grievance

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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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.
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JA


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

“This Is An Issue For All Of Us.”


First Thing

Congratulations to Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-GA), Georgia activists and the voting public on his election win for a full 6-year term. Well done! All it took to accomplish that was 4 elections for that seat over the course of 2 years. That’s a mind numbing amount of campaigning (and massive activism) while, by the way, doing his job in the Senate. This is a moment of joy.

And it has been interrupted by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (now I-AZ). Yes, she bailed from Democrats as soon as there was a substantive impact on them in doing so.

She’s spent the past two years flicking off Dems, blocking key legislation they championed and being the voice of unreason. Her behavior makes me desperate to explain what goes on inside such a person, but it would just be a guess that she didn’t get enough of daddy’s love and attention.

Aw, don’t get me started.

“This Is An Issue For All Of Us.

Because we’ve seen this before. This is how it started 70 years ago. So I don’t want it to feel normal.”

Those are the words of Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who was comparing anti-Semitism in America today to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and -40s.

It started there with Hitler’s election in 1933 shortly after the very suspicious Reichstag fire. He was appointed chancellor after garnering just 33% of the vote and he immediately began violence against communists, trade unionists and, of course, Jews. He blamed them for essentially all the ills the German people were suffering and many that didn’t even exist. He needed an enemy on whom to focus his nation’s anger, a scapegoat, and he found an easy target rooted in nearly two millennia of bigotry.

That sounds suspiciously like our time, as Trump vilified Mexicans, Muslims, and Blacks, but with ear splitting dog whistles, he targeted Jews. Surely, you remember his “good people on both sides” comment about the Neo-nazi rally in Charlottesville, where they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” His recent attacks  blew another dog whistle, saying “Jewish people who live in the United States don’t love Israel enough,” while suggesting that they have compromised American loyalties.  Whatever his self-serving blabbery, clearly Trump needs scapegoats on whom to focus citizen anger – that of our grievance-stoked citizens. That’s the source of his power.

He claims that he couldn’t be anti-Semitic because his daughter converted to Judaism, which leaves us aghast at the hollowness of his denial. It’s just another example of the standard weaseling, “Some of my best friends are Jews” and his base, the grievance-stoked haters, metaphorically goose step behind him. Now, of course, he’s even more blatant in his discrimination, as he palls around with anti-Semites and Holocaust denial creeps at his Mar-a Lago Wolf’s Lair.  But that’s just Trump.

Except it isn’t.

His behavior gives tacit permission and even guidance to his millions of followers to hate Jews.

America has always had a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. It was so strong that President Roosevelt wouldn’t allow German Jews safe harbor in our parochial, self-protective country. Making room for Jews would have lost Roosevelt public support for what was coming. So, instead of providing asylum, he left those people on ships to be returned to Europe where they were murdered.

Anti-Semitism is a key force behind White supremacists and Christian Nationalists. And it is a trigger for murders – hate crimes.

On a personal note, it is the reason I was repeatedly attacked and got into fights during grade school and high school. Like Johnny Cash’s A Boy Named Sue, I had to get tough or die, so I learned to fight well. But of course, the victims at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and those at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, CA didn’t have a chance to fight. They were gunned down by murderers inflamed with hatred fed to them from an intentionally  polluted stream.

I was in high school during the Second  Vatican Council when Jews were officially cleared by the Pope of having murdered Jesus. I was acquitted of having personally committed the crime, but I felt no relief, as nothing in my life changed. The bad boys apparently didn’t get the message about my exoneration. I suspect that they still haven’t heard and, dangerously, that they’ve taught their children to hate. Some of them or their grandchildren could be mass murderers now.

Sadly, the words of Douglas Emhoff notwithstanding, this is normal in America. What was always smoldering is now a blazing fire in the open. It is trumpeted every day in social media, with all the old tropes and many new ones flung from that sewer. Republican elected officials and pundits, fearful of the reaction of “the base” – our grievance-stoked citizens – don’t dare to speak out against it and many encourage the bile.* All of that is triggering murder.

Humans have always been tribal and quick to reject “others.” We’re no different in this country. What we do exceedingly well – better than any other country – is to weaponize hatred and trot it out at the slightest provocation.

That’s especially dangerous in a country that has enough guns in private hands for 1.25 guns per person. That figure includes infants, children, terminally ill patients and the institutionalized, none of whom have guns. Separating them out, as well as those who have no firearms by choice, leaves a lot more guns per person for those who do have them in this national shooting gallery of a country.

All of which doesn’t make any of us safer. Those of us with a racial, ethnic or religious bulls eye on our back know that well. That’s our normal, Mr. Emhoff, and it is, indeed, an issue for all of us.

————————————–

* “The sooner we stop pretending that this is a “both sides” problem, the sooner we can start taking the fight against antisemitism seriously. Antisemitism exists on the left, but while the Democratic Party condemns and marginalizes antisemitism in its ranks, the GOP condones and supports it.”

  • ————————————

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

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