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Pogo


Pogo 2As the heat subsides from the immediacy of the Boston Marathon bombings and shootings, our national dialogue naturally turns to more contemplative issues, like preventing such attacks in the future.  Concurrently, we continue to wade in the morass of Sandy Hook and our elected leaders blather ineffectively over action to prevent more gun massacres.  The connective tissue between those seemingly different situations is angry people acting out violently to, in their minds, right a wrong or to make a statement and be heard or because some mental illness led them to kill.

Setting aside mental illness as a motivator, what we have are people who do horrific things, yet those very same things seem sensible – even mandatory – to them.  The popular saying is that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

It is never popular to suggest that we have a part in what goes on elsewhere.  We’re more comfortable pointing fingers at the crazy, violent people.  But what if there are things we can do so that we don’t spawn so many people who see violence as their only option?

Here’s Human Being 101 on this: every one of us has a fight or flight response ready to be triggered instantly.  It’s located in the so-called reptile brain, the oldest component inside our skulls, and its operation isn’t ruled by notions of consequences, fairness or reason; indeed, it isn’t ruled by conscious thought at all.  It is survival level stuff as practiced by alligators and it works really well for – guess what? – survival.  It isn’t good for much more than that and that’s the problem when we humans feel threatened or wronged.

Impulses from the reptile brain flood our system ten times faster than thoughtful deliberation and we go primitive quicker than the snap of fingers.  This is the kind of stuff that is handy for recruiting members for militias, for white supremacists and for al Qaeda.  All those recruiters need to do is to smear “others” as threatening what the recruited hold dear, like their loved ones, their country, loyalty, right over wrong – you can make up your own list – and the sign-up is easy.  All that fierce reptilian stuff feels good, because when it’s engaged we feel powerful.  That’s especially useful for manipulating those who have felt disempowered, ignored or bullied.  Violence feels to them like strength and, perhaps, like it is their only remedy.

Next thing you know the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is blown up, 6-year-old children are blasted apart by 10 bullets each in Newtown, CT and Americans are blown up at the Boston Marathon.

We have an unlimited supply of people exhorting us to primitive, violent redress to every conflict.  Their chest thumping and their simplistic solutions appeal to our desire for quick resolution and to make us feel safe.   Indeed, our war drum beating legislators seem to believe that most problems should be resolved through military means.

For every Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. insisting that we be non-violent in dealing with our grievances, there are hundreds of others rattling sabres.  Humankind has always been short of peacemakers.  Actually, it is a hazardous profession, as those folks have a way of becoming prematurely dead, thanks to ever-present violent people who feel threatened.

Just get that clobbering other people will not convince them not to attack us.  That applies to the Muslim world, the various places where we expend ordnance in order to prove to ourselves that we’re Number 1, as well as to our neighbors across town who may be somehow different from you and me.  Come to think of it, I’m not too sure of you.

That last was, of course, tongue-in-cheek.  It is meant as a placeholder for all the ways we “other” people who seem, well, other.  We can succumb to fearing whoever might appear to be different or we can get past that.  John Lennon said it well:

“If you want money for people with minds that hate,

“All I can tell you is brother you’ll have to wait.”

We have to figure out that we cannot dominate and kill our way to security and comfort because that just leads to the next generation of people who want to attack us.  Nothing is going to get much better until we figure that out.  Pogo said it best:  “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The way we have been is not who we have to continue to be.  Perhaps – just perhaps – we can find remedies to our individual and collective challenges.  We’ll all need to do our part in that.


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

Other Than Your Mother


President Obama laid out offers to curb government spending two years ago by declaring that he is open to discussions around cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, much to the dismay of most Democrats and to left-of-center Americans of all colors.  The programs have been on the table, yet Republicans have been complaining since then that the President has not offered a single spending cut.  John Boehner, speaking out of the far right side of his mouth, has repeatedly declared this to be so, as has Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.  Weren’t they in those very same negotiating meetings that they both attended at the White House?

Their denials of reality are a mini-example of the Republican Big Lie strategy.  They repeat a falsehood enough times that people begin to believe that it is true.  Even the rank and file Republicans in congress have come to believe that the “no spending cuts on the table” lie is true.  Many of them have not heard directly from their leaders about the doings in those negotiating meetings with the President and apparently they don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV, either.

That does not change reality, though, and if you live in a fact-based world where 2 + 2 = 4 and up and down are not the same things, you’ll recognize the Big Lie for what it is.  Boehner and McConnell protestations notwithstanding, President Obama really did lay two big ones on the table two years ago.

Related to that is a recent comment by failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said, “What we’ve seen is a – the president out campaigning to the American people, doing rallies around the country, flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing.”

That’s an update of the attempt to diminish Obama by John McCain and Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign.  They blasted him for giving great speeches at big rallies.  That is what Saxby Chambliss (R. GA) did to Max Cleland (D, GA, Ret.), when he questioned Cleland’s patriotism during the 2002 senate campaign. Cleland lost both legs and an arm in Viet Nam, while Chambliss was getting deferments from military service and partying in civilian life, but that didn’t stop Chambliss from his dishonest attacks.

Similar to Chambliss, George W. Bush attacked the patriotism of John McCain during the 2000 Republican primary and that of John Kerry in the 2004 general election.  I guess he is sensitive over the cushy fun he had flying jets around Texas and doing a lot of drinking with his buddies while those other guys were out risking their lives for their country.

The ploy is to attack a rival’s strength, to diminish his advantages by accusation.  That is what Romney, McCain, Chambliss and Bush did and it is exactly what Republican leaders and other Republican mouthpieces have been doing to President Obama all along.  Now Obama is making his case to the American people and is succeeding, so the congressional Republican mouthpieces are attacking him, accusing him of failure and saying that he should be in DC schmoozing them, the same people who deny reality.

Obama, they say, should be having Republicans over to the White House for movie night.  He should be phoning them directly, each and every one of them, so that they feel important.  Then they wouldn’t claim that they don’t know about the budget cuts he’s placed on the table because they would have heard about them directly from the President.  But President Obama did not reached out to each and every one of them personally and their feelings were hurt.

But now he’s taken them out to dinner at a nice restaurant.  They feel special.  Now they’re all puffed up with self-importance.

Well, here’s a news flash for Republican legislators: Other than your mother, nobody cares if your feelings were hurt.  We didn’t send you to Washington so that you would be stroked and told how important you are or so that you would be patted on the head and made to feel special.  We hired you to do a job and that job does not include paralyzing the United States of America and it does not include undermining international trust in our country.  Get over yourself.  We’re not here for you – you’re there for us.

Are your feelings hurt?  Do you feel like you haven’t received enough special attention?  We don’t care.  Not a bit.  Come to think of it, your mother likes her Medicare and she probably doesn’t care, either.


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

Non-Option Number 1: Education


My friend and futurist David Houle writes an interesting blog about tomorrow.  You know – that pesky day that keeps coming around?

He wrote recently about one of the things that is coming tomorrow: the transformation of education.  It has to transform, because the present model is based on a societal structure that has not existed for the better part of a century.  It is unsustainable, yet America will continue to require an educated citizenry ready to compete in a far better educated global society.  That means that we must change to a sustainable and effective model if your kids and grandchildren are to have a chance at the American Dream, rather than an American nightmare.  You can read David’s comments here and have a look at his new book here.

The remaking of the education field is not going to be a battleground; it is going to be a war.  It is structurally like the healthcare field, in that there are powerful entrenched interests more focused on themselves than on the outcomes for customers (i.e. students and patients).  For example, there are the recipients of endowment money, tenured faculty, book publishers, housing interests, food service companies, insurance companies, the construction industry – the list is long and all are welded to their self-interest in the status quo.

If you doubt the resistance to change that you’ll see as transformative forces on education increase, just recall the attempt at healthcare reform in 1993 led by Hillary Clinton.  To be sure, part of the resistance was the early stages of the now familiar M.O. of Republicans, opposing anything proposed by a Democratic president, even if they think it is a good idea and even if they had sponsored identical legislation.

The biggest resistance, though, was from the entrenched interests in the industry, like Big Pharma, hospitals, the AMA and the most powerful resistors of all, the medical insurance giants.  The reprise of that resistance was played out in the first Obama term over what came to be known as “Obamacare.”  (Side note:  Republicans will live to regret having coined that term, intended as a mean-spirited, derisive moniker.  That is because Americans will come to embrace Obamacare as a wonderful first step of healthcare reform that serves them well.)  Those special interests don’t want their boat rocked because it carries a never-ending cargo of gold to them.  So it is for those affiliated with education.

Furthermore, even those who are a part of the education industry and who put the best interests of students first will be stressed when evicted from their comfort zone, because the fundamental human reaction to change is fear of the unknown and resistance.

But, like healthcare, education needs a do-over, if for no other reason than because costs have escalated to such a high level that it is priced out of reach of too many of the people it is supposed to serve.  And for the lucky ones who get a college degree, too many are left with crushing debt equivalent to the price of a house you bought, this coupled with un- or under-employment.  Here’s a parody of what our graduates are facing, link courtesy of David Houle.

That leads us to the question once again: What America do you want?  Yesterday’s America in all venues including education is not an option and tomorrow will come.  Now is the time to decide what we want our future to be and what we need to do to in order to create that America.  If your kids and grandchildren are to have a chance, our failing to reform and enhance education is a non-option.


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

National Despair


There’s no point in waving arms, getting red in the face and snapping at the annoying tweaks that are sent only to distract and manipulate us.  If we’re to understand what is behind our national despair we need to focus on the core issue that keeps us stuck in a morass of helplessness and prevents us from the exceptionalism we’re capable of creating.

Perhaps you believe that doing the right thing is the right thing to do.  If so, this may fit for you:

I despair over the paralysis of America caused by the people who are supposed to be our leaders but who, instead, feather their own nest and ensure that their system is self-sustaining, much to the detriment of the rest of us.

I despair over the abdication of the regulatory muscle that could have prevented the banking-driven recession that has hurt so many Americans and has undermined the American brand throughout the world.

I despair over the abdication of the rule of law, like claiming that torture isn’t torture, like leading us into an unprovoked war and, every bit as damaging, by the near-complete failure of Congress and the press to do their jobs to prevent all that.

I despair over the public hatred and lies that are repeated by those in leadership positions and by ordinary, angry Americans as well, spreading the venom that has come to be tolerated and even believed by a distracted public.

I despair over angry young men who take handguns, rifles and automatic weapons to movie theaters and schools and kill innocents randomly, this while the NRA tells us that guns don’t kill and that assault weapons with 100 round drums must be legal and, by all means, let’s have 34 round magazines for those Glock semi-automatics.

I despair when the meteorologists tell us that we can expect this year’s drought to be repeated for years to come and, at the same time, people we’ve elected to be our leaders blatantly lie to us and declare that global warming doesn’t exist.

I despair when a congressman or senator shouts bigoted remarks at others and, worse, when those remarks aren’t rebuked by colleagues, the press and the public.

It’s true that we’ve always had haters and liars and that we’ve always had leaders who have twisted the truth because it serves them (and not America) well.   We have always had fools and bullies.

But it seems that the American train has jumped the track over the past 30 years, that dishonesty has become the purpose and dysfunction the goal.  For example, Ronald Reagan told us this about the Panama Canal:  “We bought it, we paid for it, we built it and we intend to keep it!”  That was a huge applause line, right up until the day he gave it away.

George H.W. Bush told us over and over, “Read my lips: No new taxes.”  Then he raised taxes.

Bill Clinton told us, “I did not have sex with that woman – Ms. Lewinski,” but, well, you know.

Now Mitt Romney is twisting himself every way imaginable to tell us that he’s always been against all those things he was always for.

And these are our leaders.

In any relationship, each has a part in the situation, so ultimately, it boils down to what we – you and I, our neighbors, your goofy brother-in-law, the retired couple down the street and everyone who works at the businesses in your town – have agreed to settle for.  We have let self-serving dishonesty penetrate our leadership as we simply went about our lives with myopic focus.  The lack of public integrity is so common now that we barely lift an eyebrow when we hear the next whopper.  It’s what we expect.  And that is the real poison of despair.

There is a glimmer of hope, though, that holds promise for us.  We can cure our national despair and it is so simple, so easy and so obvious.  We have the power to change everything and it is in our hands right now.

All we have to do is to stop settling.  All we have to do is to stop tolerating the intolerable.  All we have to do is to demand truth and call out the liars.

It’s time.


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

The Common Wisdom


We all know that the country is center-right.  Perhaps it’s there as a result of a pendulum swing from the socially farther left pendulum of the 60’s and the politicians and pundits now like to tell us we’re center-right almost as throw-away line.  Or maybe people just keep saying that and have done so for such a long time that we’ve come to believe it, but repetition doesn’t make the claim accurate.  Take a look at just a few issues before us.

Jobs – About 306 million of we 307 million Americans want the government to take energetic action to ramp up the economy and create jobs.  The noise from the far right is the only thing that is making it seem like there is huge opposition to that.  As a nation, we are left of center now on jobs.

Voting rights – Americans believe overwhelmingly that all of us over the age of 18, with the possible exception of convicted felons, should vote.  That’s pretty much smack dab in the center, not center-right.  On the other hand, there are Republican strategists who have openly stated that the only people they want to vote are those who will vote Republican.

In the 2010 election many states voted far right legislators into office and they have enacted laws they have fraudulently proclaimed are to protect us from a blight of voting fraud.  The thing is that voting fraud almost never happens – not even in Chicago.  These laws serve solely as an obstacle to voting for young people, the elderly, the poor and those in minorities who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.  Let’s see, righty R’s preventing D’s from voting.  Hmmm.

Immigration – Most of us believe that if people do something wrong that they should bear the consequences.  And most of us believe that children of illegal immigrants, born in this country and who have broken no laws should not bear those consequences.  Righties don’t want to pass the Dream Act and they are completely out of step with the majority of Americans.  The R’s continue to oppose it because they’re afraid they’ll get “primaried” in the next election by a fanatic on the lunatic right fringe.  That keeps them disconnected from everyone but the aforementioned lunatic right fringe.

This issue is complex, but as a nation we’re pretty much in the center.

Taxes on the wealthy – Depending on the week and the poll, anywhere between 62 – 80% of Americans favor increased taxes on the rich.  Only the righties who signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes, along with some already wealthy people are opposed to that.  That is to say, the country is center-left on this issue.

Contraception – Do you really need an explanation about this?  Even 98% of Catholic women have used some form of birth control and only some fundamentalist righties have a problem with it.  It’s just that a few of them have very loud voices.  We Americans are far left in favor of contraception.

Women’s choice – The majority of Americans continue to be pro-choice, although by a smaller margin now than in past decades.  In part that’s because of the loss of institutional memory of how things used to be before Roe v. Wade.  It wasn’t pretty.  We are center-left on this.

Global warming – It’s not just all the environmental scientists; most Americans believe that the Earth is getting warmer and that mankind’s activities like burning fossil fuels is contributing to it.  The only question is why anyone denies that.  To find the answer, follow the money.  It’s way on the right.  (Ref: “And another thing” below)

Social Security & Medicare – These are the two most popular programs ever created by the federal government and America is far left on them.  Only the righties want to abolish or privatize them.

Note to budget hawk absolutist righties: We made a contract with the American people, who pre-paid for these services and we must keep our word.  I know you’ll understand that.

Education – The righties want to abolish the Department of Education at both the federal and state levels.  They are starving schools of funds, so teachers, administrators and janitors are being laid off.  School maintenance and improvement projects are being halted and the disparity between the education of our poor children and the rich kids who get to go to elite schools continues to widen.  Our children are suffering, their future becomes bleaker every day we fail them and we are putting the future of America in peril.

Americans don’t like this.  They want their children to be educated and think public education is a very good thing.  The righties are completely out of sync with America on this.  This country is way left on education.

Healthcare – Most Americans want the government to do more to fix it.  All that is standing in the way is the resistance borne of the hundreds of billions of dollars being collected every year by the medical insurance companies, big pharma, big hospitals and a few others.  We’ve tried letting the market fix this.  That has resulted in our having the most expensive healthcare in the world, while at the same time we’re getting just middling results.  Only the far righties with megaphones attached to their faces think that continuing to let the free market work is the solution.  We want affordable healthcare and are at least center-left on this issue.

The list can go on until sunrise.  Those saying that we are a center-right nation have either bought into the Big Lie or think they will benefit by making you believe it.

It turns out that the common wisdom isn’t so common, nor is it so very wise after all.

—————————————————————————–

And another thing .  .  .

Have you seen the TV commercials with the pleasant looking blonde lady in a black pants suit talking about American energy?  She tells us how plentiful it is and all we have to do is go get it.  As an example, she walks across a map of the lower 48 and tells us about, ”  .  .  . tapping Canadian oil sands for U.S. consumers.”  Sounds great.

Except the plan for the Canadian oil sands crude is to transport that heaviest, dirtiest crude oil with the greatest global warming footprint via the XL Pipeline to our gulf coast for exporting to other nations.  I need for them to explain once again how that stuff is for U.S. consumers because I’m not seeing how exporting it makes it for us.

One last comment: That ad and the others like it are sponsored by the American Petroleum Industry, the promotional organization of Big Oil.  Just so you know.

“We move through life like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.” – William Landay


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

You Can’t Tell Me What To Do


Back in colonial days there was a powerful and well-grounded fear and loathing of central authority, this stemming from very bad experiences with King George III.  He had a habit of controlling the lives of the colonists in ways they did not appreciate and they fundamentally disliked being told what to do.

Following the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation was the binding document among the 13 states.  It allowed for a pitiful central government that was barely able to function because nearly all power was in the hands of the states in the name of “states rights.”  The Articles of Confederation was so puny that General George Washington balked at it.  Ten years later the Constitution was hammered out and it gave the central government the muscle it needed to do what central governments must do.

They called it “states rights” another time and the Civil War erupted.  Of course, the economic costs and social issues of slavery and its abolishment were the heart of the dispute, but there was a powerful rebellion against authority that helped to fuel passions.  That passion lives on today in the hearts of those who call the Civil War the “Northern War of Aggression.”  That battle – the “you can’t tell me what to do” resistance – has continued unbroken, not just in the south, and today it has become nearly as virulent as at any time in our history.  Indeed, it is the ultimate wedge issue.

Since President Obama took office the Republicans have primarily been a stop sign even to things they formerly proposed, endorsed and co-sponsored.  The result has been legislative stagnation in the face of enormous national need.  What is even more telling is the language that has accompanied their obstruction.  It can be simply described as, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Most recently the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act has elicited histrionic claims of a war on religion and violation of the First Amendment.  The proudly independent types bellow that the government can’t tell them what to do and it most certainly can’t tell their church anything, either.  Let this example be a placeholder for a key cause of the resistance to reform of anything in Washington and it will be pretty close to the center of the bulls eye.

Surely, there is room for discussion about the implications of requiring institutions owned or run by churches (not the churches themselves) to include birth control in their health care insurance plans for employees.  Suggesting that this is a war on religion, though, is hyperbolic nonsense and stubbornly railing against authority raises the question yet again:  Can the government tell us what to do?

Irrespective of your personal preferences, the government says that you may not own a nuclear weapon.  The government requires you to stop at stop signs.  The government says that you may not poison your neighbor’s dog even if he barks through the night (the dog, not the neighbor).  The government says that if you run a meat packing plant that you must follow rules of cleanliness and you can’t include in your sausage the rat that fell into the kettle.

The point is that we have laws and regulations because, as the saying goes, your absolute freedom stops at the tip of my nose.  That means that we must have some agreement about what each of us may do, what each of us may not do and what all of us must do in order to have a civil society and to arrange for what is best for all of us.  That comes at some expense to each of us, surely in the abridgment of our absolute freedom.  The absence of those laws, though, would be far worse than the presence of them.  The trick, of course, lies in finding the middle ground that serves best.

So, yes, Virginia, the government can tell you what to do.  You have the right to not like it.  You have the right to attempt to change the laws.  And you have the right to obey the laws or suffer the consequences of violating them.

But for those who want to push back against anything Obama, please be considerate of the 80% of Americans who don’t want to hear histrionics like “war on religion,” nor do we want to hear the latest installment of “You can’t tell me what to do.”  The battle that has real value is the battle for the kind of America we want this to be for all Americans, not just the impassioned, vocal few.

“Remember that knowing a tomato is a fruit is knowledge, but knowing not to put it into a fruit salad is wisdom.”       Dan Keding


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

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