democracy

The Right Books To Ban


Yeah, I know that book banning is a tyrannical exercise in mind control that’s typical of authoritarian, subjugation-creating regimes. We all know that it’s a key tool to end freedom and eliminate rights. And none of us has forgotten history’s recounting of murder squads that were a direct outfall of such draconian control of the people. Still, there has to be a way to prevent bad influences from affecting the public. I think banning books is it. The trick is in knowing which books to ban, so here’s part of my list of the right books to ban. The Republicans are always trying to short change We the People, so these 9 represent a Republican dozen.

  1. The Art of the Deal; Letters to Trump; The Midas Touch; Think Big; Think Like a Champion; How To Get Rich; and any other publication with Trump’s name on it. Trump earned the descriptors grifter, con artist, liar, cheat, scam artist and more with stunning alacrity. He must not be allowed to have the influence on our people that would occur were his books still on library or bookstore shelves.
  2. The Courage To Be Free and Dreams From Our Founding Fathers. Ron DeSantis is every bit the con artist that Trump is and he’s just as cruel and self-serving. Plus, he hasn’t a clue about the dreams of our Founders. We must protect our vulnerable ones from him.
  3. Woke, Inc.; Capitalist Punishment; Nation of Victims. The last title says it all. There is no reason this nation should be victimized by Vivek Ramaswamy, including subjecting anyone to the brainless machine gun blather of this hateful despot wannabe. Turn off the victim talk and we’ll stop victimhood. Ban not just his books, but him, too.
  4. Unified, Opportunity Knocks and America: A Redemption Story. Sen. Tim Scott doesn’t have the sense to not be a Republican. That alone disqualifies him from any job that requires a functioning brain. There is only room in the Republican Party for extremists and cowards, all carrying a rejection of anyone who is not White. I’m wondering if he’s color blind, delusional enough to believe he can change that party or if he’s just self-loathing. He might dupe more people of color with his books, so we must rid ourselves of these things. Banning his books is the right (as in both correct and politically) thing to do.
  5. Anything by or about Ronald Reagan. That sainthood business given to the architect of Iran-Contra, the blatant lie of trickle down economics, massive debt creation, trillions going to the already rich and the destruction of unions needs to be kept from the eyes of Americans, lest they actually come to believe such crap. And that saint thing: de-canonize him. He’s a fraud.
  6. The Bible. Any bible. This terrifying work speaks of rape, incest, lust, murder, betrayal, adultery, idolatry, thievery and more. Get this off our library and book store shelves, because children might read it for instruction. Worse, middle finger American adults might read it and get some crazy ideas into their heads to commit who knows what violence in order to mimic bible stories.
  7. Do What You Said You Would Do is the chest thumping, I’m-a-tough-guy-absolutist tome from former college wrestling coach and enabler of sexual assault, Jim Jordan. Mothers, don’t let your kids grow up to be like that. It starts with making sure they can’t get their hands on this waste of paper pulp. Ban it.

  8. The US Senate and the Commonwealth: Kentucky Lawmakers and the Evolution of Legislative Leadership. Mitch McConnell is proud of his fiscal miserliness in protecting taxpayers’ money. As if. He’s made sure that Kentucky is one of the biggest federal cash suckers in the nation. Surely, his success at that larceny must not be celebrated by book sales. And our delicate children must be protected from such crookery. Ban that bad book.

  9. Any book by George W. Bush. He lied us into two wars, got tens of thousands killed and millions displaced, ignored intelligence that 9/11 was coming, allowed the Great Recession to happen, ended any illusion of a Pax American and more. DO NOT allow sensitive ones to read anything this frat boy wrote. Get those books off our shelves. Otherwise, the answer to his question, “Is our children learning?” will be YES, but they will be learning the wrong things.

There are so many books that should be banned. Which ones do you think belong on this list? Add them in the Comments section below and say why you recommend the Fahrenheit 451 treatment. Stand strong for the end of knowledge and learning!

Quotes Describing Us

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this:

“If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.

“It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Oh Democracy!

From Steve Schmidt, recognizing Mitt Romney:

It isn’t Mitt Romney’s duty to sit there helplessly in a cramped room with demagogues. It is our duty to vote them out. When we do, maybe the quality of character will improve in the MAGA/GOP. Until then don’t expect to see honorable people with an “R” next to their name serving in the US Senate. It is a nest of sedition, cowardice and malice. [emphasis mine]

Two Fridays ago was the United Nations International Day of Democracy and many European nations are leaning heavily toward autocracy now. That brings to mind Harry Truman:

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

How did autocracy work for those European nations over the course of many hundreds of years of devastating wars?

Which brings to mind Winston Churchill:

.  .  .  democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms .  .  .

Perhaps a UN day promoting democracy is a good thing. Perhaps all of us promoting democracy is an even better thing.

Or we can just let our nation slide into legalized cruelty, with no rights or freedom and rule by mobs, not laws.

Bad idea.

The Great Mar-A-Lago Orange Felon

Judge Aileen Canon must be the world’s most careful judge. It took her a month to craft a rules-of-the-road paper for the Documents Case. Any other judge would have completed that task in two hours. You don’t suppose dragging out this case for the benefit of Trump had anything to do with her delay, do you?

Here’s a very slightly modified movie clip from Raiders Of The Lost Ark that puts this case into perspective. Click the play arrow.

Many thanks to JN for the link.

Today is a good day to be the light

______________________________

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


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

Idiotica – Part 1


Economy Idiotica

“The biggest picture is that the post-1980 economy failed to deliver the broad-based benefits that Reagan and his allies promised.”

That’s from a piece by David Leonhardt, Explaining Bidenomics. Focusing on the signal and not on the phony Republican noise, look at this chart.

In the 1920s we had our 1%, just as we do today. They got over 20% of U.S. Income and we got the Great Depression. Reagan came along with his brain-free, trickle-down economics lie proposed by an appropriately named propeller hat named Laffer. After the enormous effort of decades to lift people from poverty and strengthen our middle class, instead Reagan made sure that once again the rich got most of the money. We got the Great Recession.

Can we face the fact that when rich people get more money without having created greater value that they like that money and will always do their best to keep it for themselves? There’s no assurance that they will invest it so that anything trickles down to you.

The Republicans still want to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Things won’t be any better for working people, the bottom 95% of us, until the Bidenomics reversal of right-wing grift takes hold and is expanded. That takes time. For now, only wonks are excited by the recitation of improving statistics. That’s a problem.

To the American public that isn’t yet recognizing the benefits of Biden’s economic actions and who still lack confidence in the economy: I get it. But turning this thing around takes years – refer to the chart above. What is needed is for us to stay the course (I hate using Reagan’s phrase, but that one fits). If things are to continue to improve, our job will be to help people see what is hard to see, what they aren’t feeling yet.

“Inflation is down by almost two-thirds since its peak in June 2022, and this has happened without the recession and huge job losses many economists insisted would be necessary. Real wages, especially for non-supervisory workers, are significantly higher than they were before the pandemic,” writes economist Paul Krugman.

He continues, “Poll after poll shows Americans rating economic conditions as very bad” Oddly, “.  .  .  while most Americans feel that they’re doing OK, they believe that the economy is doing badly, where “the economy” presumably means other people.” How do you suppose that’s happened?

There is plenty to chew on here, but one thing is certain: Republicans continue to poison Americans with their stories of American dystopia and carnage, including about the economy. This disconnect between how Americans see the nation’s welfare versus their own experience is yet another example of what a constant torrent of lies can do.

Covid Idiotica

Americans continue to die from Covid. That doesn’t shock anymore, because such news is so yesterday, so back seat to whatever is today’s outrage. But it isn’t going to stay in the back seat.

With the new variants floating just outside our nostrils and people indifferent or even hostile to vaccines, our communal resistance to dire consequences from the disease is pitiful. We could just wait around to see if we become infected and then die, but that would be dumb.

The right wing conspiracy machine is making sure that we continue to be a bifurcated nation. 95% of those dying from Covid are anti-vaxxers. They aren’t stupid people. They are suicidally and homicidally angry and stubborn. The rest of us have rolled up our shirtsleeves, gladly accepted the jab and are unlikely to have serious consequences should we test positive.

Go-Go DeSantis

But not so much in Florida. Democracy hating Governor Ron DeSantis, he of the white go-go boots in a post-hurricane photo op, has buddied up with his brain-free state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo to urge Florida residents under the age of 65 to refuse the new vaccine. That’s the one that will keep people who contract the new variant of the disease from dying. Apparently, DeSantis and Lapado want to ensure that Florida continues to be a major promoter for members of the casket making industry. I wonder if they’re donors.

Republican Idiotica

This brings us to the choices before the American people.

You’re either for supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, or you’re for Putin, Hungary’s Orbán, Turkey’s Erdoğan and Xi and not for America.

You’re either for the rule of law or you’re for autocracy, fascism and lawlessness.

You’re either for championing NATO as key to our national defense or you’re for Putin and Xi and not for America.

You either believe in democracy and America or you believe in a cult leader who is working to bring it all crashing down.

Republican children in geometry class. Click the pic for an easier to read view.

You’re either for all people’s rights or you’re for bigotry and hatred.

You’re either for full citizenship for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people – all of us – or you’re for subjugation and hatred.

You’re either for facts, science, truth and reality or you’re for manipulation and boundless fraud. You might even be in favor of ignorance.

You either have a moral compass or you don’t.

You either believe in freedom of belief or you’re a religious bigot.

You either challenge the un-American, anti-constitutional craziness that’s all around or, at best, you’ve resigned yourself and our nation to insignificance.

You either stand up for what’s right or you’re a hypocrite and a coward.

You either love freedom or you think it’s okay to dominate others.

You either care about our national defense or you’re a performative patriot only out for yourself and you don’t care about putting our military people and our nation at risk.

You’re either a patriotic American or you’re just a liar and traitor wearing red, white and blue.

Sadly, what was once the Grand Old Party is now populated by people who choose what comes after the “or” in the choices above. They are

The Republican Idiotica
.

It cannot be that every election finds democracy at the edge of a cliff tipping toward oblivion. Our task for as long as we live is to push it back from that edge, regardless of how many times that’s required, until the voices of hatred of democracy are at last silenced.

__________________________________

Watch for Idiotica – Part 2 this Sunday.

Today is a good day to be the light

______________________________

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


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

The Core Issue


From STAT, August 21, 2023:

More children are dying from guns, and disparities are deepening
.

In 2020 guns caused the most deaths among U.S. children and adolescents, for the first time surpassing motor vehicle deaths. In 2021, it got worse. A new analysis of CDC data in Pediatrics shows that from 2018 to 2021, the death rate climbed by 41.6%. “With the unexpected sharp uptick of pediatric firearm deaths noted in 2020, rates did not return to prepandemic levels in 2021, but rather continued to increase and surpassed initial pandemic levels,” the authors write.

The breakdown of children who died:

– In 2021, 84.8% were male, 49.9% were Black, 82.6% were 15 to 19 years-old, and 64.3% died by homicide.

– Black children accounted for 67.3% of firearm homicides and white children for 78.4% of firearm suicides.

– From 2020-2021, the suicide rate increased among Black and white children but decreased among American Indian or Alaskan Native children.

– Higher poverty correlated with higher gun-related deaths.

Our obsessive craziness and lethality over guns is a core issue of mine. With over 27,000 gun deaths already this year, it should be a core issue for all of us. The sad truth is that we will never confront and stop this travesty if we continue down the path of ceding our rights to those who fight against what should be common sense. Indeed, we will never tackle any of the issues that the majority of us care about if we cede our rights to those who fight against what we want. That leads us to an uncomfortable reality. Steve Sheffey nails it in his post of August 20:

Democracy must be our new litmus test. We all have non-negotiable issues but democracy must come first and foremost because only in a democracy can we advocate for the other issues we care about and only in a democracy are our other freedoms protected. Under the old paradigm, we could take for granted that both parties shared a fundamental commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

But it’s different now. Here’s the necessary action piece, also from Sheffey:

Only the Democratic Party respects democratic norms today, which means that only the Democratic Party deserves our support. That’s not what we want to hear because it deprives us of agency. But if we support democracy then that means the GOP fails our litmus test and if we believe what we are saying, we have to vote Democratic. That’s not easy to accept but it is reality.

Steve Schmidt weighed in on the core issue of democracy in his post of August 20,

Democracy dies in the plain light of day
.

The masthead of The Washington Post has read “Democracy Dies in Darkness” for the last six years. It stands as a daily monument of naïveté, smug self-seriousness and delusion that will be a beacon to our descendants in the task of unraveling how the country became so lost in this moment. What will be most obvious is that democracy dies at noon, in the plain light of day, slowly and painfully over many long tedious years.

Never one to mince words, in another post Schmidt offered,

There is no fringe in the MAGA majority. It is an undulating blob of layered imbecility, cowardice, vice, extremism, ignorance, ambition, incompetence and scheming, bubbling and gurgling together in a ceaseless assault against democracy. The fringe and its middle are identical. MAGA is round and without edges.

The proposition at hand for the country is whether a majority will tolerate the lies, corruption, malice and cruelty offered by the MAGA GOP because of the imperfections of the Democratic Party. There is no comparison between the two in terms of comportment, ethics and political morality. MAGA tried to overthrow the government, and is running on a scorched earth platform of revenge and retribution. Alongside the confederacy, Jim Crow and McCarthyism, MAGA is amongst the most odious concoctions ever created from the fumes of American nativism and know- nothingness. It is a pestilence.

We are seeing the alt-right assault on democracy happening every day in ways that are far larger than they might seem at first and it’s only coming from what used to be called conservatives.

But they are not conservative.

Today’s alt-righties are promoting a scheme to grab all of your power, your voice and your money. They have been actively working to steal from you and to destroy our democracy for decades and have gained enormous traction in today’s pugilistic, fantasy-driven politics.

Their power grab is what makes protecting and defending democracy the core issue of our time. It overrides everything.

That is why I’ve become active in The Union, the only issue of which is to protect and defend our democracy. Check it out.

Just For Fun

The Behr Paint Company has announced its color of the year for 2024. It’s

CRACKED PEPPER!
.

From the official Behr color palette

The Behr marketing folks would have you know that,

“Cracked Pepper is a versatile soft black that elevates any room and the way you feel in it.”

Huh?

“As we look into 2024, creating a sense of comfort and belonging will continue to drive design decisions—but now, as life returns to its more familiar rhythms, it’s time to allow our senses to come alive,” says Erika Woelfel, Vice President of Color and Creative Services at Behr Paint Company. “From heightening the aromas of a dining room to feeling the softness of a living area, Cracked Pepper enhances the natural expression in any space.”

What does an “elevated room” look like and how does paint do that? How does their product “allow our senses to come alive” and “height[en] the aromas of a dining room?”

C’mon, man. It’s just paint that’s almost black. Seriously, who comes up with descriptions like this for paint? And what are they smoking?

  • Today is a good day to be the light

    ______________________________

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


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

The Canary plus The Good Old Days


This Is a Get Smarter Opportunity

We are sometimes given a gift – a chance to see into the future, if only we will look at what is before us. That’s what we have right now.

You’ve heard of the many democracy, freedom and rights abuses Ron DeSantis and his rubber stamp Republican Florida legislature have inflicted on the citizens of Florida. He has sucked up to as many White supremacist grievances, fears and hatreds as he could in order to get extremists to support his bid to become an authoritarian president.

His assaults represent far worse than oppression of Floridians: DeSantis and his extremists are normalizing fascism.

DeSantis’ actions leave us with an obvious clarity about what he would do to our entire country were he to get his hands on the reins of power. That is why I believe that

Florida is the canary in the fascist infested coal mine.
.

If you’re skeptical about this, read Thom Hartmann’s take. You won’t be skeptical anymore.

You don’t have to be a Floridian to be worried about this, because we see similar things happening elsewhere. That’s why I’m encouraging you to get smart about this, wherever you are.

My friends Jim and Karen Nathan have co-founded Floridians For Democracy, a group dedicated to protecting democracy in Florida and, by extension, where you live. It is to that end that they are inviting you to two informative Zoom sessions:

    • “White Supremacist Activities in Florida: A brave sheriff and a state representative“
    • Jun 7, 2023, 7:00PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by SWFL Voices for Racial Justice
    • and Concerned Citizens of Lower Lee County
    • “Saving Democracy” with Author David Pepper
    •                                                          June 15, 2023, 5:30PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by Floridians for Democracy and SWFL Voices for Racial Justice

Here’s a link to full program descriptions and the Zoom link to each session. Note that these sessions come to you without cost and they are not fundraisers. They are education that is offered because you need to know.

Make no mistake: this is not just about DeSantis attacking minorities or even just about Florida. This is about all the anti-democracy bullies all over America stealing education from our children, cheating Americans of their voting rights, reducing women to second class citizens, refusing gun safety and all the rest.

This matters to you because one day DeSantis and the bullies will be coming for you and you’re going to hate it when they crash through your door.

The Good Old Days

As the default/budget bill was being readied for a vote in the House last Wednesday, Ron DeSantis was pontifi-whining about it, stupidly saying that we’re going to go bankrupt. Other idiot extremist Republicans were saying similarly stupid, apocalyptic things.

They all long so dearly for the good old days when fiscally responsible Republicans were in charge and they never added to our national debt. That made me wonder which days those were, so I dug around and the chart below is the product of that digging.

The numbers represent the total each president added to our national debt over the course of their administrations. Harding and Coolidge delivered surpluses. All the rest gave us more debt.

Most notably, each administration added billions of dollars of debt until Reagan came along and ratcheted that up to trillions. He put six times more debt on the U.S. than his Democratic predecessor did. In fact, he added just shy of twice the debt of all preceding presidents combined!

You can blame his supply side economics for much of that. He truly was Saint Ronny the Reverse Robin Hood, patron saint of giveaways to the rich. Republicans still genuflect at the sound of his fiscally larcenous name.

Simple fact: In large measure our national debt is a function of both low and lowered taxes matched with increased spending. Somehow such debt, while a big DUH! to the rest of us, is not easily understood by supply-siders, who believe Tooth-Fairy-like that we will have increased revenue by means of decreased revenue.
.

George W. Bush dramatically lowered taxes while starting two “off balance sheet” wars. I still don’t know what that term means. He doubled our national debt over all previous presidents combined, including Reagan! Oddly, that failed to impress voters.

The debt Dubya left for us is hardly a surprise, given his wars and his tax cuts. What is surprising is how Trump managed to increase our national debt in one term even more than Dubya did in two terms.

The Dubya and Trump tax cuts for the rich cost the U.S. nearly $10 trillion and included tax breaks for yachts and private jets.* We’re left with the glow of enhancing the lives of rich people and with the bill they left for us.

Someone please tell me which are the Republicans’ good old days when they were in charge, were fiscally responsible and didn’t add to our national debt.

Take a look at the chart and see if the “tax and spend” label that Republicans like to staple to the chests of Democrats makes sense to you. Or the Republican claims of fiscal responsibility. Or the moronic belief in supply-side economics. If any of that makes sense to you, you will immediately be sent to a 3rd grade remedial math class to see if you can keep up with 8-year-olds doing flash cards.

Source: The Balance

________________________________

* It’s heartwarming to know that the new budget just squeezed out of the Congress cuts $21 billion in funding from the IRS. That was a critical thing for Republicans. Two points about that:

  1. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that hobbling the ability to go after tax cheats will result in $40 billion in lost revenue, resulting in an increase to the debt of $19 billion.
  2. Gotta answer this question: Why was it so important for the Republicans to inhibit the IRS from chasing down rich tax crooks? Hint: Can you say “donors” boys and girls?
  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

Potpourri v18.0


Silence
This is for those Republicans quietly whining in their closets about right wing extremists: you really should be speaking up.
.
You should have voted for a Democrat to be Speaker of the House instead of voting for spineless Kevin McCarthy. You should have been speaking out against Trump’s outrages and those of the alt-right for years, maybe for decades, because you know the difference between right and wrong. Right?
.
Your closet whining instead of speaking up probably helped you keep”the base” votes,  I suppose, but at what cost to your integrity, your legacy and our republic? What will you tell your grandchildren?
.
From Heather Cox Richardson:
.

That today’s Republican leaders have not condemned any of [Trump’s] attempts to cheat speaks volumes about the party. As Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) pointed out [on March 22], when “[Michael] Cohen was arrested, indicted, convicted, and went to prison for participating in an illegal hush money payment scheme to Stormy Daniels, not a single Republican leader complaining now said a thing about what happened to Michael Cohen.” So why the rush to defend Trump in the same case?

From Ella Wheeler Wilcox, author, poet and activist, 1850 – 1919:

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

Democracy

I’m not partisan by nature, but the past 40 years have made me a non-Republican, as that party ran headlong into autocracy mania. Even so-called traditional Republicans have ducked and run from what is actually conservative, leaving Democrats the only ones to vote for if we still want a democracy.

Yoda

I get that keeping our democracy is far too ethereal to be sufficiently motivating to most Americans to get them out to vote. We prefer not to expend the effort to be aware of anything not in our immediate lives. It’s just a human being thing. But here’s the real deal: Keeping our democracy is the only way to preserve what we call our American values. “On that everything depends,” said Yoda.

Accountability

What if we actually believed what so proudly we hail about our virtues, values and beliefs – like accountability?

Last week was the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush’s second faithless war. We lost 4,400 Americans in Iraq. More important, they lost everything. We saw 32,000 of our people wounded. Nobody knows how many of our returning vets committed suicide or are still living on our streets two decades later. And, of course, nobody knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or how many millions are still refugees.

Bush looked for an excuse to invade Iraq as far back as 1999, two years before he took office. He wanted to be seen as a strong “commander in chief.” That would ensure his 2004 re-election, and, of course, that was what was most important. Pay no attention to the dead bodies in his wake.

All that death and suffering was based on Bush’s quicksand foundation of lies, fear mongering and his reprehensible swagger. Here’s just a tiny sampling.

Lies

Lie #1: Saddam was a really bad guy and had to be removed. Actually, it isn’t a lie to say Saddam was a bad guy. What was a lie was that Bush contended that was enough of a reason to topple him. There are a lot of other bad guy leaders in the world, but, oddly enough, we don’t depose them for being bad guys.

Lie #2: Saddam was in cahoots with al Qaeda, the bad guys who attacked us on 9/11. Actually, the al Qaeda group was fanatically religious and Saddam was entirely secular. They hated one another. Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

Lie #3: The Iraqis will receive us as liberating heroes and will pay us for the war with their oil. Except those Iraqis who were killed or tortured or forced to become refugees – we’re not heroes to them. And their oil was never ours to take.

Lie #4: Waterboarding isn’t torture and torture is legal. No point in elaborating – you already know.

Fear Mongering

Bush told us that Saddam Hussein is “this close” to having weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”). Actually, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission was continuing its search for WMDs in Iraq before our invasion and had found nothing to indicate that Saddam had any such weapons or was working to acquire them.

From Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice: “.  .  . we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Seriously, she said that over-the-top, scare everyone into compliance outrage.

Covert CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed by Dick Cheney because her husband, Amb. Joseph Wilson, unmasked Bush’s and Coliin Powell’s lies about yellow cake and aluminum tubes. That didn’t even momentarily pause the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld march to war. And our almost entirely lapdog Fourth Estate, our press, forgot that it was supposed to be a check on government.

Our Congress bought the lies and fear mongering and voted an Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which Bush was all too eager to use. Congress is only now moving to end that authorization.

Swagger

Bush swaggered across the aircraft carrier flight deck wearing a flight suit, flight helmet under his arm, following his being nothing more than a passenger for the aircraft carrier landing. He stood in front of his false and embarrassing MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner, even as our troops were being blown up by roadside bombs, IEDs and more. The war dragged on for years after that. I guess that mission wasn’t quite accomplished after all.

There weren’t any WMDs. There never were. There never were going to be. The WMDs existed only in the fraud perpetrated on millions of duped people so that Bush could be commander-in-chief in wartime and get re-elected. Plus, Cheney could acquire no bid contracts for Halliburton, but that’s another story. The key story is the death, the wounding and disfigurement and the miserable displacement of millions, all for a fraud.

Two decades later not a single Bush administration liar has been held accountable. Dick Cheney sneers on, without a heart, both figuratively and literally. Bush paints bad portraits of veterans, dogs and world leaders and sells them for ridiculous prices. Condoleeza Rice is the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Cushy for all, except for an America without accountability.

Here’s the truth about what happened. And watch Rob Reiner’s movie Shock and Awe.

Healthcare Capitalism

Let’s give credit where it’s due: Trump’s childishly named “Operation Warp Speed” worked. We gave vaccine producers the up front money to create new vaccines to protect us from the new, not well understood SARS‑CoV‑2 coronavirus that was killing people at a devastating pace. Indeed, we gave Moderna $12 billion for research and development of their vaccine. That has earned the company over $40 billion over just the past two years. In other words, we paid for the risky up front costs and Moderna has reaped the benefits. Now Moderna has a surprise for us.

Said Senate Health Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT),

“Here is the thank you the taxpayers of this country received from Moderna for that huge investment: They are thanking the taxpayers of America by proposing to quadruple the price.”

The part I loved best is that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), former CEO of a private investment firm, said that Moderna is an example of capitalism at its best.

Moderna has just one successful product, the mRNA coronavirus vaccine, the R & D for which We the People paid. Our government funding of Moderna to produce that vaccine was not a fine example of capitalism.

It was pure socialism!
.

Remember: that vaccine socialism was powered by chief socialist, Republican Donald Trump. O’, those evil socialist Republicans!

Debt Ceiling Update

That’s Congress as Dastardly Whiplash, who tied the U.S to the tracks. Click the pic

“Good” Republicans dither while others (the suicidal crazies) continue to threaten to default on and extinguish the full faith and credit of the United States of America. They’ve tied the country to the tracks and we can hear the locomotive coming. It’s just a few months off and the crazies continue to behave as though future spending negotiations have something to do with paying the bills for what Congress itself already bought. Read this explainer to understand that our debts must not only be paid, but that they must not even be questioned. Better yet: send the link to your representative in Congress.

“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going”

     – Irwin Corey (American Stand-up Comic 1914-2017)

Many thanks to friend and futurist David Houle for the reminder.

A Question From The Future

“Hey Mom and Dad – is it really true that a while back people could be denied health insurance and healthcare just because they had a pre-existing condition? No way, right?”

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

What’s Going to Happen


I’ve been worrying about politically driven domestic violence for a long time. We have shootings every day and, of course, there was a full-on insurrection on January 6, 2021, where people were badly wounded, some died that day and others died on subsequent days. Many continue to carry scars and debilitating injuries from that attack.

That the seditious coup didn’t work found the thousands leaving the vandalized Capitol Building saying that the assault had been a valuable “dress rehearsal.” Those people haven’t all gone to prison and they haven’t all gone away or changed their minds. They are vipers waiting to attack.

Since the insurrection, the drumbeat of undisguised calls to violence by elected leaders and big mouths with megaphones has been ramped up and it takes many forms.

It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Mean Girls) calling for a “national divorce.”

It’s the proliferation of assault weapon pins, neckties and more in Congress. And it’s Lauren Boebert (R-Hunter/Killer) and many other Republicans refusing to enter the House through the magnetometers.

It’s dictator Victor Orbán speaking at CPAC and calling for the destruction of our Constitutional norms.

It’s the eerie silence of the so-called moderates who have gone AWOL in this hour of our nation’s need.

It’s Tucker the Lying Lunatic, Alex Jones the Evil Bozo and the rest of the foul commenters blasting incendiary idiocy every night and every day, instructing listeners to “Take back our country.” Angry people are listening to these sewer mouths and preparing for “Second Amendment remedies.“

It’s Trump at CPAC declaring himself, “Your retribution” for those who feel they’ve been “wronged or betrayed.”

That last is truly stunning, as it calls on everyone with a perceived grievance – victim-hood lovers – to hit back, to attack the meanies who they think did them wrong. It’s about exactly what Trump said: retribution. Read Sheila Markin’s post for additional clarity on that.

This is about every American who thinks/feels they’ve been wronged either directly or through neglect and disrespect. And there are millions of Americans who are angry just llke that and they want to respond with violence. Plus, they think they are the true patriots. And Trump validates them and their victim-hood, making clear that he will lead them to attack.

This is exacerbated by the liars claiming they didn’t lose their elections (Trump, Kari Lake, Blake Masters and the rest). They claim it’s because of massive voter fraud driven by Democrats, RINOs, the “elites,” the “global cabal” – the grand collusion of bad guys. They claim fraudulently, “I won massively, but I was cheated.” *

That victim-hood and its attendant anger and resentment are stoked by the losers saying not just that their election was stolen, but that they were cheated and that the people who voted for them are victims of the crime, too. “You didn’t get what you wanted – ME! Look what they did to YOU!” they tell their supporters. And that multiplies the anger of already angry people. Worse, the losers who refuse to concede are hailed as courageous heroes, undaunted by the evil ones who cheated them and their voters.

What do you think millions of aggrieved people are going to do with that when their candidates lose the next election?

Self-serving politicians (we see you, Ron DeSantis) exploit these angry people by telling them lies about assaults on their children’s education, the danger to them from the unwashed hordes of illegal immigrants coming to take jobs from real Americans, the unholy LGBTQ poisoning of our country, the assaults on their freedom from mask mandates and lock downs, the lies about vaccines and the money they’re taxed that goes to undeserving freeloaders. That’s what they’re told by those slime ball politicians.

What do you think millions of aggrieved people are going to do with that when their candidates lose the next election?

I believe that we are headed for a prolonged period of greatly worsened domestic violence done by home grown terrorists and efforts by some states to secede from the union.

I hope our law enforcement assets are preparing for a very bad 2024 and 2025, but too many of the people in blue would likely be on the side of the violent ones. I think a lot of people are going to die.

Yes, of course I’m being histrionic and vying for the title of Drama King. Just because it happened in Germany in the 1930s as most people were denying what was in plain sight doesn’t mean it will happen here, even as Trump and MAGAs stomp on our values in plain sight.

And none of that will matter if it turns out that I got this right.

More on Thugocracy

One of the ways violence works is to intimidate people into self-censorship, self-immobilization. It’s what Trump does to silence critics when he brutalizes opponents. Just the threat of his verbal violence and the implication of physical violence by Trump’s vicious followers muzzles people who should be speaking up.

There have been arguments over whether Merrick Garland should investigate, indict and prosecute Trump. “Don’t prosecute,” they say, this in order to avoid violence, which, of course, is a cave-in to thugocracy. You might want to check on how such a cave in worked for Britain and all of Europe following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s visit to Munich in 1938.

There will be violence regardless of whether Garland prosecutes. That isn’t a happy picture, but we cannot deny that reality and we must never give in to the thugs. Appeasement never works.

If we give in to the thugs, our rights and our safety are permanently gone and so is our democracy.

National Park Service photo Jan 20, 2017. Click the pic

_____________________________

* Recall that following Trump’s 2017 inauguration he and all of his mouthpieces declared repeatedly that he had the greatest attendance for any inauguration. Ever. Period! They continued to say that, even in the face of the National Park Service photographs of the mostly empty National Mall as Trump was speaking.

Half the seats at CPAC were empty as Trump spoke.

Trump did a repeat performance of that lie following his talk at the CPAC convention this month, claiming there was standing room only to hear him. Here’s a pic of that half-empty “SRO” room as he was speaking. That can be considered nothing more than perverse entertainment for people living on Earth 1, but it’s more sinister than that.

Trump is declaring that his refusal of reality continues and he is leading his minions to spout the same “alternative facts,” which is nothing but truth and reality denying craziness. Unless we stop them, they will take over our country on January 20, 2025 and that will be the darkest day in the history of the United States.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

Maybe We Should Try It


Thanks for this, Jim Nathan

Final Comments of President Biden’s State of the Union Address, February 7, 2023

“And finally, to my Republican partners I say – and this is from the heart – no joke: cut the crap.

“Stop the brinkmanship over the debt ceiling. Not even you are dumb enough to pull that stupid default stunt again. I hope. Besides, Americans are locked and loaded to blame you for the consequences if you dummy this up.

“You want to talk policy? Great. Let’s go. We need to talk about spending and taxes. We need to talk about immigration. We need to talk about education and global warming and national defense. We need to find the best solutions to these issues and more so that we deliver for the American people.

“But if instead of developing policy that will help our nation and our people, all you want to do is to spread hatred, to demonize and to stoke culture wars – you know: the malignancies you grow – you’re no partner at all. In fact, you’re an enemy of the American people.

“But you don’t have to be.

“Choose whose side you’re on. I’ll be pulling for you to choose the side of America and Americans. Here’s a good way to show you’re on the right side.

“The Founders declared this to be a democracy. So, put on your originalist hat and reverse all your voter suppression crap. All of it. Pass laws that make that happen all across this land. And no, we’re not going to negotiate that.

“Oh, and that balloon thing. We couldn’t have learned anything about its capabilities, what it surveilled or how it worked if we had blasted it out of the sky as soon as it crossed into our airspace, making it crash on land. It would have become an unintelligible pile of junk. That’s why we shot it down over water. We want the counter-intelligence. Get it? So, get a grip, join Team National Security and cut the tough guy bombastic crap.

“We have big challenges to tackle and big opportunities to champion. And there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.

You believe that, right?

“May God bless America and God bless our troops.”

Democracy

There are many zealots on the right, especially the far right, who attack the fundamentals of our democracy. Some openly promote autocracy. They assault our institutions that are designed to protect this experiment in self-rule and, in doing so, they establish themselves as the enemies of democracy. Yet we have to look at this as a system.

Can this be a democracy when in 2010 the Supreme Court, through gross manipulation of the Citizens United case, gave unlimited power to corporations and wealthy people? The Court has allowed and even encouraged them to have dramatic influence on our elections. Those big money spenders have vastly more power than you do. So much for one person, one vote.

Can this be a democracy when state legislatures practice and the Supreme Court encourages gross gerrymandering, such that elections aren’t elections at all? Those gerrymandered districts take the vote right out of your hands. They take away your voice and your power.

Can this be a democracy when before every election more and more citizens are cast off voting roles so that only the voters chosen by those in power are allowed to vote?

Can this be a democracy when polling places and early voting ballot drop boxes are located in such inconvenient locations that some people, chosen by those in power, are physically unable to vote?

Can this be a democracy when formerly incarcerated people are told they can vote, but they can’t exercise that right until they pay fines and fees they can’t afford? Note that the Constitution doesn’t make the right to vote contingent upon one’s state of freedom or the payment of fines or fees. The franchise is wholly independent from such restrictions.

Can this be a democracy when a political party has, at best, made itself subservient to White supremacy and at worst has promoted hatred so as to intimidate our citizens to keep them from voting or working in election related positions?

This list could be longer, but surely you get the point that we have institutionalized the practice of limiting who gets to vote and selecting who gets outsized election influence. We have thereby predetermined who has power and who does not. That’s our system. It’s as heinous as poll taxes or a jelly bean jar at a Jim Crow polling place.

Democracy is a lovely idea. Maybe we should try it.

Quotations

Abba Eban, Israeli statesman and ambassador, addressed the United Nations in June, 1967, saying,

” .  .  .  men and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Often attributed to Winston Churchill,

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”

Perhaps we have at last tried enough failed paths and can resume the originally intended course.

______________________________

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


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

Theocracy Is Just A Tool


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Revolution, John Lennon

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

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox

______________________________

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


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

The Through-Line


Last Sunday’s post dealt with the goal of extremist Republicans: destruction. They want to destroy democracy and replace it with autocracy – fascism. They want to destroy the Constitution and replace it with some tool of absolute power only for themselves. They want to destroy facts and truth and replace them with propaganda and self-serving fictions – “alternative facts” – which, as you know, are lies wearing an enemy uniform.

And they don’t care who gets hurt. That was perfectly captured by Trump’s soon-to-be-indicted lawyer, John Eastman, who, at the rally of insurrection on January 6, 2021, proudly declared, “We’re kicking ass and taking names!” I guess that works happily for the kickers, but not so much for the kick-ees. The bad news is that you are intended by the extremists to be one of the kick-ees.

This post is my promised through-line offering to help to explain this behavior, why the self-righteous extremists would want destruction.

I believe this is driven by a primitive, tribal fear of “others.” It is intentionally exclusionary of those not of “our clan.” It is a defense against anything different, anything that might upset what is familiar and feels safe. It is existential tribal warfare.

We pick up a major thread of this to use as example: our 400-year habit of persecuting Blacks. They are different, as White supremacists will have you know. We have bounced around hating many “others” over the centuries, too, including indigenous people (happily misnamed “Indians”), Asians, Irish, Italians, Jews, Catholics and more – really any group that isn’t Anglo-Saxon Protestant and even some who are. The problem now is that Whites are losing their place as our majority racial group and – gasp! – some of those other people have already secured some rights for themselves. Even women! If this is a zero sum game as so many believe, what’s a frightened White supremacist to do?

My stab at understanding this is aided by the pages of Andy Borowitz’s Profiles in Ignorance (see Fine Print #5 below):

“In 2020, Stuart Stevens, who worked on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, published It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. Stevens points out what few Republicans have acknowledged: the views that people find abhorrent in Trump make him not the antithesis of Reagan but his rightful successor. “What happens if you spend decades focused on appealing to whites and treating nonwhite voters with, at best, benign neglect?” Stevens asks.

“You get good at doing what it takes to appeal to white voters. That is the truth that led to what is famously called “the southern strategy.” That is the path that leads you to becoming what the Republican Party now proudly embraces: a white grievance party .  .  . Today, in the age of Donald Trump, the most openly racist president since Andrew Johnson or his hero Andrew Jackson (to the extent a know-nothing narcissist is capable of having a hero), many Republicans who find Trump repulsive or at least consider him abrasive and uncouth hark back to Reagan as the standard compared with whom Trump is woefully inadequate .  .  .

But in the area of race, there is a direct line from the more genteel prejudice of Ronald Reagan to the white nationalism of Donald Trump.”

“As for Reagan’s ‘civility and personal grace,’ as Peter Wehner put it, which Reagan, exactly, was he describing? The one who used racist dog whistles like ‘states’ rights’ and ‘welfare queen’? The one who said, of student protesters, ‘If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with’? The one who wished that California’s hungry would contract botulism? The one who permitted his press secretary to turn AIDS into a joke? The one who called African leaders cannibals and monkeys? The Party of Reagan seems pretty recognizable to me [now].”

The through-line also picks up grievances against government. “Government is the problem,” declared Reagan at all campaign stops and at his first inaugural. It moves that line through Trump’s efforts to undermine all government, leading the way to today’s Republican Rabid Rabies Caucus. They amplify America’s original sin in order to appeal to White voters. They pick at the scabs of both real and imagined grievances, giving people something to use to justify their tribal fear-turned-to-anger-turned-to-hatred.

It didn’t start with Reagan. He was hundreds of years too late to have begun that. What he did do is to pick up the ball that Richard Nixon had carried (his “Southern Strategy”) and run way downfield with it. That was “Saint Ronny,” as the myopic, “O’ for the good old days” folks call him, but there was nothing saintly about him.

Pogo was right

Be clear that this post looks mostly at the issue of race being used to polarize our citizens. The important part is that this and more were used to lead to a violent attempt to end our democracy, commit murders and subjugate our people. Worse, some of our elected officials participated in this attempted coup to destroy our country. Here’s a list of the 147 Congressional dishonorables who violated their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. They instead chose to surrender their honor and integrity to a would-be tyrant in order to serve their petty selfishness. And they’re still doing that.

History is full of examples of self-serving dishonorables who stoke fear and hatred in order to seize power for themselves. Our challenge today is that many of our dishonorables are still in positions of power and influence. They stoke amygdala stimulated fear and hatred of “others” – that primitive tribal thing – and seek to crush E Pluribus Unum.

That is the through-line.

I’m not sure that John Lewis was right when he declared powerfully, “We’re better than this.”

But we could be.

Finally, this Great Trampling of Rights is well underway by these tribal terrorists. That’s what all the destruction is about. If a right is to endure, there must be a mechanism to ensure it against these assaults. So, here’s a question for us and for our rights:

What is a right without a remedy?

It seems to me that the remedy is up to us.

  • __________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!

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


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

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    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

Bolts


The call and response could go this way:

What do we want?

Certainty!

When do we want it?

Now!

We humans prefer predictability. It makes us feel secure. We aren’t such frightened little bunnies when we know what we can count on today and tomorrow, too. Sadly, we live in a world that simply isn’t all that predictable, due in part to the ever-accelerating rate of change in our world of non-stop breaking news.

America has always had a share of its citizenry who mouthed the words of support for democracy but didn’t really like or support it. That majority rule thing means that sometimes some people don’t get what they want. Some people just can’t handle not getting what they want all the time.

Plus, everything takes so much longer to decide and to do when everything is effectively a function of a committee, which is what democracy implies. Besides, some people don’t like to share and want all the power for themselves. They operate under the assumption that the “others” are too lazy or ignorant or less worthy somehow, so power grabbing by them, the “more equals,” just makes sense to them. And it’s so very self-satisfying.

We tried that anti-democracy thing with King George III at the top of the power pyramid and didn’t like that too much. That led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, saying that we’d rather do that ruling thing ourselves.

It was intended to include all of us (eventually). But anti-democracy is really attractive to some, especially in the face of change and uncertainty.

Last September 11 the New York Times published an opinion piece by Elizabeth Rush entitled What Antarctica’s Disintegration Asks Of Us. She calls for having a different attitude toward this aspect of climate warming, yet my big takeaway was just one sentence in her piece:

“How do we go on living when the very things we once depended upon have become undependable?”

We are decades past the time when it became clear that we are killing ourselves and our planet on the installment plan, one tank of gas at a time, yet practically nothing has been done to ameliorate the problem. Not long ago there were the Paris Climate Accords and we earthlings have a perfect record. Of the 195 nations pledging specific action to deal with global warming, not even one country has kept its promise and most haven’t done a thing.

The Anasazi cliff dwellers lived for over 1,000 years in what is now southwest Colorado. It was a very dry climate, yet they managed to grow crops and scratch out their existence. It had always worked for them.

Right up until it didn’t.

One day between 1275 and 1300 A.D. they left. They didn’t leave a note about why they were departing or where they were going.

Something had become undependable. Best guess: years of drought forced them to leave in order to find a place where there could be a dependable supply of food and water.

The Anasazi liked dependability and predictability just as much as we do today. But they had an existential problem, so they made a decision and all of them left. Nobody knows how they came to their decision, but if drought was the impetus, what they had to do probably looked fairly obvious. Other times, solutions don’t look as obvious and decisions are difficult and slow to be made.

Now we’re facing a challenge every bit as dire as that of the Anasazi and increasingly as obvious. The Antarctica glacier that Elizabeth Rush and the scientific and journalistic team investigated is melting and has the volume to raise sea levels 10 feet. Say good-bye to all coastal cities on the globe. Nobody knows what other climate changes that much sea level rise could trigger.

The question we are going to have to answer is whether we will allow our democracy to solve this riddle. Doing so will be much slower than by authoritarian dictum. Also, it will likely be better reasoned and actually workable. That’s what happens when extra wisdom is applied.

You’ve watched would-be authoritarians over the past years and even now, as they work tirelessly to undermine democracy in order to grab power for themselves. They want to solve problems by fiat.

As of this writing Kari Lake is continuing to say that she will refuse the election results in the Arizona gubernatorial election if she doesn’t win. That’s the very stuff of authoritarianism. Would you trust Kari Lake or anyone like her to make life and death decisions for you or for our nation?

Now, for a collision of muddled metaphors.
.

We don’t have certainty and we will never have it. The people trying to sell you their authoritarian bucket of bolts are calling it dependability and predictability and saying theirs is the best answer. They are singing a siren song to lure you to crash on the slippery rocks of authoritarianism. They claim theirs is the patriotic way and that all you have to do to secure their promise for yourself, to have the predictability you crave, is to surrender your freedom and your voice.

They will be trying to get you to bite into their poison apple two years from now. If there is any certainty anywhere, some of them will be doing that every two years for the rest of your life. So, always be prepared with your decision.

Otherwise, you’ll be left clutching slimy authoritarian rocks and holding a bucket of worthless bolts.

Covid Update

No, it hasn’t gone away. Here’s an updated chart of daily Covid deaths:

We endured thousands of daily Covid deaths for over two years. Then magical vaccines came along, rationed first to healthcare workers, then to the elderly entrapped in nursing facilities and at last to the general public and there was a drastic reduction in Covid deaths. We still lost over 400 of our fellow citizens every day to this pandemic for a long time. As you can see from the chart, the daily death count began to decline in late October and is now below 300.

The fact remains that over 95% of the people who die from Covid every day are or were vaccine refusers. The same percentage applies to those sick enough to be hospitalized but who don’t die. Meanwhile, you do the math on how very few would die from Covid if vaccine refusal went away.

295 people dead from Covid every day is better than before, but hardly something to celebrate.

Oh, wait – we’ve already moved on and are now paying no attention to Covid at all. There are too many fresh distractions every day in this hyped up, always-breaking-news environment for us to stay focused on any one thing for very long. So, no celebration.

Ukraine Update

Ukrainian troops have recaptured the city of Kherson in the southeast of Ukraine along the Dnipro River where it empties into the Black Sea. Russian troops ran away from the advance of liberating Ukrainian troops and the Ukrainian flag flies in that city once again. It appears we’re coming closer to the day when President Zelenskyy can demand Putin’s surrender, as outlined last March.

Ukrainian flag is raised in Kherson with President Zelenskyy attending – 14 Nov 2022. Click the pic.

————————————

Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:

Fire the bastards!

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

JA


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

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