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Slogans

Aug 25

At the National Speakers Association convention earlier this year, Bruce Terkel delivered a powerful keynote presentation on marketing. During that speech he explained that President Obama’s 2008 slogan “Yes we can” was the second best marketing slogan ever. It is positive, it is inclusive and it is enabling. Sadly, Republicans utilize a different slogan strategy.

Tom Coburn (R–OK), Ted Kruz (R-AZ), Michele Bachmann (R-Mars) and a bunch more Republicans want President Obama impeached. They offer no high crimes or misdemeanors of which they think he is guilty. They just want the sentence carried out without bothering with an indictment or conviction. Their slogan seems to be, “Say anything to marginalize him.”

Paul Ryan continues to promote his Republican budget – only it isn’t a budget. It is a plan to privatize nearly all of government. This is just another example of Republicans putting lipstick on a pig and telling us it isn’t a pig, like the original Patriot Act that actually was unpatriotic and like Operation Iraqi Freedom that didn’t free the Iraqis but did chain us to perpetual war. Their sleight-of-hand slogan is, “Fooling you with a lying label.”

I wrote here recently that the Republicans got nuthin’ because they propose nothing that will benefit America or Americans, other than the billionaires to whom they are indentured. They lambasted President Obama at every opportunity regarding a budget. Then Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Tanning Salon) presented the 2010 Republican budget that had no numbers in the entire document other than page numbers. (Accounting note: If there are no numbers, it can’t be a budget.) On the infrequent occasions that congress does manage to pass legislation to make things better, like the Dodd-Frank bill, Republicans immediately start the process to dismantle it piece by piece. This slogan is obvious: “Whatever it is, we’re against it even if we used to be for it.”

The House did pass a farm bill. It gives Big Agri-Business multi-billions of dollars. That same bill eliminates support for food stamps. One in six American children lives in poverty – it is double that number for people of color – and The House intends to take the food out of the mouths of those kids. The slogan: “Starvation makes children more self-reliant.”

Two of three poling places in North Carolina are being closed, leaving local college students with obstacles nearly impossible to overcome in order to vote. A pregnant woman in Kansas, victim of a brutal rape, cannot do anything about it. The school teachers in Wisconsin, who have sacrificed pay over and over in exchange for the promise of an adequate pension when they retire, are now having their pensions stolen from them. None of that is an accident.

The Republicans are so bereft of offerings that they are putting the majority of their effort into stopping Americans from voting in order to win elections and cram through legislation to produce results like the examples above. If they can’t stop people from voting, they use district gerrymandering to make votes inconsequential. For example, Texas is 45% white but the Republican controlled state legislature has ensured that 70% of the districts are white Republican, thus marginalizing people of color.

Perhaps this kind of Constitutional blasphemy has not permeated your world yet. Just understand this: it will. Right now they are coming after people of color, poor people, first time voters, the elderly and the infirmed. After that it will be another group, then another, because a power hungry minority will never have enough control to satisfy themselves. Look to history and you will see the repeated story of incremental loss of rights concurrent with the rise of totalitarianism. That is what voter suppression accomplishes, so “Coup by disenfranchisement” is the Republican slogan.

“You know, I would have at least some respect for the Republicans who pass these laws if they would just come clean and admit they are trying to keep everyone but old white guys from voting like it used to be in the good old days. But instead, they make up stuff.”

Gaylard French of Waxahachie, TX
The Dallas Morning News
Letters to the Editor, August 18, 2013

We can sit back and pretend that our country is not being stolen from us, but sooner or later we’re going to have a very bad day. The Republican slogan for that is, to quote Dick Cheney, “So?”

Bruce Terkel was asked the obvious question by a member of the audience at the close of his keynote to the National Speakers Association convention. “If ‘Yes we can’ is the second best marketing slogan ever, what is the best one?” Terkel didn’t miss a beat, replying, “See your doctor for an erection lasting longer than four hours.”

Are we that easy to manipulate – with just a slogan?

Voices

Aug 11

Eighty percent of Americans who know of the over-reaching, legislation-from-the-bench Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case – the one that ensured unlimited money influencing our politics – want it reversed. That number varies by just a handful of percentage points, depending on respondents’ political views. This issue is the venue where ultra-left tree huggers and hair-on-fire Tea Party members can join hands, sing Kumbaya and wave Don’t Tread On Me flags, all at the same time. The trick in getting action on this is to expand the number of Americans who know about the CU decision so that we can exert sufficient pressure on lawmakers to pass the 28th Amendment to the Constitution to get big money out of our political process.

It was to that educational purpose that I crafted the Money, Politics and Democracy program that I have been delivering to various local groups for the better part of a year. I delivered it last week to a fledgling group in DuPage and Will Counties who care enough about this issue to leave their front porches on a lovely summer evening and sit in a hot meeting room in order to learn.

Be clear that I have another motive in my talk. It is to motivate people to take action. And it is to that point that I direct you to an essay by Jesmyn Ward in today’s New York Times entitled A Cold Current. Her story is about racism, the devaluing of people by “othering” and how we react to that. There is a parallel to her story in today’s economically punitive America.

Think about the America you believe in, the one you want to leave to your children and grandchildren. Look deep into your notion of The American Dream. You better think about it, because we are crafting the America we will bequeath to your descendents right now. It is just possible that the dream that you hold dear for your dear ones and yourself is a different dream than that dreamed by the leaders of our pharmaceutical industry, our energy barons, the fabulously wealthy individuals – the 1%. That is because those people are exactly like everyone else in this sense: We all act in what we believe to be our best interests.

I don’t even remotely imagine that the Koch brothers arise every day with sights on the evil they might do or the mischief they can create for most Americans. As the titans of Big Pharma spent $390 per second fighting Obamacare, they weren’t doing it to ensure that our healthcare system remains the worst among industrialized nations. Neither do the leaders of the American Petroleum Institute air its television ads with the pretty blonde in a black pants suit in order to create more super-hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy so that more Americans might suffer and die. They do those things because it is in their financial best interests to do what they do, so they spend the big money to make their voices heard. It is all about the voices.

So, rather than putting your effort into demonizing the big bucks class in America, your energy needs to be focused on making your voice heard. Let go of any notion of instant gratification, because this is a long term push. Just understand this: If you don’t make your voice heard, people with a very different dream for America from the one you believe in will have their voices heard, because they will be the only ones talking.

Now go read Jesmyn Ward’s piece. Read it first for her message about racism. Then read it again and substitute “classism” and you’ll understand.

The RNC Has . . .

Aug 04

Izzy Santa, RNC Hispanic Communications Director as seen on MSNBC Weekends with Alex Witt, July 27, 2013.

Here is a shortened and pretty accurate transcription of dialogue:

Witt: The president indicated that there are Republicans who agree with him in private. Is that true?

Santa: The President’s programs have failed and Democrats are abandoning him.

Witt: In talking about Obamacare, the President said that the Republicans can’t just be against; they have to be for something. What are the Republicans for?

Santa: Obamacare has failed.

Witt: How do you think the President’s immigration plan will work for Hispanics?

Santa: The President’s immigration plan is a complete failure. (Ed. Note: There is no plan in place yet, so nothing has failed except the passage of the bill. It is bottled up in the Republican controlled House.)

Witt: Another question.

Santa: Attack Obama, blah, blah, blah.

Here are the observed RNC Rules, as consistently obeyed by Michael Steele when he was RNC chairman, Rience Pribus, current RNC chairman and Izzy Santa:

Always attack President Obama and Democrats.
Never answer a question or offer anything creative, new, constructive.
Always attack President Obama and Democrats.

Memo to RNC: That’s all ya got? Ya got nuthin’.

Number 14

Jul 21

I’ve written many times about how big money steals our politics and our democracy and about how victories to make change for the better are hard won. Those victories are critical, though, because without change the big money people will continue to incrementally buy America. They will continue to disenfranchise more and more Americans. They will continue to make themselves immune from accountability. They will continue to ignore the slide into poverty of millions of Americans. They will continue to stoke war, benefit the war materiel industries and waste the lives of our children.

Yet every now and then there is a ray of hope – a quiet thunderclap – and that happened on May 31, 2013. That is the day when Senate Joint Resolution 0027 passed the House in the State of Illinois legislature. It is a resolution calling for a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution to reverse the terrible slide into corporatocracy, a demand to allow regulation of money in politics.

This is a big deal and one not easily accomplished, yet it happened. It happened because tens of thousands of Illinoisans demanded this change and insisted upon a formal declaration from the state being delivered to congress. That is the power of the voice of the people. While the resolution is non-binding, it makes the demands of the people clear for our national legislators and lets them know that they ignore the people at their own political peril.

The good news didn’t stop there. In June, Delaware became the 15th state to demand the same thing and on July 2 the Oregon Legislature passed House Joint Memorial 6 (HJM 6) calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. F.E.C. There will be more states and more municipalities that will join the call because the people know that something is wrong and they want change.

So, make your voice heard at MoveToAmend or Common Cause or any of the organizations working toward eliminating big money influence in our politics and striving to restore our democracy. Do it because the voice of the people – yours and mine – can set us – America – back on the right course.

Special Ice Cream Edition

May 10

Whatever your issue, budget, debt, global warming, immigration, guns, healthcare, civil rights or any other topic, the reason things aren’t getting better is because of something that controls your issue: Money. Big money. Big money that influences elections, politicians and distorts the will of the people into the will of the very few enormously wealthy people. For more on that, take a look at Larry Lessig’s TED talk.

Should you doubt that big money influence is preventing the will of the people (that’s you) from being done, just recall the recent vote on background checks prior to gun ownership. Have you ever seen an issue in the United States where 90% of the people were in agreement? That’s highly unusual and one would expect those who represent us to get the message and vote accordingly. Didn’t happen that way. Enough of our politicians flagrantly voted against our wishes because of big money influence and they caused the wrong result.

The Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream guys have something to say about that. You can read about it here on the CNN Opinion blog. They explain it better than I do.

Just because those gun money politicians defeated the sensible gun ownership background check that you wanted doesn’t mean that they can defeat everything that we want. We Americans are united in opposition to big money buying our elections and our country. So, get off your Barcalounger, get a stamp here and get the message out so that next year we will elect candidates who will begin to make things right.

Is this issue important to you? Comment below and then email this to 3 friends.

For Purist Lefties and Windshields

May 05

I’m surely talking to myself here, but this just might fit for others, too. JA

*********************************************************

The Radical Right provides enough material in a single sentence of extremism than can be corrected in a 750-word response. I’ve heard as many as three fictional facts in a single short sentence. Let them go on for two minutes and it’s such a dizzying array of fantasy that it’s impossible to know where to begin to correct the falsities. Those guys know how to spray incendiary, divisive and destructive language. They’re really good at demanding that everything be decided their way and insisting that that they never make mistakes.

For example, don’t you just hate it when the far righties tell us how safe George W. Bush kept us? Try telling that to the kids whose mother or father was crushed to death in the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.

Those far righties want to end Medicare and Social Security and they have concocted fatuous, misleading names for the programs they designed to do just that. Then they have had the gall to tell us that they don’t want to end those programs.

When 20 little kids were gunned down in Newtown, CT the far righties made sure that we didn’t do anything to begin to limit access to the kinds of weapons that make it easy for violent people to do such things. They insist with self-righteous fervor that they have the one true interpretation of the Second Amendment and they ignore the demands of the rest of us, as they pursue campaign cash to support their careers.

So we call these people crazy. They are hateful and mean. They are dishonest in sixteen different ways. Our guts snarl and our spittle flies as we yell at our windshields.

To pull a Columbo, there’s just one more thing.

What is it that you were saying as President Obama worked toward compromise with congressional Republicans during all those iterations of budget and debt issues? What was it you were saying as he failed to press for universal health care? Now he’s offered chained CPI as a negotiating chip. I’ll bet you had serious juice about those issues and your words for him might have sounded a lot like your comments about crazy righties.

Obama let the Republicans kill his jobs bill, even as they were telling us it was all about jobs, jobs, jobs. You pilloried the Republicans, but did you also lambast Obama for his lack of leadership on the issue?

How many times did you wail that Obama gave up his negotiating leverage by caving in at the beginning of discussions with Republicans? It seems that President Obama just won’t be the absolutist leftie some want him to be. Maybe you’ve sprayed a coating on the inside of your windshield over that.

We can keep strolling down the path of all the ways Obama and the Democrats have failed – surely that has happened. Yet here’s the key point: governing is compromising and nobody gets all of what they want all of the time.

The Radical Righties have done a really good job of strong-arming America for over a decade. Their demand that everything be decided in the far righty way is incomprehensible to many; just get that a similar demand from the far left is just as incomprehensible.

For those who get off on anger, who feel powerful by living in their disparagement of anything and anyone who disagrees with them, I have a news flash: You are a lot like those whom you pillory.

Fight for what you believe in. Oppose what you disagree with. Just don’t be so certain that you have the one and only true vision of what is best, lest you become a yet another ideological roadblock and put the inside of still more windshields at risk.

Pogo

Apr 28

As 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.

Other Than Your Mother

Mar 13

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.

Non-Option Number 1: Education

Jan 06

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.

National Despair

Jul 28

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.

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JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler