Violence

Eliot Ness, We Need You Now


Reading time – 2:55  .  .  .

Regular readers of these posts will recognize that I have long wondered why otherwise fully functional adults possessing a clear sense of right and wrong could tolerate, much less support and promote the obvious law breaking, wrongdoing and un-Constitutional actions of Donald Trump. Of course, some may simply be true believers. But the results of my research, often expressed in these pages (here for example), have suggested a more likely explanation for the behavior of most of these people.

Were an elected official to oppose Trump in any way, two bad  things would happen:

  1. They would be vilified mercilessly on Twitter and at every Trump speaking opportunity;
  2. Trump would enthusiastically support their primary opponent in the next election;

and they would lose their job. We’ve seen this happen.

That’s a strong witch’s brew to inhibit discouraging words and votes against Trump; however, this brew is far more toxic than I had imagined, because there is a third and far more dangerous ingredient.

A most compelling essay was posted by Frank Rich in the January 6 edition of New York Magazine entitled What Will Happen To the Trump Toadies? It is focused on the likely future of Trump’s lickspittle enablers by drawing parallels both to Richard Nixon’s suck-ups and cronies and to Vichy France collaborators with the Nazis. The piece is long and detailed and a great article. It’s well worth your time and focus.

Appending that essay is a short interview of Never-Trumper, Republican strategist Rick Wilson. He speaks to the fact that many in Congress secretly despise Trump, reporting on one, saying,

“Right after Trump was elected, there were a lot of guys who had this shocking moment. A friend of mine, a member of Congress, went home to a town-hall meeting, and a guy asks him, ‘Are you going to be with Mr. Trump 100 percent of the time?’ And he goes, ‘Well, look, I support Donald Trump and I want to help him, and we agree on many things. But I represent this district. If there’s something the president wants to do and it’s good for us, we’re absolutely going to do it. If it’s something that’s bad for our district, I’m going to oppose it.'”

“By the time he left the stage, his wife had death threats. His kids had death threats [emphasis mine]. Because he wouldn’t say, ‘I’ll be with Trump no matter what.’ He called me two days later, and he said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Eventually he goes, ‘I’m going to keep my seat.’ He still privately bitches and moans, but he’s still in Congress.

If threats of death and violence like this are common – and this event is unlikely a one-off – then that is the third and most powerful reason Republicans won’t stand and be counted. Survival of self and family is too powerful a driver for them to overcome in order for them to do what they know to be the right thing.

What that means is that thugs – Trump’s “good people on both sides” – have taken control of our country. The Brown Shirts are enforcing Trump’s power and he and they have effectively dissolved the Senate.

In the face of that, imagine evidence overwhelmingly damning of Trump (it exists) being presented at his impeachment trial. Imagine further that it creates a huge public outcry for removal. What are the chances that 67 senators would vote to boot Trump from office?

We desperately need a 2020 version of Eliot Ness right now.

————————————


Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

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. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Guest Essay – The Real Reason


Reading time – 4:35  .  .  .

Reader Dan Wallace has an insightful take on our American condition that is happily devoid of the hystrionics, name calling and partisan posturing of many. He offered it as a comment to my Hoping for Clarity From Sunday Times Readers post, but it was likely missed by many. His views are too important to be missed, so his essay is presented here. Read it and nod affirmatively and enthusiastically. JA

I was not a Trump voter for the reason given below. But it was, and I believe remains, the primary reason not to vote for him.

Simply put, comparing Trump’s publicly visible behavior to the available checklists for psycho/sociopathology, all indications are that he is psychopath, a sociopath, a person experiencing anti-social personality disorder, a malignant narcissist, or something along those lines. The exact term does not matter. That there is something seriously wrong with this guy is obvious and does matter. The right answer for someone like this is to feel sorry for him and to help him if we can, while minimizing the damage he can do. It is not to elect him (or keep him as) President of the United States.

For some reason it is considered unseemly to talk about this. I do not understand why. Choosing not to talk about it is like sitting down to dinner at a table that has a giant moose on it and pretending there’s no moose. There is. Step one in getting rid of the moose is admitting there’s a moose.

The view that there is something seriously wrong with Donald Trump is held by people as diverse as George Conway and Keith Olbermann. Unlike them, I am not a newcomer to it. I was virulently anti-Hillary in 2016. But I argued at the time, and I still do, that given a choice between venal and crazy, the right answer is to put 100 clothespins on your nose and vote for venal because it is at least predictable and is not necessarily oriented toward tyranny. While not all psychopaths become tyrants, all tyrants start as psychopaths.

Every now and then the American people make the mistake of putting into office someone with a severe mental disease or defect. The last time we did that was 1968. It took 6 years, but the institutions ultimately worked and we removed him from office.

We need to do that again, but the stakes are far higher now. We have an enormous division between those who have been left behind by globalization and those who have not. We have not figured out how we as a nation will compete in a truly globalized world. We have enacted policies that have driven the disparity of wealth to the sort of level that provokes insurrection. We have the least efficient healthcare system of any industrialized nation and continue to play the fiddle while it threatens to bankrupt us. In order to avoid dealing with those unpleasant realities, we have given ourselves a false sense of prosperity by fueling our economy with debt, something in which both parties have been equally and joyfully complicit. That accumulated debt is now so large that resolution of it likely will eventually require devaluation of the dollar, which will turn us into something like Greece or Venezuela. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a change in our environment that has the capacity ultimately to threaten the survival of our species (Moose #2).

These are serious issues and we should get about the business of addressing them in a serious way. The solutions will not be simple. There is plenty of demagoguery to go around, on both the left and the right. None of it helps. But one thing we should all be able to agree on: Having a psychopathic buffoon in the White House makes all of this worse, not better.

Addendum

On Wednesday of last week, Trump “met with” a group of about 25 refugees in the Oval Office. Presumably, this was a photo op intended to make him look empathetic. The problem is that it was captured on video, and one thing he clearly is not is empathetic.

The video shows Trump’s interaction with Nadia Murad, a Yazidi refugee who won the 2018 Nobel Peace prize for bringing her horrific story to the world and for fighting to stop the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Her story includes ISIS raiding her village, killing her mother and six of her brothers, taking her captive, holding her as a sex slave and subjecting her to rape and torture.

The remarkable thing about this video is not Trump’s abject ignorance, unpreparedness and stupidity (after Murad tells him twice that ISIS killed her family, he asks, “So where are they now?” – Yes, really – watch the video.). Rather, it is that the President of the United States can listen to this story and show absolutely no empathy for the human being standing in front of him and for the appalling suffering and loss she experienced. If that lack of empathy doesn’t make someone a psychopath, then what the hell does?


————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

 


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

Tipping Point


Reading time – 2:10; Viewing time – 3:14  .  .  .

America in the 1930s was anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Semitic and probably some other anti’s. And of course we have a well documented history of excluding Chinese, Catholics, Irish, Italians – you name it and we’ve been against it at some time. The piece where I want to focus now, though, is the American attitude toward Jews before World War II.

Kristallnacht, a November night in 1938 of viscous Nazi violence against Jews, was seen as abhorrent by the vast majority of Americans. Yet later that same week, Gallup polled Americans about whether we should open our borders to those seeking refuge from Germany and 72% said no. Two months later 67% of Americans opposed a bill to admit child refugees from Germany. We wouldn’t even lift a finger to save children. It took the revelations of the Holocaust – 6 million people murdered – to reach a tipping point and begin to change public opinion.

Now we’re facing a different cry for relief from persecution. Poor people from Central America are arriving at our southern border pleading for asylum so they won’t have to go back to their war-torn, brutalizing countries where there is nothing to eat.

We’ve watched as this administration has cut aid to those countries, making conditions still worse. We’ve seen how this administration has slow walked applications for asylum, arrested border crossers and failed to properly provide for those it incarcerates.

We’ve heard the official hate speech and seen children separated from their mothers and fathers. This administration told us that this cruelty was a “deterrent” to more migrants coming to America. We’ve seen the reports of overcrowding of children in cages and of kids kept locked in vans for a day and a half. Now we’re seeing Mexico being bludgeoned into housing migrants who are trying to find refuge in the U.S., while at the same time this administration uses this humanitarian crisis that it created to strong-arm Mexico into buying more U.S. stuff. Meanwhile, desperate asylum seekers suffer.

The question for us is this: When does it get so bad that all of us stand up and say “No more!” Where is that tipping point? How much suffering will be so much that it isn’t just a bunch of do-gooders shutting down the Tornillo child prison, but the overwhelming majority of us call out our official cruelty and demand proper, humane treatment for these people?

”  .  .  .  for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.” Thucydides

Perhaps our hoping for better isn’t enough. Perhaps thrusting aside this savage reality we do not fancy isn’t enough, either. Maybe it’s time for action.

Late Addition

Herblock cartoon, 1954. Click me for a larger view.

Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) was a reprehensible fraud who ruined the lives of many Americans with his phony charges of them being, having been or having sympathy for communists. Among his famous dalliances from truth was the piece of paper he would brandish, claiming that on it was a list of names of known communists in the State Department.

The piece of paper was just a piece of paper. For all we know it was McCarthy’s shopping list. McCarthy just used the convention as a prop to secure himself attention and fame by menacing others. He was eventually censured by the Senate and died a miserable drunk with hepatitis.

Click me for the story

On Tuesday, President Trump pulled the same reprehensible fraud by brandishing a single folded sheet of paper taken from his breast pocket and waving it before members of the press, claiming it was the agreement just forged with Mexico. He wouldn’t show the agreement because he would let Mexico make the announcement, he told us.

Just one thing: there is no new agreement with Mexico. The agreement was secured long ago – there’s nothing new – and once again the great negotiator has achieved nothing except for laying yet another fraud on the American people.

Just for fun – from The Onion. Click me

                                                  ————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!


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

The Price of Memory Loss


Reading time – 3:10; Viewing time – 4:35 .  .  .

Here are a couple of examples to make a point.

First, whatever your position on the issue of abortion, just for the moment set aside your religious or moral views, as well as your notion of rights, and focus on practicality.

Regardless of public memory, a lot of abortions really did occur prior to the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. For wealthy women, abortions might have been quietly performed in the examination rooms of their OB/GYNs. For others that option wasn’t available, so abortions often were done in a filthy office or back alley by untrained brutes. Many women suffered greatly from complications like severe infections and even loss of fertility. Some bled to death.

When Roe was decided, abortions came out of those filthy offices and back alleys and moved to safe medical facilities. A lot fewer women experienced complications and far fewer died. That’s the practical piece.

It’s easy to wag fingers about abortions if you don’t have a memory of how bad it was before Roe, which is not to say that all who oppose abortion are unjustified; rather, it’s to say that if Roe is overturned, as is de facto incrementally happening, there will be a huge uptick in the use of filthy offices and back alleys. The price of our memory loss is that a lot of women will suffer and some will die because we no longer remember how bad it really was.

Here’s another example of the practical effect and the price of the loss of historical memory. This comes from Gershom Gorenberg’s piece in The American Prospect:

“As historian Tony Judt showed in Postwar, his great work on recent European history, the Western European welfare states created after 1945 were not products of wild idealism. They were the ‘insecure child of anxiety.’ People understood that the political extremism of the 1930s was ‘born directly of economic depression and its social costs. Both Fascism and Communism thrived on social despair, on the huge gulf separating rich and poor.’ The welfare state was a means to keep the black-shirts and brown-shirts in the past.

“One reason, perhaps, that America built so much less of a welfare state was that it was not left so shattered by the war. Obamacare was a very late, partial effort to fill in the most glaring gap, the lack of a national health-care system. Trump hasn’t given up on destroying that.

“But then, Trumpism is a new movement born of social despair and the renewed gulf between rich and poor. Despair sells the tickets to Trump’s mass rallies, and anger handles the amplifiers for his hateful rants. [emphasis mine]

“How is it that a large minority of Americans could vote for this man, or that a majority of Britons could have voted to leave the European Union, or that the new authoritarianism is rising in European countries wounded so deeply seven and eight decades ago by the old authoritarianism?

“I won’t argue that there’s just one reason. But I suggest that a major contributing reason is that eight decades or nine is the span of a human life. Someone who was 13 in September 1939 is 92 or 93 years old today. We are running out of people who can give firsthand testimony of the war itself, much less of the political madness that gave birth to the war. The last earthquake was so long ago that too many people have forgotten the purpose of the strict building code that followed it.”

With a loss of historical memory we humans have a way of reverting to old ways that were terrifyingly destructive. That’s easy to do with leaders spouting slogans and shibboleths and wild promises of restoring the greatness of some mythical, fictional past. But those slogans, shibboleths and wild promises have a way of making us blind to the full reality of the suffering and destruction they bring about.

The point is that the price of memory loss, whatever the issue, is far too great. That is why we – all of us – must remember.

                      ————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Time to Chill?


Reading time – 3:47; Viewing time – 5:19  .  .  .

For at least three years some have been saying to ignore what he says and to focus instead on what he does.  Pay attention, they say, to policy stuff, actions that have impact, and ignore the stupid – even false – things he says. Just chill.

That sounds like good counsel and I’ve tried to follow it. Alas, there is no escaping that words have power to drive people to action. And some actions are brutal and even murderous.

Michelle Goldberg wrote in the New York Times, “.  .  .  Trump is a racist. This should be clear to all people of good faith, given that Trump was a leading figure in the birther movement, defended white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, and claimed he couldn’t get a fair hearing from a judge of Mexican heritage .  .  .” Be clear that his messages are heard loud and clear by people who revel in hate.

There really weren’t “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville. It may have been just words the President spoke, but his message to haters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and thugs of all stripes was that they’re just great folks spewing hate and doing harm to others.

The President showed up at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, even though he was specifically asked by the Rabbi and the mourners to stay away. His words were exactly what the mourners didn’t want, but he spoke anyway. His message to his fanatical followers was that it’s okay to disrespect some people, even those in the midst of the profound pain of loss. Gotta wonder how much his constant disrespect motivated the shooter.

What we’re clear about is that the President’s disrespect extends everywhere, including his hateful comments about John McCain, and his acceptance of the torturing and murder by tyrants abroad, with whom he tells us he has great relationships and he and Kim Jong-un “fell in love,” however gag-able that may be.

He doesn’t care about Otto Warmbier, who endured torture and beatings by the North Koreans that led to his death. He doesn’t care about Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who the Saudis killed, butchered and cremated. And he clearly doesn’t care about Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who were poisoned in a nerve agent attack in London. Trump takes the tyrant dictators at “their word” and finds no fault in them. What do you suppose is the message his fanatical followers get from that?

He at last got part of his Muslim ban. Then he tweeted hatefully toward Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) about her handful of anti-Semitic comments, for which she had already apologized; but he had nothing at all to say about decades of racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric from Christian Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who remains unrepentant for his hate. Got any doubt about what one religion is okay with the President and how he feels about other religions in America? That gives the cover of righteousness to the haters, making virtually any atrocity acceptable.

Click through and read this important essay.

He continues to vilify brown skin people from south of the border and blacks everywhere, while at the same time inviting more immigrants from “Norway.” Got any doubt about what color skin the President wants all Americans to have and how unwelcome others are? I wonder if his racism motivated the murderer at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston?

His words incite fear, hate and anger and he dog whistles violence at every rally. He drives division and hatred every day. And he’s managed to get 40% of Americans to listen to him and some to emulate him. That puts the rest of us at risk and you already know that sometimes people get killed. So, no, I will not ignore what he says.

All of what he says and does sends a tyrannical message of exclusion, of “us versus them.” It’s a small view of America from a small, cowardly man, but some of his followers like that and want to exclude others using violence to do so. That’s what happens in cults of personality.

Before someone starts waving their red, white and blue at me, proclaiming in righteous voice that this is the land of the free and we’re entitled to our views and opinions, even if they’re based in hate, just get this one piece: this country was established by the Founders in absolute opposition to a tyrant. This is no time to succumb to one.

Do you know someone who tells you to chill, to just get over it for the hateful and stupid things that come out of this President’s mouth? If they want to know the true value of that chill notion, click here and register to hear the expert speak on the subject. And bring that friend along – the one who tells you to chill.

Watch this now. This is no time to chill.

Click to join me on March 23 for this fascinating and informative event.

                ————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!

 

 


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

I Didn’t Want To Write This Post


Reading time – 4:54; Viewing time – 6:18  .  .  .
I didn’t want to write this post. I want to be better than this, to be evolved and enlightened. I want to be patient and understanding and have equanimity, but that just isn’t happening. Not now and perhaps not for a very long time.

I’m mad as hell.

I’m sick of weenie politicians offering their damned “thoughts and prayers.” I’m nauseated by the spinelessness of our leaders who are, instead, followers of the biggest financial donors. I’m sickened by elected officials who value their political life far more than the actual lives of attendees at religious ceremonies and little children in school. The core value of these officials seems to be, “Let ’em all die, as long as I get re-elected.”

I attended what was offered as a healing ceremony at my synagogue on Sunday morning. The kids attending Sunday School were brought in for the last 15 minutes of the proceedings and as I watched their little bodies make their way to open seats I couldn’t help but realize that these kids have now been taught to be afraid all the time, everywhere. And that’s absolutely not okay.

Nobody has ever solved the riddle of how to take fear and hate and anger from the hearts of our citizens, so I don’t have any notion that the riddle will be solved now. What I do believe is that we can open our eyes to the reality all around us and start to deal with it.

The Anti-Defamation League keeps track of anti-Semitism in America and reports that anti-Semitic incidents were up 57% in 2017 over 2016, with the highest increases occurring in the first 3 months of the year. It’s interesting to note that these spikes in acts of hatred occurred during and just after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Then the acts of hate spiked again following the “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, which was conducted by “fine people,” according to our president.

Trump is the obvious and easy-to-name provocateur of intolerance because of his well documented incitements to hate and violence. His wooden recitation of words from a Tele-prompter that were written by someone else means nothing, because everyone knows he’s completely disingenuous in his sympathy and is only mouthing the words. The withholding of his vilification of others barely lasted an hour following his Tele-prompter charade, when he was back to naming enemies and demeaning them. We’ve always had a problem of hatred in this country, but we’ve often had a leader upon whom we could count to call upon our better angels. Now, we don’t.

And it’s missing from many of our elected leaders, too, especially those who spinelessly refuse to stand up to Trump.

For those who desperately want to deny the one-sidedness of the incitement to hate and violence that lives in our politics and our country, I have a question for you: What is it that you’re pretending not to know? Perhaps you’ll like my question better in this form: What is it that is right before you every day that you refuse to see and refuse to hear?

If you call yourself a Republican I invite you to examine if that’s really true. The Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and H. W. Bush is long gone. There are still some ugly echoes from them, like the overt racism of Nixon and the racial stereotyping by Reagan (recall his self-serving lie, saying there were “welfare queens” in Chicago), but the basic conservatism of any and all of them is gone, regardless of the Republican label in use by others today.

Today’s Republican Party is the party of discrimination, the withholding of rights, hatred and the impoverishment of middle class and poor Americans and anyone who is not from white, Christian European stock, and the violent perps feed off that. If the things in that list don’t describe you, then renounce your membership in that party right now, because the Republicans of today abandoned you in favor of protecting their own asses and in the process they lost any semblance of moral standing and the right to a place of leadership. And it’s not just the discrimination that’s a problem.

They’ve sold out to the gun lobby because that gets them big donations for their campaigns. Were they honest they would declare the number of people who they figure can be butchered by semi-automatic weapon carrying angry people before they’ll stand up for sensible gun safety laws. Don’t look for that declaration, though, because going public with that would upset their big money donors.

Eleven people were killed and many more were wounded in the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday, this in the name of blaming Jews for the miserable life the killer had made for himself. It’s the same pattern as for the butchery in the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and the Sikh temple in Milwaukee and the LGBTQ partiers at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and those little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the people at the Las Vegas concert. Nearly all those dead bodies can be attributed to the cowardice of our elected officials to stand up and lead.

I went to the healing ceremony on Sunday and found no healing. I’ll get to that someday. Right now I’m mad as hell and I don’t give a damn about politicians’ “thoughts and prayers.” I want action.

For more following our most recent massacre, be sure to read Howard Fineman’s essay and Bari Weiss’ essay, too.

Correction: While she lived through those years, Rose Mallinger, the 97 year old shooting victim originally mentioned in this post, was not a holocaust survivor. Apologies for the error. JA

————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Women For Trump


Reading time – 2:50; Viewing time – 3:43  .  .  .

A compendium of Trumpian Distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball

It is a fact that a significant number of American women support Donald Trump and, given his history of misogyny, that begs the question of why they would do that.

Some are clear that they abhor everything they believe to be true about Hillary Clinton, so anyone else was a better choice in the last election. Indeed, maybe they are able overlook what they see in Trump that seems disagreeable to them. Perhaps they imagine that he doesn’t really believe everything he’s said and all that has been reported that he’s done. Perhaps these women were willing to overlook all of that simply because of their loathing of Clinton. Perhaps there’s more.

Many women have watched as our Congress has managed to paralyze itself so that the problems these people face never get addressed, much less solved. They have had it with politicians of all stripes lying to them, making promises they never intend to keep and just using them for their own purposes. They are convinced that the news media is nearly universally biased and lacks integrity. In short, anything that smacks of “the establishment” is not to be trusted and should be overthrown, replaced.

Click for WomenForTrump

At root, they are furious over being taken for granted, never being listened to and consistently muzzled so that they don’t have a voice. They feel disrespected. Blown off. Rejected. Trump rails against all parts of “the establishment”, so these folks feel validated as he leads them by metaphorically raising a middle finger.

I haven’t much to say to dissuade them of their feelings. Well, maybe just a couple of things, but nothing to suggest that they haven’t been disrespected, blown off and rejected. Just try these questions on for size – not in the abstract, but, if you’re a woman for Trump, for you personally.

It’s pretty clear that Donald Trump believes that he has special permission to do pretty much whatever he wants because he’s a “star”. He’s said exactly that. But if you’re a woman, that means he believes he can do as he wants with you, which means that whatever your age or your attributes, he thinks he can grab you whenever and wherever he wants. So, the first question is how would it sit with you if he groped you?

For the second question, let’s agree that it’s pretty clear from what he’s said repeatedly that he has a cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons. Perhaps he thinks he can nuke Iran and that there would be no retribution visited upon your town by Iranian survivors or perhaps other nuclear powers. Would it be okay with you to be vaporized in a mushroom cloud of Iranian retribution?

Maybe being groped by Trump or nuked by Iranians are far enough away in your imagination that such things aren’t compelling reasons to refuse to support Trump. Perhaps his flicking a middle finger at “the establishment” is so satisfying and delightful as to be overpowering and supplanting of all forms of doubt. If so, then project just these two horrible things – being groped or being nuked – onto your daughter or your little granddaughter. Don’t think for a moment that couldn’t happen, because he bragged about walking into the dressing rooms of naked teenage beauty contest girls. What if one of them were your daughter or your granddaughter? What if she were home when the nuke hit?

Is that flick of a middle finger still enough to overpower your doubt?

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
    2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

    Thanks!


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

Equal Justice – and Memorial Day


Reading time – 2:17; Viewing time – 3:02  .  .  .

Slavery didn’t end in America with the close of the Civil War.

It morphed into Jim Crow and torture and lynchings and murder of every sort. It changed into poll taxes and phony literacy tests. Shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965  were passed, slavery adjusted again, as Richard Nixon thumped the table announcing his tough on crime and drugs measures, which were specifically designed to disempower and imprison people of color.

Ever since that time we have been locking up black people at many times the rate of whites who have committed the same crimes – or for no crime at all. Even as that horrific assault on humanity continues, slavery has morphed yet again to deny people of color the right to vote by using phony claims of voter fraud. And all the while blacks are burdened in our justice system by the presumption of guilt over innocence.

Slavery never ended. It evolved into the cruelties and injustices of today’s America.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL is living testimony to our forgotten dead – our brutalized dead. It makes fully human the reality of the millions who were treated as less than human, tens of thousands of whom were murdered and all were forgotten.

On this Memorial Day we remember our Civil War dead and all our military people who died standing guard over our country. That is as it should be. (Read this and this.) And it is long past time that we remember our people who died for the crime of being black. The Memorial has started that remembrance, telling us their names – real people’s names – so that the dignity they were born with and which should have been theirs all along is at long last restored.

The Legacy Museum is short distance from the Memorial and is a walk through a reality that we collectively prefer to ignore; however, reality is a persistent thing and looking the other way won’t erase it. Our duty is to see it for what it is.

If this were just a walk through history it would be worthwhile and valuable, but it is much more than that. That’s because of today’s truth: we continue our brutality toward our own people.

John Adams instructed us:

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Go to Montgomery, AL and see the facts and evidence for yourself. Start by clicking on any picture in this blog to begin to open your eyes to the full truth. The Equal Justice Initiative has made it easy for you see the facts and the evidence. It’s time that we set ourselves on a path of equal justice for all.

————————————

Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

If You Ever Were a Kid


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

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

March For Our Lives – Chicago

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

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

Click me for the Sun-Times story

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

Are you starting to get it yet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

————————————

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

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

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

The Hypothetical States of America


Reading time – 1:47  .  .  .

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

——————————————————————-

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

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

Until . . .

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

Until . . .

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

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

——————————————————————-

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

Because you care.

————————————

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

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

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

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 11  Scroll to top