Ugly
POST 1181
Hatred

Photo included so that you see that they were real people with real hopes and dreams. They weren’t just statistics.
May 21, 2025 should have been just another beautiful spring day in Washington DC, but it was not. Instead, it was a horrible day of hate-fueled murder.
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were staffers at the Israeli Embassy working on efforts to bring people together. They had fallen in love and were soon to travel to Israel, with a ring in Yaron’s pocket and a plan to surprise Sarah with his marriage proposal, then to begin the rest of their lives together.
They attended an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capitol Jewish Museum in DC that spring evening and were gunned down by an extremist who shot 21 bullets at them. The shooter had posted things like “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” and when he was taken into custody he shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” both slogans commonly used by anti-Israel and antisemitic frenzies. He also shouted, “I did it for Gaza.”
From Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League:
ADL’s latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents tracked a total of 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. in 2024. This is the highest number of attacks against Jews on record since ADL began tracking incidents 46 years ago.
Hatred and violence against Jews is the world’s oldest hatred. It has been stoked often, sometimes by the Church, by ignorant peasants, by leaders of countries and for the past 9 years by Donald Trump, mostly using dog whistle messages, but sometimes with overt hateful idiocies. Here in graphic format is what he and others have incited.
If you have difficulty reading the chart, just click on it to go to the source.
Things to note:
The 35% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2016. It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure, that Trump was running for office that year and calling his rabid followers to violence.
The enormous rise in antisemitic incidents in 2023 and 2024, at least 300% over prior years. That time aligns with what happened following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Jews and Israel’s response. It also corresponds to Trump running for office, leading rallies and not just failing to call on his supporters not to be violent, but issuing more dog whistles to hatred.
Not Too Surprising
Isn’t it peculiar that there have been many demonstrations against Israel and against Jews for Israel’s actions following the October 7 attacks. But there have been almost no demonstrations on college campuses, on city streets, in front of government buildings – anywhere – against Hamas for its murders, rapes, kidnapping and yet more brutality. Lots of angry people chanted variations of “From the river to the sea,” but you never heard any demonstration by ordinary citizens demanding that the world stop killing Jews.
What do you make of that? Hamas okay, Jews, like peacemakers Yaron and Sarah, not?
Last comment (for now) about this.
Don’t say that America is a country of peace. It was born in war. We officially made war on Native tribes and took everything they had. We incarcerated non-Whites and enslaved 16 million Blacks and then began to lynch them. We solve our differences with violence and often with guns: drive-bys in our cities; torturing of gays; mass shootings in schools, churches, synagogues, supermarkets, music festivals and a 4th of July parade; and right now whole communities are stockpiling hatred, anger and weapons for a civil war they long for.
And our fellow citizens committed 9,354 acts of antisemitism last year alone. That’s over 1 per hour, ’round the clock.
We humans love our hatreds. They make us feel powerful and important. “Death to _________” – you fill in the blank. That’s stuff that stokes our reptile brains.
Now For Another Hatred
This quiz is from Robert Reich’ post, Why the one big beautiful bill is the single ugliest you can imagine. It’s about hatred of ordinary Americans by greedy rich, power crazed elites and their fawning, incompetent stooges. Answers are in parentheses.
1. Does the House’s “one big beautiful bill” cut Medicare? (Answer: Yes, by an estimated $500 billion.)
2. Because the bill cuts Medicaid, how many Americans are expected to lose Medicaid coverage? (At least 8.6 million.) [NOTE: 13.7 million people will lose health care – not insurance; healthcare. 11 million will lose food stamp benefits—many of them kids. JA]
3. Will the tax cut in the bill benefit the rich or the poor or everyone? (Overwhelmingly, the rich.)
4. How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it? (Nearly $390,000 per year). [It includes $1.5 trillion in new – extra – tax cuts disproportionately skewed to the rich. It would defund Planned Parenthood, increase oil drilling and logging on public lands.]
5. If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose? (They’ll lose about $700 a year).
6. How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000? (They’ll lose more than $1,000 per year on average).
7. How much will the bill add to the federal debt? ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)
8. Who will pay the interest on this extra debt? (All of us, in both our tax payments and higher interest rates for mortgages, car loans, and all other longer-term borrowing.)
9. Who collects this interest? (People who lend to the U.S. government, 70 percent of whom are American and most of whom are wealthy.)
10. Bonus question: Is the $400 million airplane from Qatar a gift to the United States for every future president to use, or a gift to Trump for his own personal use? (It’s a personal gift because he’ll get to use it after he leaves the presidency.)
Don’t believe it? Here’s another independent source.
Still don’t believe it? Click on the chart at the bottom.
It’s time right now to contact your senators and tell them to vote down this hate filled, hatred fueled Republican war on the American people conducted by hateful and cowardly Republicans and the extremists who want to turn our country over to an American Führer.
Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121
.
and ask to be connected to the offices of your senators. Tell them in no uncertain terms (politely, of course) to shoot down this dishonest, anti-Americans, so-called budget bill passed along to the Senate by House Republican cowards.
The Republicans can’t “both sides” their way out of responsibility for these cruelties. They did this to We The People. I appreciate their help in kicking them out of office. Indeed, that’s . . .
Good News!
White House officials have denied FEMA assistance to the state of North Carolina following lethal Hurricane Helene last year that devastated the western portion of the state, killed 107 people and destroyed over 75,000 homes. Trump and the Republicans are abandoning the people, leaving them in the rubble, the pollution and the danger. That’s yet more hatred.
That’s terrible news for those suffering people, but just try being a Republican running for any office in that state next year. Same thing in any state with poverty issues, as children and grannies are denied healthcare due to the billions of dollars of cuts to Medicaid and Medicare – more hatred. The “Who cares about you?” Republicans are showing themselves to be exactly what they are: cowards, barbarians, and self-obsessed animals.
The ads and campaign slogans for Democrats running for office fairly write themselves. Now, if only the Democrats can keep from screwing this up.
Finally, Institutional Discrimination
You need to click on the chart below and review the easy to read explanation of why it’s good to be in the top 0.1% and it sucks for most of the rest of us.
Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
Goes fast, doesn’t it?
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JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
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