guns

Stupidity – a Reminder


Reading time – 77 seconds; Viewing time – 3:18  .  .  .

Ed. note: This post was originally published in summer, 2015, but this is the start of our primaries and it’s time to pay attention and take action.

———————————————-

Said Harlan Ellison, “The most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.” That is cynical and harsh, yes, but there surely is an element of truth to be found in that statement. Let me offer a simple syllogism:

Doing self-destructive things is stupid.

We Americans are doing self-destructive things.

Therefore, we Americans are stupid.

Perhaps your mind is instantly pushing back on that condemnation. Fair enough, yet here is a short, off-the-top-of-my-head list to make my case:

  1. We are largely ignoring the threat of climate warming that shows us every day that the planet is going to hard boil us. Evidence of our folly: We subsidize fossil fuel industries and pay scant lip service to non-carbon based energy sources, all of which makes things worse.
  2. After nearly forty years of failure, we still practice the same supply-side, trickle down economics that has forced millions of Americans into poverty. Worse, we keep electing the same self-serving politicians who perpetuate this reverse Robin Hood of ensuring the stuffing of the pockets of the wealthy and subsistence and hopelessness for the masses.
  3. We have waged roughly 50 years of near-continuous war, largely because we have tolerated a spineless Congress that abdicates its responsibility and caves to the war profiteers.
  4. We have allowed our state governments to abdicate their financial responsibilities for the deferred pay owed to state workers. That may put millions into retirement age peril by denying them the pensions they earned.
  5. The First Amendment gives us freedom of speech and that includes the right to lobby Congress. However, we have allowed huge corporations not to just speak, but to control our laws and regulations. That has given us more guns and murders per capita than any other western nation, crops that are designed primarily to resist ever-greater applications of toxic pesticides, rather than delivering safe, nutritious food  – the list could go on and on.
  6. We have passively allowed the need for huge amounts of money to control our elections so that now we hear more about campaign fund raising than we hear from candidates about their proposals for the betterment of America.

All of that and more goes on because we fail to show up on election day. That’s self-destructive. stupid.

Your primary election is coming up soon – here’s a link to a primary election calendar. Find yours and put it on your personal calendar. Do it now.

The general election for all of us is on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Put that date on your calendar now, too.

Then VOTE! Can’t find a great candidate? Then pick the least bad one, because failing to vote isn’t an act of rebellion: it’s surrender.

Failing to vote is, well, stupid. And you’re too smart to do that. So, show up and vote.

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Crimes of Passion and Packing Heat


Northlake Mall Shooting

Northlake Mall, Charlotte, NC

Reading time – 53 seconds; viewing time – 2:56   .  .  .

Crimes of passion are exactly that: crimes of passion. When the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, the amygdala is screaming out imperatives at about 10 times the rate of our analytical, logical pre-frontal cortex. In other words, we act solely in response to the passion of the moment and we slay that dragon and obliterate the danger before us. And we believe that imperative is justified if we see ourselves as having been victimized. Have a look at Arthur C. Brooks’ brilliant piece in the December 20 New York Times for more on that.

On December 24, 2015, some pistol packing fool got his impassioned conflict with another person violently solved in the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, NC. What might have prevented that from happening?

The NRA says that we need more “good guys” to be packing heat in order to alleviate the slaughter that continues unabated in America. They push back against any attempt to promote gun safety, ideas like universal background checks and prohibiting violent felons from owning guns. Their push-back is most commonly anchored in the claim that such laws would not have deterred shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA. It’s a stupid argument, but let’s apply its logic to the North Carolina mall shootings and another from not long ago.

More people packing heat in that mall would not have stopped that slaughter because it happened way too fast. In fact, more people packing heat likely would have made it unclear who the bad guys were and even more innocent people would likely have been injured or killed by ignorant shooters.

Think next about the movie theater in Aurora, CO where in 2012 that idiot opened fire during the Batman movie. What do you suppose would have happened if a few dozen other movie goers were carrying guns? The additional carnage that would have been created by the NRA’s so-called “good guys carrying guns” and doing their version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but this time in a dark movie theater, would have been horrific. And they wouldn’t have even have stopped the shooter from killing and wounding people.

Now let’s apply the NRA’s “it wouldn’t have stopped certain killings” logic to these shootings and their push-back against gun safety measures.

More people packing heat would not have been useful in stopping either the killing at the North Carolina mall or in the movie theater in Aurora, CO. In fact, they would have made things much worse in both cases. Therefore, according to the NRA’s own logic, we should not have more “good guys” carrying guns.

Quod Erat Deonstrandum.

Dear NRA: Stick that up your Glock.

————————————-

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


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

Issues Separation Anxiety Disorder


Issues Separation Anxiety Disorder - a Republican affliction

Issues Separation Anxiety Disorder – a Republican affliction

Reading time – 77 seconds  .  .  .

I heard a comedian explaining that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who laugh and those who make people laugh. Hard to argue with that.

And it turns out that there are always two kinds of people in the world. For cabbies it’s people who drive and people who need a ride. For children it’s kids who are fun to play with and kids who aren’t.

My view, too, is that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who divide people into two groups and those who don’t. And that is the most important difference we’re being shown by the presidential candidates.

The Republicans – every one of them – are dividing us into two kinds of people:

  • – We good Americans and immigrants who are taking our jobs.
  • – The makers and the takers.
  • – The straights and the gays.
  • – Those who know that military solutions are best and the weak-knee wimps.
  • – We good Americans and the terrible government.
  • – The gun-toters and those who would take their guns from them.
  • – The Christians and all those who are wrong.
  • – Good Americans and the “lame stream media.”
  • – The cops and the Black Lives Matter people who incite the murdering of cops.

In all these cases Republicans tell us that the cause of the problems of the first group is all those in the second group. No need here for personal responsibility or even good sense. As Church Lady would say, “How convenient.”

At the last Republican debate, divisions like these and attacks on those in the “other” group are all we heard. Okay, that’s not entirely true. We also heard about taxation plans based on math with rounding errors in the negative trillions of dollars, but which would put trickle-down economics on steroids, thus accelerating the transfer of all money in this country to 158 families.

In contrast, at the Democratic debates we heard about bringing us together:

  • – Healthcare for all Americans as a right.
  • – Economy-stimulating infrastructure rebuilding that will create millions of good paying jobs.
  • – Ending income inequality so that everyone benefits from a growing economy.
  • – Ending our corrupt election finance system and driving special interests out of control of government.
  • – Common sense gun safety laws so that we begin to end our self-inflicted, ongoing massacre of innocents.
  • – A shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy so that we don’t all die on an uninhabitable planet.

This list could be much longer, but you get the idea. It’s about all of us, not a dividing of us.

Again, and with a few extra words this time, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who try to manipulate us with fear and hate in order to divide us from one another; and those who don’t.

The key is this: Fearful, angry people are motivated, so they vote. They may vote in self-destructive ways, but they show up on election day and vote. People who aren’t fearful and angry aren’t as motivated, so they don’t bother to vote. That distinction is exactly what led to a Tea Party wacko getting elected governor of Kentucky last week.

The Republicans are affected with Issues Separation Anxiety Disorder (dividing us over mostly bogus issues) which they spread to unaware Americans via media contact. The acronym is ISAD, and I assure you that I am sad over this debasement of America.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who vote and get what they think they want; and those who don’t vote and are willing victims of the manipulators who divide us.

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

What Should We Do?


Reading time – 121 upsetting seconds  .  .  .

WARNING: People are being murdered, but you might not care. Have a look at this and you’ll understand. Then come back here for an eye-opener.

—————————————–

I’m a curious guy, so when a horrific event unfolds, one of my first reactions is to wonder what’s behind the event, pushing it to its terrible end. It’s the “Why?” question we all ask when yet another killer snuffs out the lives of innocent people. It turns out that some smart people with the resources for research have looked into this question extensively and it’s pretty easy to get information.

For example, in a summary article on sott.net they report,

Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and it’s not the weapons used.

The overwhelming evidence suggests the single largest common factor in all of these incidents is that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes. [emphasis added]

Most shooters are male, in their teens to early 20s and they are on drugs – prescription drugs, legally prescribed and obtained. Some side effects of these SSRI drugs (Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors ), like Zoloft, Ritalin and Prozac, are suicidal tendencies and violence.

We are a drug-taking society and we carry the expectation that a pill will solve our problems. This from AntidepressantAdverseReactions.com,

In addition to depression, SSRIs are marketed for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (“OCD”), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”), Social Anxiety Disorder (“SAD”) and Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (“PMDD”) and Panic Disorder.

See? Just take a pill and all those nasty symptoms go away.

And we’re taking ever more of these drugs. In a 2014 Scientific American article, they wrote,

Antidepressant use among Americans is skyrocketing. Adults in the U.S. consumed four times more antidepressants in the late 2000s than they did in the early 1990s. As the third most frequently taken medication in the U.S., researchers estimate that 8 to 10 percent of the population is taking an antidepressant.

We throw pharmaceuticals at ourselves willingly – we like quick fixes – and sometimes we do so inappropriately. Just do a search on “SSRI overprescription” and read any article (here’s one from Psychology Today and here’s one from the American Psychological Association) and you’ll see that’s true. But the story is worse than that.

The pharmaceutical companies actively, enthusiastically and artfully tell the happy tale of how their products make life better. They are far less prone to put out front the downsides, the side effects. In fact, they go out of their way to soft-peddle and sometimes suppress them. (Same deal: just do a search on “suppression of SSRI side effects” and read any article – here’s one.) The pharmaceutical companies make a profit of over $6,000,000,000 per year on SSRIs; little wonder they don’t want to tell us the risks of violence from giving acting-out little Johnny some pills.

But then Johnny grabs the legally purchased guns from dad’s house and goes to the movie theater or the local school and kills a bunch of people, then himself. And we’re all shocked and surprised.

In a 2013 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, they found what you’ve felt all along, that things are getting worse, that there are more and more mass shootings. Here’s a chart of 160 active shooting incidents by year where 3 or more people (not counting the shooter) were killed:

Blair, J. Pete, and Schweit, Katherine W. (2014). A Study of Active Shooter Incidents, 2000 - 2013. Texas State University and Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington D.C. 2014

Blair, J. Pete, and Schweit, Katherine W. (2014). A Study of
Active Shooter Incidents, 2000 – 2013. Texas State University and Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of
Justice, Washington D.C. 2014

As you can see, you were right: there really are more and more mass shootings.

To be sure, some people have a medical need for pharmaceuticals. But perhaps we’ve taken the lazy way, throwing pills at symptoms instead of dealing with root causes, and in the process, and likely unknowingly, invited increasing horrors upon ourselves.

Surely, gun safety has to consider the mental stability and competence of those who want guns. At the same time, we don’t have to invite greater mental instability by so often feeding our kids and young adults the very drugs that make them suicidal and violent. Maybe a pill isn’t always the answer. Maybe we should be directly dealing with mental health issues. Good idea, right?

There’s a problem with that: we’ve dramatically reduced the resources we deploy to deal with mental health. From a 2013 Forbes magazine article,

From 2009 to 2011, states cut mental health budgets by a combined $4 billion- the largest single combined reduction to mental health spending since de-institutionalization in the 1970s.

Ronald Reagan championed the curtailing of the “welfare state” and he cut funding for a slew of social programs, among them resources for treating mental illness. From Sociology.org,sidebar

.  .  .  Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness.

What are the special interests and business community that were satisfied by Reagan’s policy? The pharmaceutical industry at every level. For those folks, doing anything that drives the sale of more meds is good for business. The real needs of people with mental illness just isn’t their problem.

So, now that we have an undisputed, ever-increasing series of mass shootings, as well a clarity about what’s causing so many of them, what do you think we should do: give more pills with potentially lethal side effects in order to mask symptoms; or treat the real mental health issues of our people? Consider your answer to that question in the context of sending your kids off to school and wondering if their going to class will be a life-threatening act.

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Roseburg, OR and Manipulation


Reading time – 65 seconds  .  .  .

President Obama went to Roseburg, OR to express condolences to the families, friends and their fellow citizens for their losses due to the murderous campus rampage of a killer at their community college. He went to meet privately with families of victims and the surviving victims to let them know of his care and to say that he and the American people were holding those hurting people in our hearts. In light of that, who could voice a complaint?

It turned out that hundreds of people found something to complain about. They came with “OBAMA GO HOME” signs. They came with their disdain and their loaded guns to greet him at the airport. They came with the message that he can’t take their guns. Other than their flagrant disrespect for a man bringing condolences to grieving people, they also came with their perfect ignorance.

The NRA has done a masterful job of propagandizing* gun rights, using the last 7 years to make people believe that President Obama is going to take their guns from them. That would be reasonable if not for the fact (and this is an ACTUAL fact) that President Obama has never spoken a word publicly that could remotely be understood to believe that he wants to do anything of the sort.

He has spoken repeatedly about sensible gun safety laws, like universal background checks so that Crazy Pete down the block can’t legally buy an AK-47 assault rifle. He’s never suggest that you should not be able to own a gun.

He has spoken repeatedly about keeping guns out of the hands of convicted violent felons. Unless that describes you, that sensible proposal would never affect you.

There is no perfect American solution for preventing all gun deaths. There are many solutions for preventing some of them. Should you find yourself a potential target of an angry young white guy who can’t get a date and who is carrying a lifetime of rage and an assault rifle with a huge clip of bullets, that moment might change your mind about access to guns and a partial solution will look pretty good to you.

The one thing that the NRA is supremely good at is propaganda. They wrap themselves up in red, white and blue, proclaim all sorts of sanctimonious, nonsensical blather about rights that has nothing to do with our Constitution and its spokesmen use that to inflame unknowing patriotic people to hate the government. They get people tied up six different ways from Sunday with a proud “Don’t tread on me” appeal to their, “You can’t tell me what to do!” passion and incite them threaten violence upon others.

The NRA has convinced well meaning, independent minded people that the government not only oppresses them now, but that their guns are their only defense against a tyrannical government. The massive sale of firearms and ammunition to citizens that comes of that phony threat creates lots of profit for the firearms industry and they pass some of their millions to their lobbyist, the NRA, to twist the arms of our legislators to their violence enabling desires. That is to say, the NRA’s self-serving manipulation creates a false and impassioned us-them conflict, all for the unnamed purpose of greed.

The downside to that is the sad and tragic list of Americans, over 406,000 since 2001, dead by gun violence.

The good news for the Roseburg protesters is that our Constitution gives people the right to protest (another ACTUAL fact). The bad news is that they have been grievously manipulated to believe that the Constitution is intended to allow everyone – even the crazy and the violent felons – the right to own and use any weapon they want, leaving us all at risk.

Do you believe that a partial solution is a good idea? Then support, campaign and vote for legislators who have the same good sense as you.

________________________

*Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s diabolically brilliant chief of propaganda, created a road map for manipulation of public opinion, his Principles of Propaganda. Here are a few that you may find rather similar to the NRA’s actions:

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

14 Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.

18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Just So You Know All of What It Means


Reading time – 96 seconds  .  .  .

You know about mass shootings, of course, but a review is useful, so have a look at the partial list below.

DATE                    LOCATION                 PEOPLE KILLED             PEOPLE INJURED

Oct 1, 2015        Roseburg, OR                         10                                    10

Jun 18, 2015      Charlston, SC                           9                                      0

May 23, 2015     UC Santa Barbara                    7                                      7

Apr 2, 2015         Ft. Hood, TX                            3                                     16

Sep 16, 2013      Washington Naval Yard          13                                      3

Jun 7, 2013         Santa Monica College             5                                       0

Dec 14, 2012       Sandy Hook Elem. School     27                                      1

Oct  21, 2012       Brookfield, WI                          3                                      4

Sep 28, 2012        Minneapolis, MN                     6                                      2

Aug 5, 2012          Oak Creek, WI                         6                                      3

Jul 20, 2012          Aurora, CO                             12                                    58

Jan 8, 2011           Tucson, AZ                               6                                    11

There have been many more mass shootings, of course, including Virginia Tech, Texas Tech, Columbine, as well as the every day, garden variety homicide-by-firearm – about 30 per day. The list is endless and we can proudly proclaim that we lead the world in mass shootings, with 90 of them between 1966 and 2012. That doesn’t count murders like the on-air assassination of Allison Parker and Adam Ward in Virginia this year – just the high body count shootings.

There have been over 406,000 deaths by gun violence in America since 2001. Compare that to 3,380 American deaths by terrorism in the same period and you may want to reconsider how you react to fear mongering over terrorists and focus instead on a far more likely threat to your well being.

Requiring universal background checks would not end gun massacres this year or next year or the year after that. It would, though, start the process of keeping firearms out of the hands of mentally unstable people and those convicted of violent crimes, of whom it can reasonably be said that they are violent by nature and should not have easy access to tools of murder. Clearly, requiring universal background checks is part of the solution and it is an easy one to implement, too. But consider the perverse truth about the resistance to sensible gun safety laws:

  1. The National Rifle Association (NRA) exists primarily to promote the sale of firearms in order to protect the revenue and profit of the corporations that make up the firearms industry. Because universal background checks would put 66% more gun sales under scrutiny, it would likely put a damper on gun sales. Firearms manufacturers don’t want that to happen, so they send their lobbying arm – the NRA – to oppose background checks. And this is where it gets nasty, because that means that gun manufacturers value their profits more than they value the lives of the nine students who were just killed at Umpqua Community College.
  2. Politicians want to keep their jobs. Doing that requires lots of campaign cash and the NRA is a big campaign donor. The contributions the NRA makes to politicians makes those politicians beholden to the NRA. Indeed, if they don’t do the bidding of the NRA, the NRA will see that they get primaried by someone who will do the NRA’s bidding. And this is where it gets nasty again, because what that means is that many politicians care more about their careers that they do about the 19 little kids and 7 teachers who were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
  3. There are ardent Second Amendment supporters who believe in what they see as the principles of that amendment. They loudly proclaim that we have to have guns in order to protect us from tyrannical government. This is where it gets nasty yet again, because what that means is that those ardent Second Amendment types are implicitly saying that regular massacres like those listed above and all the rest of our gun violence, including what can happen to you the next time you go to a movie theater, is simply the price we must pay for liberty. They think you volunteered to wear a bulls eye.

Offered just so you know all of what it means.

In other news: As of this writing both North and South Carolina are experiencing torrential downpours, with some areas receiving well over a foot of rain. It is catastrophic in its effect and meteorologists have described this as a once in 500 years event. Drenched and drowning in all that rain and flooding, residents of the Carolinas can at least celebrate the good news there is no such thing as global warming.

Finally, it’s always a real mind-blower when anyone from far right Wackoville forsakes its propaganda, abandons the hyperbole that contains no more than 0.5% fact and instead tells the truth. I’m wondering if doing just that might disqualify Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from becoming the next Speaker of the House. Recall that you were warned that, “You can’t handle the truth,” (from A Few Good Men).

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Get Up


William McNary - Justice Project 2015

William McNary at the Justice Project 2015

Reading time – 47 seconds  .  .  .

“Democracy is a verb.”

That’s what William McNary told us, speaking on July 26, 2015 on the Winnetka, IL Village Green at the 2015 Justice Day event. It was 50 years to the day since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to 10,000 people gathered in that same place for the North Shore Summer Project – 1965. The imperative to be vigilant in the fight for civil rights remains and will do so for a long time.

Think about that as you listen to the Republican presidential aspirants at the CNN debate on Wednesday, September 16. What kind of future for the American people do they envision and what will they do to create it? Do they appeal to our better angels or do they take the lazy route to a nomination by stoking anger, fear and hatred? Do they enlighten us or do they dumb us down?

Let your own vision for America, for an American Dream that you want to live and to leave to your children and grandchildren, guide your thinking. And for the sake of you, your children and your grandchildren, get up and get active.

Get up and get active, because we cannot afford more never-ending wars or more American children living in poverty (1 in 6 do now), more gun massacres and more Americans forced into bankruptcy because of catastrophic medical expenses. We cannot afford more American students unable to compete with their Asian rivals because of archaic, out-of-date and unequal education, or a planet ready to assault itself and us with acts that won’t be of God, but of us. And we cannot afford the more than 2.4 million incarcerated Americans, more than any other nation – ever.

Make your voice heard – for example, right here on this post in the “What do you think?” section below.

Pass a link to this blog to three others and insist that they subscribe and comment – that they get up and get active – because you and a lot of other people are counting on them.

Democracy is a verb. Get up.

————————————-

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

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Your Freedom


Reading time – 49 seconds  .  .  . 

For our absolutists  .  .  .

You’re an absolutist and you believe fervently in individual liberty. You don’ need no stinking gub-mint messing with your life.

It seems that we have a national epidemic of “You can’t tell ME what to do!” causing uncontrolled inflammation of amygdalas (reptile brains) across America. We have gun owners going hyperbolic, declaring something testosterony about their guns and cold, dead hands and making it clear that the gub-mint can’t have their guns or tell them what to do. Never mind that President Obama, who has been vilified by Second Amendment enthusiasts since 2008, has never proposed anything that would limit lawful gun ownership. Obamacare has been lambasted for its intrusion into people’s lives, even as it doesn’t intrude. And recently Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced in the name of freedom that it is government over-reach to require food industry workers to wash their hands after using the bathroom. That seems to suggest a food workers motto, “Je suis ick.” And bon appétit to everyone at the lunch counter.

Those are just a few examples of the continuing drumbeat of imagined intrusions upon freedom and a response of, “You can’t tell ME what to do!”

As you, absolutist, go explosively red in the face and cross-eyed demanding your complete freedom, it’s critical that you understand that the harsh truth is that your complete freedom stops at the tip of my nose. Go ahead and own your Glock – it just better not affect me or mine. Go ahead and refuse to buy healthcare insurance. Just don’t come whining to me about the bill you get from the emergency room, because that’s on you, buddy. Pay up. I suggest that you spend a little less time demanding what is not yours – absolute freedom – and a lot more time honoring your responsibilities.

Like getting your kids vaccinated both to protect them and so they don’t infect my kids. Yes, you have a right to stupidly leave your kids at risk. What you don’t have a right to do is to put my kids at risk. It’s that tip of the nose thing. Try being responsible this time instead of having another temper tantrum about your absolute freedom.

There. Is that absolute enough for the absolutists?

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


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

Ferguson Follow-Up 1


Reading time – 16 seconds  .  .  . 

Last Sunday I wrote about the dreadful job that was done by the attorney underlings of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, including their complete absence of any direction for the grand jury regarding criminal charges sought. That story got worse.

Take a look at this segment of The Rachel Maddow Show from December 2, 2014 entitled, Botched grand jury instructions call Ferguson ruling into question. This gives a clear picture of how tainted the county’s work was and provides a window into the grand jury’s baffling finding.

Which leaves me wondering about what happened in Staten Island, New York such that a majority of the 23 people seated as a grand jury couldn’t figure out that Eric Garner should not have been strangled to death by New York cops and that at least one of those cops should stand trial.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


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

Rodney, Treyvon, Michael Brown and Us


Reading time – 87 seconds  .  .  . 

After a high speed car chase, five LA cops took positions around Rodney King. Four of them beat the crap out of him while the fifth just watched and made no attempt to intercede. The four were charged in state court with assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. They were acquitted. Two of them subsequently went to prison following their convictions in federal court for civil rights violations. Apparently, along with King, some civil rights were beaten up by those thugs. The other three cops got away with savagely beating a defenseless man.

Armed only with a package of Skittles and a soft drink, Treyvon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman, who claimed he was “standing his ground.” That, it seems, is the thing to do after identifying someone as a bad guy through positive identification of his hoodie, then stalking him. Zimmerman got away with murder.

Now Officer Darren Wilson has managed to avoid even a trial following his killing of Michael Brown.

When St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced the grand jury’s decision and delivered his ass covering statement, I flashed on a video that was released shortly after Brown was killed. It showed two construction workers who just happened to be working next to the killing zone. They are shown yelling at Officer Wilson, saying, “His f****** hands were up.” Another voice yells, “He was no f****** threat at all.” These guys were clearly aghast that the cop kept shooting at a submissive and wounded Brown. BTW, they are white guys. It seems some white guys in Missouri know the difference between right and wrong. I’m wondering if any St. Louis County officials do.

We know that the prosecutor presented both sides of the case, the prosecution and the defense, to the grand jury, something that is pretty much never done. The prosecutor’s job is to get an indictment and that’s always – except this time – done by presenting only the incriminating evidence. And after Officer Wilson gave his contradictory, inconsistent and self-serving testimony, the prosecutors didn’t even cross-examine him. That’s not the path to an indictment. What was McCulloch thinking?

We know that McCulloch’s prosecutors gave no recommendation to the jury as to how to charge Officer Wilson. That is odd to the point of being singular. The prosecutor always directs the grand jury to the criminal charge that is sought. McCulloch just let the members of the jury fumble through their ignorance of the law and try to figure out what to do. Now, why would McCulloch be so passive and even neglectful in his duties?

Here’s Human Being 101:

1. When we don’t have all the information, we make up stuff to fill in the blanks, because we just can’t stand not knowing. For example, when some guy cuts you off in traffic, even though all you know is that you were cut off, you instantly “know” the mental limitations of that idiot.

2. When we are anxious, afraid or angry, the stuff we make up is always negative. Trust me on this. When your kid is out past curfew and you’re lying in bed staring at the ceiling, you’re not thinking about the good time your kid is having. You’re wondering if you should call the police or the hospital emergency room.

Applying that understanding to the behavior of the prosecuting attorney, we can and probably do make up all sorts of stuff to explain what happened. My noggin goes directly to asking who benefits from this kind of sloppy prosecutorial behavior, this by a fellow with a reputation for being a strong prosecutor and also for having a racially – let’s call it “flexible” – history. This is the same guy who, when implored to appoint a special prosecutor in the Brown case in order to avoid both the substance and the appearance of bias, refused. Really, now, who benefits from that and from the deeply crappy and one-of-a-kind unusual prosecution?

I know who doesn’t benefit and it’s us, including the next unarmed kid who gets gunned down by a cop or a cop wanna be.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


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

1 … 7 8 9 10 11  Scroll to top