy or Toto and it’s more powerful than a twister, Auntie Em.
    3. Attention: Here’s a special message about Republicans from Oz (no, not Mehmet, the New Jersey carpetbagger in Pennsylvania) – watch this 7-second clip. Couldn’t resist.
Finally,

Here are two pics of a reservoir in northern Mexico. You can find pics of Lake Meade and other reservoirs in the U.S. that look just like these – because the west is in a drought of Biblical proportions, this as Kentucky drowns, as California burns and as coastal waters inundate ever more land. Be sure to show the pic to your climate warming denial friends, especially if they like to visit the west and southwest.

This crisis has been made possible by decades of Republican reality denial and obeisance to the fossil fuel industries. Also look here.

Many fossil fuel captured Republicans simply don’t believe in the reality of global warming and the catastrophes it creates, like how unlivable areas are when there is no water or too much water or fires or hurricanes or tornadoes. Optimistic you, you’re hoping tomorrow will actually happen and that’s why you’re going to vote for Democrats at every level.

Click the pic for the WaPo story.

From the Onion:

“If Trump can get investigated, then by that logic, that implies our country has laws and when those laws are broken, there are consequences. What kind of hell are we living in?”

—————————–

* TS/SCI means “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.” Available only to those necessary to the project. Must be discussed, used, and stored only in secure locations. Its release to the public would cause “exceptionally grave” damage to our national security.

————————————

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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Emergency: The Assault on Stare Decisis


Click me

You already know about the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe and it’s important to put that decision into context.

Be clear that this decision will result in Daisy, raped at age 13 by her father, having to take that incest-caused pregnancy to term. It means that Maryanne, raped in a laundromat by an unknown thug, will have to carry that baby, too. And 53 year old, diabetic Lucy will have to carry her surprise  pregnancy all the way to the point that it kills her. None of these women or any other woman is in charge of her own body any longer. The Supreme Court has established government mandated pregnancy, putting politicians in control women’s bodies.

Clearly, women no longer have autonomy of themselves or full citizenship.

At least since John Roberts was being vetted by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003, he and all subsequent candidates have been questioned about their views regarding Supreme Court precedent. Every candidate has declared their belief in stare decisis – “to stand by things decided” – which directs that settled law should not be re-litigated. And every candidate has given clear enough indication that they believed that Roe is settled law. But it turns out that their most serious declarations of fidelity to settled Supreme Court decisions just weren’t true.

And the Republican controlled Senate has consistently allowed that dishonesty.

Roe was decided in 1973 by a 7-2 vote and was unsuccessfully challenged many times (see this ACLU Timeline). The Court repeatedly upheld Roe. That’s a lot of settled law, a lot of precedent, but that was of no consequence to the liars now on the court. Roe is gone.

Also this week, the Supreme Court overturned a 109 year old law that prohibits carrying guns in public in the State of New York. It’s yet another example of extremist Justices ignoring precedent – violating stare decisis, which they claimed they adhered to – and moving us backward to a far more dangerous time.

Keep monitoring your shock response, as more decisions come down criminalizing all aspects of abortion. That includes criminal penalties for an Uber driver who brings a woman to a clinic; against friends who lend her money for an abortion; and against supportive husbands and boyfriends. Expect criminal penalties heaped upon women who live in states banning abortion and who travel to a state that allows abortion. Bear in mind that Texas has already empowered vigilantes to spy on neighbors – really, on anyone – and report them to the Texas Gestapo to collect bounties and for the state to levy fines and pile on criminal prosecution.

Expect challenges to Griswold, which will result in the outlawing of birth control. Justice Clarence Thomas, he of the “high-tech lynching,” has already invited such challenges. And don’t be the least bit surprised as this extremist Supreme Court attacks same-sex marriage by overturning Obergefell; or bans inter-racial marriage by overturning Loving; or even bans private consensual sexual activities; encourages more gun violence; and incrementally inserts religion into yet more government arenas.

One exception to that: Loving probably won’t be overturned, because Thomas is in an inter-racial marriage. He wouldn’t want to penalize himself. Penalties are for other people, so expect to hear a proud shout out for stare decisis on that one, as that expected primitive attack on freedom is defeated. Just that one shout out to precedent. It’s personal to Clarence.

Bear in mind that roughly 80% of Americans did not want Roe reversed. This Court is all about minority-enabled bullying of the rest of us, so don’t be surprised at the loss of yet more rights.

The true context and diabolical meaning of the overturning of Roe is the elimination of stare decisis, which opens the floodgates to Republican Party extremist and Supreme Court attack on our freedoms, protections and traditions. Credit for that goes to the decades-long efforts of Republicans to return us to the very worst of American Puritanical, “insecure male” tyranny, accompanied by the continuous drone of self-righteous Bible thumping and the strutting of loud, little men.

The Chicago Protest

Rage was in the air. The fury driven by the theft of rights and a very personal betrayal dominated the Federal Plaza in Chicago on Friday, June 24. It was a day that will be remembered for a very long time, with a permanent distrust of the Supreme Court its lasting legacy. The perfidy of the Republican Party, the cheats who crafted this vehicle for betrayal, will be long remembered as well.

Here are pics of some of the signs from that demonstration. The more foul messages have been excluded, but don’t imagine even for a moment that anger didn’t dominate the event. So did the commitment to vote and to support others in abortion ban states.

This isn’t over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

————————————

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 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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Where The Plan Leads


Mark Zaboroski posted a commentary on Bring Back Democracy, which included this picture of mini-Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, blowing deceitful sunshine up the butts of MAGA maniacs.

He wrote, “I don’t know who the woman over his right shoulder in the photo is, but I did hear part of her little speech. She declared that there was ‘no such thing as an unplanned pregnancy because God had a plan for each of us . . .’”

Zaboroski went on to shred the stupidity of her statement, wondering how that plan works for women or girls pregnant from rape, incest or who have ectopic pregnancies and who will die from them, as well as for victims of our daily mass murders and the suffering from wars and cruelties of every sort. She’s just another deranged absolutist of the delusional American 30%.

To be fair, her brainlessness and DeSantis’ John Galt crap works well if you’re young, strong, healthy and don’t give a damn about anyone else. Then you can spout hollow God explanations and fierce independence platitudes at people who are suffering. It works according to our so-very-human insecurity plan – not God’s plan – of selfishness for power and money.

All that is oddly connected to Leon Trotsky, a leader in the Russian October Revolution in 1917 and commissar in various posts of the Soviet Union until he went into exile from Stalin. He wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs Magazine in 1934 entitled Nationalism and Economic Life, which was just re-posted because (and this is just my notion) we humans steadfastly refuse to learn and remember. In an introduction to the piece, magazine editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan writes,

“Trotsky described an interwar Europe trapped by inward-looking capitalist systems that had failed to keep pace with the demands of a global economy. It was a short road from economic nationalism to fascism, he argued, and fascism would lead to ‘nothing except ruin.’ Although Trotsky would not live long past the outbreak of World War II—he was murdered in Mexico in 1940—the warning in his essay foreshadowed the devastation to come: the violence of the early twentieth century would ‘seem only an idyllic overture compared to the music of hell that is impending.’”

It is that “impending hell” that the woman over DeSantis’ right shoulder is promising us – she and her 30 million fellow travelers in self-serving, self-satisfying lies, distortions, rationalizations, refusal of truth, cheating, manipulative, dishonest God references and the rest that they insist are their God-given rights and “God’s plan.” Mysterious ways, they tell us.

But it really isn’t a mystery. The road to impending hell is paved with well worn stones. We do this to ourselves through the willful ignorance of the 30%, their fear and their rage and our cherished national apathy and refusal to stand up to them.

Irv Leavitt posted a love note to our new graduates, The Burden of the Class of ’22: It was a brutal time to be in college. The brutality isn’t over. Surprisingly, his words resonate with Trotsky’s, as he ends his post with this:

“After World War I, lots of horrified people took a breather from lives of purpose. They trusted that such bad stuff would never be allowed again. So the young members of The Lost Generation wasted their time instead of getting to work fixing a broken planet.

“It turned out they only had a decade of their lives to throw away before all hell broke loose.

“It’ll be a shorter respite this time. Hell has better technology now.”

Back to Trotsky.

In his essay he paired a couple of words that caught my eye: vicious ignorance. Let those words trickle through your brain for a moment and I’m betting that you see 30 million election refusers, believers in absurd conspiracies, deniers of what’s in front of their faces, Bible thumping rationalizations and a cruelty you thought only happened in other places where the light never shines. Vicious ignorance. And it is this vicious ignorance that will bring fascism to America, the “music of hell that is impending” if we allow our delusional, cruel minority to overpower us.

Here’s George Santayana yet again: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We are perfectly positioned to produce all the horrors of the past, including mass murders, fostered and ignited by those with no interest in learning. And, as Leavitt instructs, those horrors, that impending hell, has better technology now and will burn every one of us very soon – if we let it.

So, if there is a plan, it looks like we made that plan and it’s taking us in the wrong direction. We better be clear about our desired destination and adjust the plan so that we go there, instead of going to that overheated, everlasting furnace where the 30% would take us.

Must Read of the Week

Steve Sheffey posts weekly with great clarity and insight and I urge you to read his latest piece. The first section deals with our national mania to protect guns, not children. Read it. Memorize it. Pass it along to your friends and family who, by habit, zombie-vote Republican.

Must Watch of the Week

Watch this video. Warning: strong language. And the right message from someone who knows what he’s talking about. Read the comments below the video, too.

Think: Then Act

Do you remember 3rd and 4th grade? The most dangerous thing that could happen to you is that you’d skin your knee on the playground at recess. But today is a living hell for our kids, knowing that something far worse may be stalking them. Here’s something you can do about that.

Click here to connect with March For Our Lives, then RSVP to a local march to be held June 11. It’s time for us to show up and stand up for what we believe in, like kids being safe in school. That won’t happen until we make our voices heard both on the ballot and in the streets. So, be there.

Note: We won’t stop our death-by-gun butchery (310 shot daily; 111 killed daily) until we as a nation decide that we love our kids and our grannies more than we love our guns. It’s time to make the right decision and declare it publicly.

Hope

I know you remember Amanda Gorman, the woman in the long yellow coat who stunned you and the nation at the Biden inauguration on January 20, 2021, reciting her poem, The Hill We Climb. Read her new poem – out loud – Hymn For the Hurting.

————————————

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

Did someone forward this 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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Frog Legs and You


Maybe you remember that experiment in science or biology class where they zapped a leg of a freshly killed frog and the leg extended like the frog was jumping. Then your teacher zapped it again, and once more the leg sprang to full extension. But soon you saw that additional zaps resulted in less and less leg movement, until at last the leg didn’t even twitch when it was zapped. That’s known by science brainiacs as the “Zap the frog too much” experiment. The reason it’s too much, at least in part, is because of the overload of stimulation.

Turns out, we’re just like that frog leg. You may have become desensitized to things like extremist right wing insanity because of the incessant pummeling you’ve taken over the past few decades and especially now. You’ve learned that there is no bottom, no low that’s too low for these people, so that what was once scandalous and provoked you to yell at your TV, now just stimulates you to grab another handful of popcorn. And that’s dangerous.

Maybe you’re sick of Covid – who isn’t? – so you turn away from news and discussion about the pandemic. That’s understandable. But there’s a new variant on the way here from Europe and my understanding is that it’s as contagious as the Omicron variant. I don’t know how lethal it is or whether our current vaccines will protect us against serious illness and death from it. That’s because I’m sick of hearing news about Covid and have left myself ignorant. And that’s dangerous.

Late addition: Here’s a good report on the new variant. You need to see this.

Let’s connect that to another piece of dangerous human craziness.

I was noodling about our uncivil discourse, our toxic tribalism and our extremists calling for a new civil war. That evolved into some back of the envelope calculations and I discovered a shocking number.

The population of the United States in 1861 was 31,429,891. Our Civil War resulted in approximately 620,000 dead Americans. If we were to have another Civil War and we were as efficient at killing one another as our antecedents were, our current population of 329,500,000 citizens would produce about 6,500,000 dead Americans. It would be the equivalent of the Covid pandemic more than six times over.

So, to those who are calling for secession or a new Civil War, is that what you really want? Seriously? You want six-and-a-half million dead bodies? Are your rage and hatred so enormous that you want to trigger another Holocaust, but this time entirely of Americans?

Maybe it’s time to ratchet down the demonizing of neighbors. Maybe it’s time to turn off your QAnon feed. Yes, I’m aiming at the far right, because whatever far lefties are saying I’m not hearing any them calling for violence upon those who disagree. I’m not hearing preposterous lies from them.  They have some out-there opinions, yes, but not lies. I really don’t think this is a both sides issue. I may well be wrong about that, so I welcome your enlightenment via the Comments section below.

Yes, we should turn down the rhetoric, but here’s the thing. You and I have had our froggy sensibilities zapped so many times by what are demonstrably outrageous lies intended to infuriate that it’s easy, even demanding, that we ignore the stimulus and not even twitch in our disagreement. That’s very dangerous.

If we fail to stand up to the attacks we will invite far worse. It’s like the failure of the world to stand up to Vladimir Putin’s murderous ways in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea and the Donbas. That we sat on our hands while he committed war crimes led to his invasion and the laying waste of Ukraine.

Challenging as it is, we have to stand fast for what we know is right. We don’t have to respond to every lie or every absurd conspiracy theory intended to stoke hatred. But we humans are designed to act when we sense danger, so we have to recognize it even when we’re saturated and our froggy legs want to remain unresponsive.

Passive is not our job. Our job is to protect and defend, because our Constitution is supposed to be a living document and it only lives if we make it live. It’s time for all of us to extend a leg.

That means taking action, which is the exact intention of the sentences in green that lead the bottom section of all my posts. It’s about full leg extension. Indeed, pass this along to three friends, because they and we need their legs extended, too.

Quote of the Week

This week’s quote comes from Frank Bruni of the New York Times, writing about extremist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was caught flagrante delicto in insurrectionist text messages that the January 6 committee is investigating.

“What a terrifying moment, in which the wife of a serving Supreme Court justice unabashedly exploits her insider access, ignores the idea of checks and balances, promotes conspiracy theories and essentially endorses insurrection. Her conduct isn’t some passing curiosity. It’s a sign of the times. And it’s a warning to us all.”

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this 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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Dream Sequence


I awoke from this fully formed dream in the dark of last Wednesday morning.

——————————-

The regular army of Ukraine, plus the hundreds of thousands of volunteer citizen soldiers have inflicted enormous damage to President Putin’s vaunted military forces. Thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed and at least twice as many have been wounded. Their tanks, troop carriers, aircraft and artillery pieces have been destroyed and the Russian army is in retreat, its myth of military might destroyed.

President Zelenskyy is taking to the airwaves to address President Putin. The whole world is watching, holding its breath. He speaks fluently in Russian from his office, with only the Ukrainian flag behind him. He is wearing an olive tee shirt, over a month of dark beard and his eyes are bloodshot, yet rock steady into the camera.

President Putin, it is time for us to end this war.

Clearly, you began it with the expectation that your military would roll over my country in just a few days; that you could eliminate our parliament and me and install a puppet regime that would be your servant; that the world would stand by and watch while you once again invade a sovereign nation and commit unspeakable crimes against humanity. But none of that happened.

You did not count on the pride, the resolve and the un-bendable patriotism of the Ukrainian people. You did not expect our fierce insistence upon our sovereignty, our democracy and our freedom. And you did not understand that the fire of freedom that burns in the hearts of people everywhere would cause them to reach out and support the Ukrainian people and punish Russia. Perhaps by now you are beginning to see the truth.

We will not bend. We will not be beaten. We will prevail. So, I am now giving you one chance to end this with some of your military still intact. If you refuse this offer we will continue to destroy your armies.

Here are my non-negotiable terms.

    1. All Russian military personnel, army, navy and air forces, will immediately cease fire.
    2. All Russian military personnel will immediately withdraw from all Ukrainian territory, including the Donbas and Crimea and all of our national waters. They will continue to withdraw until they are at least 150 miles from any part of the Ukrainian border.
    3. You will not interfere with any Ukrainians being repatriated or attempting to leave our country.
    4. You will return to Ukraine all Ukrainians whom you kidnapped and have kept in Russia – or elsewhere.
    5. You will immediately pay for your indiscriminate bombardment of our civilians, our cities and our lands the sum of $2 trillion dollars in U.S. funds as reparation for the destruction you have caused. It grieves us that we cannot get reparations from you that could bring back our little children you have killed.

The entire world wants you to accept these terms, Mr. Putin, including all of the Russian people. They don’t want this horrible war any more than any freedom loving people do. That’s why you must stop the killing and suffering and end the morbid parade of thousands of body bags containing dead Russian boys being sent back to Russia and to their wailing, grieving mothers.

This offer will expire in three days. Take it. Save what you can from this misbegotten adventure and Europe will once again be at peace.

The world awaits your response.

Then I woke up.

At 8:00AM that day, March 16, I watched the broadcast of President Zelenskyy addressing the U.S. Congress, the American people and the world. His words were brilliant and compelling. His message was clear and unmistakable. And the fierce resolve of his people, even in these dark days, was reflected in his bearing, plain for all to see.

Putin cannot win this war – ever – and there is nothing he can do to change that. Ukrainian troops have begun counter-offenses and the Russians are being defeated, even at the cost of so many innocent Ukrainian lives.

America and the rest of the free world have given much and will continue to give to Ukraine to help them to succeed. And perhaps one day soon President Zelenskyy will be able to deliver my dream speech.

May it be so.

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this 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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Existential


Steve Bannon told us long before the 2016 election that he wants to “tear it all down,” meaning the administrative state. That includes our Constitution, democracy, learning and wisdom and the institutions that uphold our moral foundation. He wants it all blown up.

He is a nihilist, a hater of authority and a manufacturer of chaos and hatred. I have no interest in understanding his deep and profoundly debilitating daddy issues that drive him to create destruction, because doing so is useless to the critical task at hand. What is important is to recognize how impactful Bannon is and has been to Trump becoming the first American dictator and what that means to us.

Trump used Bannon first to get himself elected, then to convert the presidency into a money machine for Trump. Neither of them has even a consciousness, much less a concern for all who get crushed by their maniacal, mentally ill lust for ever more power and money. And, of course, Trump has used hundreds of sycophantic goons to subvert every agency of all three branches of government, demonstrating just how easy it is to get people to sell out and be manipulated for what they think are self-serving reasons. Even with regular examples dangled in their faces they just can’t seem to get it into their heads that they themselves will be next to be fed into Trump’s guillotine.

Many of us want to preserve our democracy and don’t agree with the 20% of Americans who are both Trump followers and who think violence is justified in order for them to get their way. That leaves us with critical challenges, chief among which is to answer the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

One option is to give in to the threats. History is teeming with examples of people cowed into submission by the threat or use of force. That means that they willfully made themselves serfs without rights, just pawns to be played and sacrificed for the benefit of the bullies. It’s understandable how fear could make people allow that, but if we do that we invite the despotism the bullies seek to create and which you and I don’t want.

In a recent webinar presented by The Atlantic one of the topics discussed was how to deal with millions of our fellow citizens who accept accusations that are completely untethered to any facts and who reject out of hand any observable evidence that counters their beliefs. The point made by the experts is that we don’t have an option of changing such peoples’ minds because they are set in concrete. They are impervious to all information that doesn’t support their predetermined certainties, so we must do things to appeal to those who have at least one foot on real ground if we are to protect our democracy.

I don’t have confidence in the Democrats’ willingness to face reality and do what needs to be done. Test my lack of confidence by listing all the times in a week you hear or see any Democrat directly and specifically unmasking the insurgents, the liars, the cheats and the haters. Include the times that you see the bad guys get punished for doing things like Lauren Bobert’s attack on Muslims and the White supremacist, anti-Semitic statements of Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene and the homicidal representatives with their AR-15 Christmas cards. Where are the smack downs of Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz? Add up all the incidents of push back to the crazies that you find in a week. I’m betting that the number on your list will be zero or very close to it. I’m afraid that we just can’t count on the Dems to do the right and necessary things – yet.

But what if we can turn up the heat on them?

We need people who will primary our confrontation avoiding senators and representatives. We need those people to be on the fiery point of the arrow aimed at the Trump conspiracy to end our nation. We need people who will organize giant protest marches in the streets of our towns and cities. We need people to show up at the protests and demand justice be visited on the law breakers and that democracy be assured for We The People. We need people to canvas door to door and encourage the non-voters to show up because that’s in their own best interests and because they’re screwed if they don’t.

We need you and I to get up off our BarcaLoungers and make noise. Lots of noise. We need for us to show up at protests and put lawn signs out front where the neighbors will see them. We need to write opinion pieces online and in local and regional newspapers (where they still exist). We need us to call into online talk shows and blast back against the hypocrites and haters so that other listeners might have their eyes cracked open just a bit. We need to go to town hall meetings and smack down the smack of the violent ones.

We need people who will challenge every calm and reasonable approach to our crisis of democracy, because those calm and reasonable tactics are powerless to stop an authoritarian coup backed by 20 million armed people who believe violence is okay. Doubt that? Grab your history book and read about Nazi Germany in the 1930s – and no, that isn’t hyperbolic and yes, it’s an apt comparison. We are in that kind of danger.

This is no thought experiment. This is existential – an actual life and death battle for democracy. Steve Bannon and the rest of the bad guys say they want to tear it down. I say, “Not on my watch.”

What do you say?

475

That’s the number the Associated Press published in an illuminating examination of our bemoaned, hallucinatory plague of voting fraud.

They looked at the 2020 election votes in the six so-called battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – where 25.5 million votes were cast. The total of all suspicious votes (like people voting for dead relatives) reported by those states was just 475. That’s 0.00186% of the total vote.

President Biden’s cumulative margin of victory in those states was 311,257, which places the suspicious votes at 0.15% of the margin. Even if all those sketchy votes actually were fraudulent and even if all of them were added to Trump’s vote count in just one battleground state (pick one, any one), they still wouldn’t come close to making a difference in the outcome.

Some of us think that there is a firm reality that can be counted upon, like gravity, verifiable facts and counting. The rest aren’t interested in reality. For them, it’s evidence, schmevidence. So, sadly, nobody’s views will be modified even a little by the AP reporting. Such is the state of our political trench warfare and the failures of education to overcome primitive beliefs. Turns out we really aren’t much beyond beating drums in the jungle.

And Just For Fun

Thanks go to SS for the pointer.

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this 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!)

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, so don’t bug me about it.
  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 vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2023 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

1 2 3 … 7  Scroll to top