fascism

First They Came


POST 1220

No One Left To Speak

From friend Jay Becker of Refuse Fascism:

[Over] just a few days, here in Chicago, masked, heavily armed federal agents:
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– fired toxic pepper balls and tear gas at [non-violent] protesters in Broadview;
– shot a woman in Brighton Park;
 – carried out a military style assault on an apartment building housing Black and brown working people in South Shore;
– raided a homeless shelter in Bronzeville;
– marauded through crowds of families on Michigan Avenue, kidnapping those that fit their racial profiling, and more.
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And this is just in one city. The same scenes are playing out in DC, Memphis, Portland and L.A., and the list of cities Trump wants to use for “military training” grows. And this is just a sample of the civil and human rights trampled on by this fascist regime. Read more here.
.

Lawrence Dietz wrote a stunning piece to put into perspective what is happening in our country. He has given me permission to post his essay here for you. You know the first part.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

— c. 1946, Rev. Martin Niemōller, arrested by the Gestapo in 1937

and liberated in 1945

First they came for Latino illegal immigrants, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Latino.

Then they came for the comedians who make fun of them, and I did not speak out — because I was not a comedian.

Then they got an executive order to punish any group they call “terrorist,” including liberal political groups who oppose them — and I did not speak out, because I do not belong to any of those groups.

Next, they can come for me, a geezer who has posted critical social media comments about them — and who will be left to speak for me?

The “they” Niemōller referred to who came and arrested innocent citizens in Germany was the Gestapo. They always arrived in overwhelming numbers of thugs to abuse, terrify and arrest people who had done nothing wrong. Those incarcerated just weren’t fine Aryan specimens, so it was easy to scapegoat and abuse them. That’s a lot like our Latino immigrants today.

And that’s exactly what happened in Chicago last Tuesday.

From Reuters:

U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.

As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.

Hundreds of agents swarmed the apartment building during the raid on Tuesday, including some rappelling down to the roof from Black Hawk helicopters, according to NewsNation.

One resident, who asked not to be named, reported being made to lie down on the ground by agents during the raid and having his hands zip-tied.

From Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s post on October 3:

The escalating raids on undocumented immigrants are also running afoul of the law. Tuesday’s raid on an apartment building in Chicago, in which residents, including U.S. citizens, were detained, has galvanized opposition. Today, after reports that children were zip tied, separated from their parents, and detained for several hours .  .  .

Click and read

The goals seem quite clear. First, to rid the country of Black and Brown people. Second, to terrorize the citizenry so we won’t fight back, but instead will obey in advance. It’s all to establish a dictatorship for the benefit of Trump, his sycophants and the fabulously wealthy. That’s called fascism.

Enemies Of The People, Invasion From Within

That’s the terminology that violent, hatred-driven, maniacal dictators use to snuff opposition. Trump has been using it for years. Like all megalomaniacs, he thinks it justifies persecution by making hatred seem patriotic.

And it kills.

In his rambling, often incoherent speech to 800 generals and admirals (link here for the entire tirade) who were pulled from duty from around the world, Trump lied,  “We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy.” He said that the US military could use American cities as “training grounds” for troops, as they battle “the enemy from within.”

Trump is right about one thing: we do have an enemy within. It’s Trump and his maniacal army of fanatics. They are systematically dismantling our government for their own benefit and to your detriment.

If you aren’t Black or Brown don’t imagine that you’re safe and will stay that way. Jews, Muslims, Asians and more have long been in Trump’s crosshairs. Not far behind will be Catholics, all native people, Mormons – essentially anyone who isn’t Aryan Christian. When they come for you – and they will come – do you suppose there will be anyone left to speak for you?

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Real Charlie Kirk


POST 1217

It is one of our more peculiar behaviors in America. I don’t know if it’s common in other cultures, but it is pervasive here.

When someone dies we only speak of that person in complimentary ways. We never mention the meanness, the cruelty, the bad things done by the departed. I suppose the refraining of speaking ill of the dead hearkens back to some jungle admonition that doing so will lead to becoming the next to die. Just a guess.

This is crazy stuff because when people die their acts of cruelty don’t suddenly vanish as though they didn’t happened.

When Adolph Eichmann at last faced accountability and was executed by the State of Israel, it would have been insanity for acquaintances to eulogize him, saying what a good neighbor he was. He was a genocidal murderer and that didn’t un-happen because he was at last dead.

Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Should we only speak of him as a great party host and a guy who provided employment for young girls wanting to become models or masseuses? Ridiculous. And I don’t think we should do that selective amnesia following Charlie Kirk’s death, either.

Charlie Kirk was a hateful man. Whatever his finer qualities might have been, he stoked hatred and wrapped it in the covers of a Christian bible. He was the guy about whom we were warned by the quotation, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”* That’s how Kirk presented himself to spread his infection of hatred to others.

He spoke in ways Jesus would likely have found abhorrent. Check with your pastor on that. Kirk encouraged bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia and more. He spoke in ways that would have gotten him tarred and feathered by our Founders.

Our unhinged far right is crafting him into a martyr for their cause of White supremacy and faux Christianity, They present him as a hapless victim of those who weren’t their truly heartfelt brothers and sisters in hatred, like lefties, Democrats, liberals, protesters, Never Trumpers and others. That deification ignores the reality of Kirk’s hatred.

Fortunately, there’s no need for me to recount his calls to discrimination and domination because there is a rich public record of them. Watch this little compilation and decide for yourself if Kirk is the true red, White and blue Jesus replacement.

For those who have an uncontrollable need to whatabout everything, for those who hear something they don’t like and maniacally have to object that it’s unfairly out of context, let me say from my heart, “Get over yourself.” Watch the video of the little man with a fine intellect, great showman talents and the skills to bring out the great ugliness within our White supremacists, their very worst angels. Then decide if Kirk was a true patriot and a holy warrior and if his death was a messianic moment.

The far right is in an orgy of indignation over the murder, seething with self-righteousness and certain in their holiness and virtue, as they demonize any with the temerity to oppose them. They have next to no facts to support their claims, nor is that lack of facts an impediment to their judgment or a cause to question their blaming. And they must have someone to blame. For them it is a holy war, all praise to the Great Orange Demented One and all honor to the martyr! Nothing kills like a holy war.

To our White supremacists: Should you believe in some justification for Kirk’s deification, please don’t write to me about it. Don’t enter your brain mashing rationalizations in the Comments section below. Just walk away quietly – please, quietly – down the sidewalk, never letting others know of the hatred and violence you harbor and covet. Better yet, get yourself into some anger management program or psychotherapy.

Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to be murdered. He didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of political hatred and violence, even though he stoked it with his own words. But Charlie Kirk most definitely deserves our wide-eyed recognition that his being murdered didn’t purify him of his evils and it hasn’t made him a good man. He remains in death the hatred stoker that he was in life.

That’s the real Charlie Kirk.

_____________________________________

New York Times, April 9, 1944

Click me

* That quotation is often attributed to Sinclair Lewis because of the message of his 1935 book, It Can’t Happen Here, or possibly to Huey Long. But the actual source is unknown. Nevertheless, we see today that it is true and accurate.

For more, see the profile by Henry Wallace, FDR’s second vice-president. Click and read his clear explanation from 1944. He knew a lot about fascism, as we were in the last year of the war to defeat fascism when he wrote his essay. He was accurate and correct then and he still is now.

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A Message For Our Time


POST 1214

Where We Left Off On Sunday

From John Pavlovitz’s September 12 post, The Shameful Christian Idolatry and Fraudulent Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk:

“Kirk has left a hateful, dehumanizing legacy of words that Conservative Christians are either choosing to ignore in their zeal to canonize him, or they simply share his racist, phobic, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, supremacist sentiments, and in Trump’s garish, Jesus-less remodeling of the Christian faith in America, now imagine them righteous.”

“Jesus’ central command was to love. How exactly did Kirk love immigrants and people of color and women and Trans teens and Muslims and Democrats and atheists?”

Read Pavlovitz’s full comments here. And refer to the footnote in my Sunday post for accurate descriptors of Kirk. Then you won’t be too quick to canonize this man who was full of messianic delirium and hatred for anyone not precisely like himself. He infected our young people with his charismatic thumping, but Kirk is no martyr for Jesus. Maybe he just smoked too much of his own weed, swam in his own juice, sang his own songs until they were all he recognized. Elmer Gantry was delirious over the delusion of the faithful, too.

The young were fooled too easily by Kirk. It is important that we help them to be un-fooled and that we ourselves not be fooled by any charlatan.

Wait.

Is mine the lefty “savage rhetoric” Trump says led to Kirk’s death? Am I one whom Trump has vowed to go after, one “who contributed to this atrocity” even in my ignorance of Kirk?

I repeat that before the murder I knew nothing of Charlie Kirk and never spoke of or wrote about him. But Trump’s cosplay Wild West retribution macho-ness likely won’t differentiate my former ignorance from some imagined “savage rhetoric,” so woe be unto me for whatever it is I didn’t do, because Trump is way, way through the looking glass and my ignorance will be no defense.

“Off with my head!” will the Putin puppet king demand, needing a constant river of blood for his unquenchable thirst. He’s like the mad king in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, maniacally gouging hearts from chests.

Given Trump’s continuing willingness to be played by Putin, do you think Putin really has Trump’s pee tapes? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s just Trump’s paranoia exacerbated by his dementia. Regardless, Trump is gleefully dismantling everything good about America, including cancer research and our individual health.

Did I mention something about charlatans? We should never allow a charlatan to have any power.

Where Are The Heroes?

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a Jewish new year and a wake up call to the realities of life and death, retired Rabbi Rami imagined how he would lead services and offered this closing:

A period of silent meditation will follow our discussion, after which I will distribute shofarot (ram’s horns), each with a taped message inspired by the one Woody Guthrie attached to his guitars in the mid-1940s: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. Ours would say, THIS HORN FIGHTS FASCISM. Those who are able would step outside to blow the horn and wake the neighborhood to the threat of fascism, while those unable to walk would do the same inside. The entire service would last no more than two hours and conclude with a communal shout of “In a place without heroes, be a hero!” – Rabbi Hillel

If Rabbi Rami has it right, in these most fraught of times, with danger and the promise of rising evil all about, when we desperately need heroes, how will you be a hero?

Give that some thought and post your notions – your promise to yourself and to the people you love – in the Comments section below to clarify your own thinking, to stimulate others’ thinking and to inspire people who need inspiration. That would be all of us.

To be clear, this invitation isn’t about being Jewish. In fact, it isn’t about religion at all. It is about the realities and threats to our lives right now, both individually, communally and nationally. It is about recognizing the dangers to our deepest values and the need for us to step up, to hear and respond to the clarion call to duty.

How will you be a hero?
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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Today’s American Crisis


POST 1210

I wrote recently asking, Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now? Clearly, I’m not the only one sounding the reality alarm, the point of which is to make clear that we are not in danger of some advancing fascism: we’re in it.

It’s poisoning us, our country, our children and the world with lies and cruelty and the theft of all we hold dear. “The cruelty is the point,” we’ve been told, and we’re too late to prevent that. But we aren’t powerless. We can take action to create the America we believe in, the one where you have full rights, where nobody can snatch you off the street and disappear you, where your children can see a good future for themselves and their children.

Chris Armitage wrote the playbook for what we know in our bones is right and good and actionable in his piece, I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.

That’s right: zero percent. Once entrenched, fascism lasts for miserable generation after miserable generation. Armitage documents that clearly and when you read his post you’ll know he’s right. This is one of the most frightening and realistic things I’ve read about our plight. It is oddly also one of the most hopeful.

Thomas Paine

His message is today’s version of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis*. You’ve known Paine’s clarion call to action since you were in high school. The first pamphlet in his series urging that we become an independent America, free from the whims of a mad king, begins, “THESE [sic] are the times that try men’s souls.”

Paine was right then and, indeed, our souls are severely tried again today. We are threatened every minute of every day by a king wannabee who is mad and cruel and who has surrounded himself with sycophants to rule over you for only their own benefit.

This is not a time for “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot,” but a time for We The People to take bold and courageous action. It is time for us to break free from the mesmerizing of baseball and football games, from the vapidity of unreal TV reality shows and from the rest of the escapes from our actual reality. It’s time for us to stand strong with new, powerful and deeply American action.

You need to read Armitage’s post. He’ll make clear what We The People can do. His paper is longer than most things you read and it is vital throughout. Read it. We The People need every member of your family to read it, too, including your crazy Uncle Bubba and Aunt Shoo-Shoo. We need your neighbors, your senators and your representative to read it.

Or we can wallow in the swamp of permanent powerlessness, subjected to the cruelty of mad despots. But we don’t want that. And we know that preventing that perversion of America won’t happen by wishing it away.

We are the people Emma Lazarus wrote about, the ones welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and by Lazarus’ words emblazoned on that bronze lady. We’re the people “yearning to breathe free.” It is up to us to ensure that we and all who count on us will, indeed, breathe free.

Read Armitage’s clarion call. Now.

Reality Quotes
    • Trump has murdered the concept of facts and truth. He has replaced both with a sick dogma, which has, at its core, a terrible truth: what is true is what Trump and his minions declare it to be.
    • Steve Schmidt, Clarity and Conviction, September 1, 2025

Reading together from page 1 of our Citizen Manual, “Nuh-uh. Not okay with us.”

    • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
  • John F. Kennedy
  • And that is why we must wake up to the possibilities that Chris Armitage details.

Full disclosure: I don’t know Chris Armitage. Until reading this essay I had never heard of him. I receive no value whatsoever for promoting his essay to you except the pleasure of perhaps making a smidgen of a difference for the betterment of us all.

Anticipatory Regret

What with the obvious physical and mental decline of Trump, my mind wandered to the national tradition of the honoring of dead presidents with a funeral procession. In my mind’s eye I can see the rolling caisson carrying the flag-draped casket of the deceased and the beautiful black stallion, riderless, with polished boots backward in the stirrups. I can see the military in their dress uniforms standing rigidly at attention and the flag hanging sadly at half staff. I can see a black clad widow standing forlornly as the procession passes.

I want none of that for Trump. He deserves none of the tradition and honoring. Plus, I don’t believe that Melania would shed a tear for this faithless man. But it will happen that Trump will be honored in this traditional way because that is what we do, regardless of his incompetence, malfeasance and treachery.

Perhaps it will be a positive thing for us, as we revive a cherished tradition for We The People. This is a time when most of our cherished traditions have been thrown to the dirt and awful people with dirty hearts have wiped their dirty shoes on them.

Perhaps Trump will die in his prison cell where he’s incarcerated for his conviction on 34 felony counts, where his sentence for theft of top secret materials and another sentence for his role in the January 6 insurrection will run concurrently for the next 30 years. If so, it will be bizarre to honor him with our tradition for presidents. I will regret that parade.

There was no traditional funeral procession upon the death of Richard Nixon; just a private ceremony. Perhaps Trump, yet another criminal president, will have the decency to do the same.

Nah. What was I thinking? That kind of decency could never come from Trump.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Those who cannot remember the past
  • are condemned to repeat it.
  • George Santayana, 1905
  • Keep Santayana’s words in mind
  • as you consider
  • the horrors of past fascisms.
  • Nothing so soon destroys freedom
  • as cowardly and servile acquiescence.
  • Clarence Darrow, 1941

    _________________________________________________

    * Paine’s essay was written in a day when people’s attention span had not yet been truncated by both an avalanche of information and the enslavement of us by electronic devices. He got away with publishing an essay that is several times the length of these Disambiguation posts. And the people read them.

  • I urge you to read The American Crisis to reconnect yourself in a most visceral way to the real America that you long for.

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now?


POST 1205

It’s About One Thing and One Thing Only

The Trump immigration cruelty, breaking of laws and the rest have nothing to do with immigration. They have nothing to do with the economy. They are unrelated to international trade or safe borders, disease prevention, ending war or the Nobel Peace Prize.

Click me for the story.

The cruelty is about getting rid of Brown and Black people, which is why ICE locks up even legal Brown American citizens and doesn’t discriminate between immigrants with or without a criminal record. In fact, ICE doesn’t even check for criminal records. They just kidnap people, zip-tie them and send them to a hell hole prison. Make America White Again!

The cruelty is about establishing public fear of Trump so that he has all the power. Even big law firms, major universities and financial institutions are chickening out and bending the knee for what they seem to believe is their short term advantage or perhaps protection from Trump’s cruelty.

That is compounded by Trump’s incremental militarization of our cities – notably only where there are Black mayors. Trump threatens several more cities with the deployment of our military and none of them is near the top of the list of cities with the most crime. He threatened New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, all Democratic strongholds with large African-American populations. They could be next and won’t that be a fine distraction from the withheld Epstein files?

Militarization is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.

During his first administration Trump ordered Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to have his troops “shoot [protesters] in the legs.” Milley refused, but now that Trump has fired the generals most likely to refuse his illegal orders and has replaced them with Trump sycophants, what do you suppose will happen when there are peaceful protests that Trump doesn’t like and they are surrounded by our troops carrying weapons of war?

That’s essentially what happened at Kent State in 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed peaceful protesters (full disclosure: they were saying mean things about the administration). Guardsmen killed four and injured nine kids. Who was the idiot who issued live ammunition?

Surely, Trump figures that fear will keep we rubes in line.

Again, this is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.

All of that is diabolically supported by a cowardly Republican controlled Congress and the Supreme Court that was hand picked by Trump. Whatever their beliefs, they are all receiving death threats from Trump thugs, making it most unlikely that they will stand up to him.

Every Trump outrage is about one thing and one thing only: Making Trump a king. Der Führer.

Can we drop the pretenses and denial now?

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Address of August 14*

In urging you to read her whole post, here’s an excerpt from Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s report of August 14.

Noting that “this time requires us to act anew, not just think anew,” Newsom nodded to President Abraham Lincoln’s famous call from 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

The Staples Singers

Trump bungled every aspect, every detail of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage on Friday. The bungling began even before the two met. Trump landed first and Putin showed up late, causing Trump to have to wait for him for nearly an hour, making Trump look like a chump.

Then Trump treated Putin to red carpet treatment and gave him a ride in the presidential “Beast.” At the end they parted, saying false, hollow niceties about one another and Mr. Art of the Deal flew away with no deal and with no pathway to a deal. Trump just plain got played by Putin – again. That affects all of us and, oddly, connects to The Staples Singers.

I listened to their wonderful hit Respect Yourself the other day and heard their message a bit differently than I did in 1972 when it topped the charts. Back then it was a message to our angry and disrespectful and the violence prone people, suffering  in the midst of great and largely justified public rage in our country. Today I heard it as a message to all of us to respect ourselves and one another by proudly standing up for what we know is right.

We know the Alaska meeting was wrong for America and the world. We know this Epstein stuff stinks 16 different ways, that disappearing people is wrong and awful and unlawful, that the assaults on our healthcare, the education of our children and the security of old people who paid into a system that now owes them are all wrong. And we know that abandoning Ukraine, giving it lies instead of munitions and turning our back on those embattled people is wrong on so many levels.

So, have a listen to Respect Yourself for a message – see if it speaks to you, giving you guidance for your actions today. And do, indeed, respect yourself.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Truth is on
  • the march
  • and nothing
  • can stop it
  • Émile Zola, 1898
  • We must always take sides.
  • Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
  • Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
  • Elie Wiesel, in Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1986
  • _______________________________________________
  • * Watch the entire session. This is what you’ve longed to hear. It will fill your heart and stiffen your spine with resolve.
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  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this 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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Potpourri v24.0


POST 1197

Car Sales And Trumponomics

Dr. Brian Beaulieu of ITR Economics is an economics and investments guru with a pretty good prognostication track record. He sees the chaos that is happening in our economy and sees the numbers. Here’s his recent report.

We did not have the June data for auto retail sales when I did my Fed Watch on Friday. Have it now. The May-to-June drop in domestically produced light duty vehicle retail sales was the worst spanning 60 years of data (including tough recessions) at -26.2%. For foreign produced light duty vehicles, the June drop was -39.6%, the most severe May-to-June decline in a history spanning 50 years.

The data is showing that:

1. Creating uncertainty is bad economic policy.

2. Playing whack-a-mole with tariffs is bad economic policy.

3. It may be possible to have a president come into office with economic policies that truly can disrupt the business cycle, at least temporarily.

You may not research what Beaulieu commonly does, but likely you know in your gut what he expertly shows us.

The Unlimited National Restoration About People’s Equity Act (UNRAPE) of 2025

Trump’s Big Barfy Betrayal Bill (BBBB) is a blatant transfer of trillions of dollars from poor and working class Americans to the very wealthiest in our very divided and economically grossly out of balance society. It is the biggest, but certainly not the first move to impoverish We The People entirely for the benefit of the very wealthy. It will leave most Americans feeling like they’ve been financially raped – yet again – because they have been. Indeed, $50 trillion (with a “T”) has gone from We the Regular People to the uber-rich over the last 40 years.

This is what oppressive governments do. The result is an impoverished populace with all power and most of the money in the hands of the insanely rich. It’s time to reverse that trend with this proposed bill.

TITLE I – WEALTH CLAWBACK

An annual 10% wealth tax is imposed on all persons having over $1 billion of net wealth. Let’s claw back, some of what they took from us.

TITLE II – FAIR SHARE

Federal personal income tax rates are hereby restored to those in effect when Ronald Reagan became President. The top tax rate then was 70% of income over $762,933 (in today’s dollars).

TITLE III – FEDERAL MINIMUM TAX

A minimum federal income tax rate of 20% is imposed on incomes over $1 million, regardless of the source of the income, whether filing individually or jointly, to ensure that very rich people who regularly use arcane tax exemption schemes not available to poor and middle class Americans pay their fair share.

TITLE IV – CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES – BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE ALONE

Corporate federal income tax rates are hereby restored to those in effect prior to the first of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. The maximum corporate tax rate of 35% will apply to corporations with taxable income over $10 million. Corporations with taxable income over $15 million will be subject to an additional tax of 3% of the excess over $15 million, or $179,000 (in today’s dollars), whichever is smaller. That was the first time in American history when taxes were cut during war time.

For reference, Donald Trump’s 2018 Tax Cut and Jobs Act created no additional jobs and added $1 to 2 trillion to the federal debt, so the restoration of the corporate tax rates to the higher former rates should have no effect on employment numbers but will be a big help with our massive debt.

Let’s put this UNRAPE bill into the hands of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to expand and improve it. Email her and tell her to be ready with her proposal on the afternoon of January 20, 2029 or 2027, whenever Democrats retake the Senate.

Say Good-Bye To Your Mind

Congress has cut funding for PBS and NPR and Trump has the go-ahead to kill the Department of Education. Robert Reich explains the why of that:

There are five facets to the authoritarian attack on our minds that I cover in the video:

1. Rewrite history
2. Gut education
3. Dismantle science
4. Suppress the media
5. Attack the arts

Trump is unleashing all of them. And added up, they render us less informed, less inspired, and easier to control. They empower Trump to divide us with hatred and fear. And they prevent us from discovering that we have more in common with one another than with the authoritarians who try to rule us.

This attack on our minds ultimately reduces our capacity for self-government, because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

From Thomas Jefferson:

An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight.

Given Jefferson’s clarity, it’s easy to understand why Trump would want to keep us and our children ignorant.

Worthwhile Quotations Corner

From Steve Schmidt:

The other day, Van Jones suggested that any person who believes Trump’s babble is “weapons-grade stupid.” That is an accurate statement if there ever was one, and everyone knows that stupid cannot be fixed.

Speaking of Stupid

Our Congress is composed of the geniuses we send to Washington to represent us, our interests and desires and the needs of our nation. The Republican side of it has consistently and spinelessly caved to Donald Trump’s every pathological desire.

Congress voted to de-fund PBS and NPR. Republicans stupidly called it the “Defund Government-Sponsored Propaganda Act.”  Now that Trump has killed Big Bird, betcha Trump thinks that oughta distract and shut up those clamoring for the Epstein list. Won’t happen.

Who cares, Republicans seem to be saying, whether kids, especially rural kids and those with compromised early education opportunities get the obvious benefits of public broadcast programming? Or whether people in rural areas receive weather warnings before the tornado strikes? Who cares if Americans have a non-commercial, apolitical source for news, they whine?

Republicans have been saying for a long time that PBS and NPR are voices of woke lefties, a part of the “fake news.” They claim they broadcast propaganda. I challenge anyone to provide even a single example of PBS or NPR programming that even vaguely resembles those inflammatory, ignorant and stupid claims. C’mon, MAGAmites, help me out here.

All but two Republicans voted to shoot Big Bird and every Republican voted to cut Medicaid, SNAP, USAID, Voice of America, FEMA, vaccine research and the rest. Remember that when it’s time to choose in the upcoming November elections. Tell your friends. Tell your crazy Uncle Bob. Tell your Uber driver.

Click me for protest rights tips.

“The Republicans don’t care about you.”
.

It’s already established that you can’t fix stupid. And it looks like you can’t fix hypocrisy or cowardice, either.

From the John Lewis Good Trouble Demonstration
Highland Park, IL, July 17, 2025

Tens of thousands of people turned out for the Good Trouble protests at over 1,500 marches across the country, both to honor John Lewis and to staunchly, powerfully protest this felonious fascist president. Here are pics of  some signs people carried.

Sure do miss RBG

 

 

 

 

 

Our abused immigrants today are just like  your family members who immigrated here years ago. Same hopes, same dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

Be at the next demonstration, because we’re all counting on us.
The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
.
  • A bad cause will ever be supported
  • by bad means and bad men.
  • Thomas Paine, 1777
  • Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
  • Frank Leahy, 1955
  • _________________________________________

* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or casually cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA

.


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Worst


POST 1149

A Partial List of Executive Order Destruction
  1. They’re cutting funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), slashing support for indirect costs associated with medical research. Good luck with that break-through treatment your baby needs to survive.
  2. They’re cutting funding for the CDC, which will be forced to stop preparations to deal with the next pandemic and the one after that. They’re cutting support to deal with opioid overdose prevention, too.
  3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is being shut down, so we will no longer have warnings about dangerous weather.
  4. Even the sign has been taken off the USAID building, making it clear that the agency is so yesterday. We don’t care if babies die, tens of thousands succumb to HIV and China replaces us globally in the hearts and minds of millions so that they gain access to the resources we need.
  5. The Department of Education is set to receive the wrecking ball. Your children are already well behind where their parents were at the same age in reading, writing, science and the rest. The destruction of the DOE will ensure that their children – your grandchildren – will be even more ignorant. Plus, some of the DOE money will be redirected from public education to private schools via vouchers. Are you okay with your tax dollars going to the school at Our Lady of Grift, or the St. White Guy Patriarchy Academy?
  6. Musk has announced the imminent demise of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Apparently, we didn’t really need the $17 billion the agency recovered for We the People who were fleeced by fraudulent and predatory practices. We can look forward to a resumption of the days of wanton financial cheating and the emptying your wallet.
  7. Christian Nationalist Russell Vought was made director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is an author of Project 2025, which is a roadmap to destroying the Constitution and our government. To be fair, that wasn’t done by executive order. It was a cowardly Republican vote in the Senate for a decidedly anti-American extremist.
  8. Newly installed director of HHS Christi Noem, the, promo actress for her dentist, made a visit to Guantanamo, where Trump plans to dump 30,000 immigrants. They are possibly undocumented people who are possibly accused criminals who were possibly convicted. Trump explained, “We don’ do no stinkin’ vetting for nobody for nuthin’. Besides, they’re brown. We don’ need no dark people to mess with our White privilege and we don’ need no stinking rule of law or habeas corpus,* either.” Note that I did not follow the events of Noem’s visit, so I don’t know if she shot and killed any cute puppies while she was at Guantanamo.

Notice the resemblance,

especially in the dead eyes.

We’ve had 3 weeks of Trump flaunting the law. There have been lawsuits to stop him and he’s lost them all, but just as his Josef Goebbels (Stephen Miller) said about ripping babies from mothers’ arms at the border, “The cruelty is the point.”

The court system is a long, slow process. Some lawsuits may take years to conclude. Meanwhile, Trump will be getting away with lawlessness and harming people.

Trump has captured the public narrative (yet again) with his lawlessness and his unending torrent of verbal vomiting of fantasies and lies. The rule of law isn’t even a speed bump to him. As his advisor Steve Bannon advised, “Flood the zone with shit” and Trump is doing exactly that. It may be shit, but it’s a tsunami that overwhelms everything so fast that stopping him is more than a daunting task.

Saving the Worst For Last

I know that this has been a long year for you over just the past 3 weeks, but take a trip with me in the WayBack Machine. We’ll set the dials to take us to the thrilling days of yestermonth, when there was separation of powers, un-elected rich guys couldn’t stomp on your privacy, your financial well-being or the programs Congress had ordered. The rule of law, that quaint, old fashioned notion, was king and it applied to everyone, except fat, orange, mentally declining narcissists.  Even as there were people in black robes undermining the rule of law, there were guys with silver bullets enforcing it. But things have changed.

Now thousands of silver bullet guys have been fired as retribution for having enforced the rule of law. Replacements are being required to pledge themselves to the fat, orange, mentally declining narcissist, instead of to the Constitution and the rule of law. All executive department heads (or nominees) have similarly pledged their loyalty and have given away their integrity to that same fat, orange, mentally declining narcissist.

He is blatantly ignoring court orders and the separation of powers that for nearly 250 years has prevented us from being violated, dominated and sometimes terminated by a cruel despot, like mad King George III. And the stomping by an un-elected apartheid devotee and his hacker delinquents upon your privacy, your financial well-being and programs Congress ordered  continues. They are defying court orders. They even want to murder Big Bird. So do the Republicans in Congress.

In short, this president and his integrity-free operatives are daring anyone to stop them from taking sole power over the United States of America and strangling this country with fascism.

That’s the worst.

.

We cannot count on our self-neutering elected Democrats or the always-with-their-hand-out-for-contributions DNC to lead actions to stop the steal of our country, so it’s up to us – as in: you, me and the millions who recognize that injustices and wholesale attack on our nation and our people are underway.

Demonstrations are scheduled for Presidents Day, this Monday, Feb 17. That’s a really good day for millions of We The People across the country to take a stand.

Click here to find an action near you. If you don’t find something nearby, make one – there’s information for that at the same site.

Oh BTW – eggs are $10 a dozen. Didn’t Trump promise he’d make the price go down? Was that supposed to happen on day one? Did anyone tell the hens about all that?

RESIST!

Required Reading for Action

Read Robert Reich’s Feb 6 post, What You Can Do.

___________________________________________

* noun: habeas corpus

a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention. [emphasis mine – JA]
Source: OxfordLanguages

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Un-American – Extra Urgent!


POST 1146

You know about the tsunami of Trump’s attacks on our government and our Constitution. His is a multi-pronged assault designed to destroy everything we care about, to “tear it all down.”

Vague policy explanations of the reasons to oppose and abhor this danger are insufficient to convey the urgency. This needs to be expressed in “This is how it affects you” terms. Heather Cox Richardson has crafted that for you  in an easy to understand, if painful to read, explanation.

So, this post is essentially hers. Read her essay. Take your time and feel the enormous drive to fascism that is advancing and taking everything away from us. You’ll see that Trump and his billionaire suck-ups are working to make this country into a monster, the likes of which we have fought against in hot wars and in a decades long cold war. This cadre of self-serving oligarchs is creating exactly what your values say are evil and un-American.

Project 2025 is the playbook Trump denied knowing about but he is following it to the letter. You can read a full, Mein Kampf-worthy version here. If instead you want a translation into truthful English of this manifesto for the destruction of our country, the ACLU has that for you.

This war on America is complex and difficult to stop. There are many brave people already fighting it, but there is no assurance that truth, justice and the American way will prevail.

Our standing on the sidelines watching others carry the fight is a losing strategy. Waiting for disaster to befall us before doing our part is nothing less than conceding defeat in advance.

Go read Richardson’s piece right now. Then get in the fight.

REBEL!

  • _______________________________
  • We’ll need a great leader for this. Coming Wednesday: Who Will Lead?

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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

How It Works – v2


POST 1144

Preface

This is an update of a piece originally posted February 7, 2021, one month after the treasonous insurrection.

In yet another attack on the rule of law, President Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 of the January 6 criminals, including the cop killers.* The Republicans in the majority of both Houses of Congress have shown themselves to be cowardly and spineless in the face of Trump’s assault on the Constitution. They are essentially dissolving Congress voluntarily.

_________________________________________

“Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

In the first Star Wars movie there is a scene with Darth Vader and the officers of the Imperial star ship.

.

That’s pretty much how Hitler did it. He didn’t actually make the Reichstag go away. He just neutered it into becoming a lap dog by means of The Enabling Act of 1933, which the council members passed due to fear for their lives. Then things became way worse, as they always do in dictatorships. Required reading: Steve Schmidt’s There Is a Thin Line Between Life and Death.

It’s pretty much the same in Putin’s Russia, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Xi’s China, Duterte’s Phillippines and now in the U.S. Eliminating legislative oversight is what authoritarians do to hoard all power for themselves. Most often it’s done with thug tactics. Just ask Putin opponent Alexei Navalny about his experience with Putin’s gulags and nerve poison. Oh, wait: you can’t ask Navalny because Putin murdered him.

The January 6 mob was a violent insurrection dispatched by Trump, a riot of Jesus-bannered, cross carrying thugs, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other unhinged hoodlums. They were there to overthrow our government – to effectively eliminate Congress – so that Trump could take over the country (see the movie clip again if you need a refresher). And to kill cops.

Does that sound so extreme as to be preposterous? If so, you need to pay closer attention, because that’s exactly what those thugs said they were there to do, all at Trump’s bidding. They were there to murder any House or Senate members they found (cue the clips of senators running for their lives). They brought a noose to lynch Mike Pence. Those aren’t things people do in order to preserve their government.

Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from cop killer mob violence while defending 535 members of Congress and the symbol of America that is the Capitol Building. He was killed by Bible-thumping, flag waving American terrorists, who most certainly weren’t promoting law and order, honoring our cops or doing what Jesus would do.

Honoring Officer Brian Sicknick

Both before and since the insurrection, non-Republican members of Congress and election volunteers have received death threats* to themselves and to their family members.

For any remaining fascism skeptics:

If not to overthrow the will of the people and our democracy, what do you think that election fraud Big Lie was about?

Surely, you don’t think those rioters were play acting when they attempted to kill those in Congress.

Surely, you don’t think they believed in democracy when they attempted to trash the votes of tens 81 million Americans.

Surely, you don’t think the currently seated members of Congress who attempted to stop the Electoral College vote counting and whose knees buckle upon hearing of Trump’s every whim actually believe in and honor their oath of office.

Surely, you don’t think the pardoned traitors don’t mean it when they vomit their vitriol of retribution.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is how democracies die. A cult leader exhorts fanatics, the thugs terrorize all opposition and incrementally people surrender to death threats and violence. And that’s advanced when hundreds of our legislators give a standing ovation to the hateful nut cases spewing fascist hatred. That’s advanced when Trump puts forth a slate of entirely unqualified suck ups to be heads of cabinets and it’s advanced when spineless Republicans put those Trump sycophants in power. Yes, fascism can happen here in America. It’s happening right before your eyes.

I’ve exhorted readers to learn what FDR’s Vice President Wallace had to say about fascism in America. If you believe in democracy and have not yet read his essay, please read it now.

Now that Trump has pardoned these violent criminals – cop killers – you can expect acts of terrorism, including sniper and mass shootings, bombings (think: Timothy McVeigh and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City) and perhaps political assassinations over the coming years. These are highly armed, angry, hateful, bigoted, self-righteous thugs who expect to continue their self-righteous war against America. That’s exactly what they’ve promised. And Trump loves and protects them.

I’m all for our learning to talk with one another constructively, to make peace, perhaps to have a truth and reconciliation commission. But that can only happen after violence is no longer a threat and democracy is secure. Reference: South Africa.

Now it’s time for all of us to stand and be counted in support of the FBI, our state justice departments and law enforcement agencies to stop the barbarians. It’s imperative that we eliminate the clear and present danger that these home grown killers and desecrators are.

The cop killer terrorists have already breached the gates of democracy and are buoyed in their treasonous actions by Trump and because they see January 6 as a victory for themselves. If we are to continue our bold experiment in self-rule, we better get some victories notched against the barbarians damned fast.

Oh, and Trump fired 18 inspectors general in violation of the law requiring 30 days advance notice,

  1. Trump don’ wan’ no stinking people who can hold him accountable, so he’s getting rid of the watch dogs. He’s lived a lifetime of doing whatever allowed him to skate from responsibility for his actions, including packing the Supreme Court with his extremist picks to give him a license to lie, cheat, steal and kill from the Oval Office.
  2. The real deal, the giggly, bubbly part for Trump, is that this, along with the pardons, is a stake in the ground saying that he doesn’t have to obey our laws. He’s making it clear that he is above the law and is daring anyone to stand up to him. The question is whether Congress will let him get away with that, just as the Reichstag let Hitler get away with everything. You are advised to have low expectations of our Republicans.
This Just In: Fired for Cause

Jeff Bezos’ termination of faithfulness to the Washington Post’s masthead slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has led to spineless reporting, suck up editorials and shameful toadying. It is worse than just embarrassing. It is the dying of a light that protects and defends our democracy, all for a few coins in Bezos’ pocket and a pat on his slick scalp by the Führer-in Chief.

I just cancelled my subscription.

Let me know when that coward is gone and there is new leadership at the paper worthy of the legacy of Kathryn Graham and Ben Bradlee.

__________________________________

* Refer to Thom Hartmann’s post, If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard?

Coming Sunday: This Is Not Normal

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

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

You Can See It Coming


POST 1143

What’s Really Happening

Billionaires and wild-eyed, angry people frothing at the mouth over the power they’ll have over others (like you) are trying to make their domination seem normal, selling it to you as the way things should be. They want to dump their cruelty, their wickedness and their hatred on you and me. These people are capable of the greatest evil and they will rain it down on you if you let them.

You must fight for what you believe in. Fight to declare that Nazi salutes* are un-American and unacceptable. Fight to declare that you won’t stand for totalitarian wickedness.

Let’s try it this way.

In the 1960s the times really were changing and the message was from we younger people to the Establishment, those who wanted to send us off to fight and die. Bob Dylan wrote a song, telling the older generation that we weren’t willing to be their canon fodder, not willing to be compliant and do as we were told, that they better see that things had changed.

    The Times They Are A-Changin’
.
Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’And you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin’
.
That was a message then to the Establishment from the younger generation – us. Now that message stares back at us and dares us to realize that the times have changed to once again endanger all of us. They challenge us with authoritarian, oligarch, dictatorial doom unless we see the peril all around us and take action. They warn us to start swimming or we’ll sink like a stone.
.

Because the Trump Establishment and millions of our fellow Americans are steeped in grievance, repression, bigotry and hatred. In the face of that, far too many of us are passive, apathetic and willing to be drenched to the bone.

Wake up!
.
Because the waters around us have grown – surely you feel it.
.

There is nobody coming to save us. This is a threat to you and me and it us we who must stand against it, to take action for ourselves and for our country right now!.

Doubt that? Check in with any of the DC cops or Capitol Police officers who got beaten to hell on January 6 and whose attackers are now back on the street vowing revenge and screeching they’ll finish what they started.

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
  •  – attribution unknown
Hitler’s Playbook – Required Reading

From January 8 in The Atlantic, How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days – He used the constitution to shatter the constitution. Trump is doing the same things now, ripping down all that protects us. Hitler did it in less than 2 months and Trump and his sickies are on pace for that.

From Harry Litman, Hitler Pardoned His Goons, Too. Right out of Hitler’s playbook. He’s filling out the ranks of his cruel private army with criminals and the violently insane, just as Hitler did.

From Steve Schmidt, The Big Lie. Hateful lies, propaganda to bend our minds is being fed to you every day. It’s right out of Hitler’s playbook.

From Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, This is how fascism comes to America. And it is coming, just as it came to once democratic Germany.

From Sheila Markin, They Assaulted Police. Trump Freed Them. Specifically, read the section about the pardons, Why Trump Did It. She outlines 6 reasons, each one chilling and right out of Hitler’s playbook.

  • It’s Right In Front Of Your Eyes

The would-be fascists can wave the red, white and blue, Trump can hump a flag and they can tell you about all the non-White, non-Christian people responsible for your problems. They can call themselves Christians, as they parade their hatreds and cruelties, but for them it’s not and never was about anything Jesus preached. Rather, they’re all about fascism, all about dominating you and all of us. It’s about them taking everything and leaving you nothing. It’s about total domination – of you.

  • It is the swift dismantling of American values by invoking American values..
  • They are incrementally stealing the dream your ancestors had when they came here, as well as the dream our Founders had when they launched this glorious experiment in self-rule. This looming fascism is exactly what the Founders rebelled against from the British crown.
  • The fascists here today are preparing to take from you your freedom, your rights, your protections and your country and it’s happening at terrible speed. It is happening whether you see it yet or you’re going along as though nothing will touch you. But those blinders by your eyes will fail when the tsunami of despotism comes to crush you and all you hold dear.

  • Thomas Paine

    Unless you fight.

  • “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

  • REBEL!

  • .
  • ._________________________

  • * Some are saying Musk’s Nazi salutes weren’t Nazi salutes. That’s like Trump saying that the January 6 insurrection, the assaults, the murders and the vandalism, was a patriotic love fest. Denying reality and falsely calling violent attacks something benign is right out of the Hitler playbook.

  • BTW – those were Nazi “Seig Heil!” salutes from the racist, apartheid loving Elon Musk.

    From The Onion, of course

  • Coming Wednesday: This Is Not Normal

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