leadership

The 1960s and Now


Reading time – 3:00; Viewing time – 4:24 .  .  .

Times were dark and we were heading down the dismal spiral of the Vietnam war. There was the draft and all the guys knew that we would spend a minimum of two years in the military. It’s just the way things were. And there was a problem with that.

World War II had been a patriotic cause to protect our country and the world from the most evil of all evils. It was a “good war”. Vietnam bore no resemblance to that and not many boomers were anxious to slog through rice paddies and get shot while serving in “Johnson’s war,” a conflict that had no patriotic reason. Most of us felt at risk. Mortal risk.

And that’s what lit the fires of protest, the shouting, the anger, the demonstrations, the confrontations with the establishment. Vietnam simply wasn’t a “good war” and certainly wasn’t worth killing others or dying for. If they wanted boomers to go to war, they needed a much better reason. Let Johnson be the first president to lose a war, we said. Better that than any of us losing our lives for no patriotic reason.

We were agitated. We were engaged. And we were completely misunderstood by older generations who simply couldn’t make sense of us. They wanted to know what all those protest songs were about. Why were we so angry and how come we didn’t do as we were told the way they had? And why didn’t we just abandon our resistance in the face of the titanic force of the way things were?

The answer, of course, is that it was personal. President Johnson was coming for me and he was going to get me killed for no good reason. It doesn’t get more personal than that and that’s the key point.

Like us, the astonishingly clear students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School feel that same mortal risk and they are agitated and they are engaged. They are protesting and they are demonstrating. And, just as for the boomers in the 1960s, it’s personal. They will not go away. They will not be silent. And they will not knuckle under to the titanic force of the way things are.

Here is what politicians better figure out really fast:

  1. This generation gets it and it’s personal and they refuse to wear a bulls eye on their backs.
  2. It isn’t just the students at one Florida high school; it’s every high school and college kid across the nation. If you doubt that, watch for the head count at March For Our Lives on March 24. Better yet, show up.
  3. These kids can and will vote. And don’t dismiss the high school sophomores and juniors: They’ll be voting in the 2020 election.
  4. This generation of Americans will vote in bigger numbers than previous generations and they will outlive all of us. They will get their way.

We boomers had our day, but there were some civil rights advances, the Vietnam war and the draft went away and our fire went out. We became complacent and learned to play the game.

Now, though, our Gen-Zs, like the kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, are politically aware and they are mobilized. So are many of the Gen-Ys. Together, they are the hope for our nation’s future.

President Obama told us in 2008 that, “We are the people we’ve been waiting for.” He was right. And on February 22, just 8 days after the MSD High School massacre he told that entire generation, “We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.” He’s right again.

Memo to politicians: Get on the right side of history or get run over.

Memo to Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the NRA: In your red-fanged address to the CPAC conference you said, “We are never talking about an armed resistance against the socialist corruption of our government.” Was your implied threat intentional?

Just know, Wayne, that as you rail against any and all actions that might actually make our students safer, rest assured that they aren’t advocating armed resistance against you either.

See how personal this gets?

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

The “T” Word


Reading time – 3:13; Viewing time – 4:18  .  .  .

In Brené Brown’s new book, Braving the Wilderness, she quotes Harry G. Frankfurt in differentiating between liars and bullshitters. The liar rejects the authority of the truth; the bullshitter pays no attention to the truth at all. She also quotes Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

The BS effrontery was plain for all to see on January 30, as the President of the United States delivered the Constitutionally required report to Congress on the state of the union. The president delivered his practiced applause lines and – horror of horrors! – the Democrats did not stand and applaud.

Now, this is the reality show president, so for him to experience an absence of fawning adulation must have been terribly painful. Indeed, the next day he put his hurt feelings on his sleeve.

This from NBC News:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday called Democrats’ stone-faced reaction to his State of the Union address last week “treasonous” and “un-American” during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Cincinnati.

Trump described Republicans as “going totally crazy wild” during his remarks last Tuesday, while expression-less Democrats remained seated for the majority of the speech. “They were like death,” Trump lamented. “And un-American. Un-American.”

But their reaction, he said, was also something much worse.

Vaguely noting that “someone” called the Democrats’ reactions “‘treasonous,'” Trump said he agreed. “I mean, yeah, I guess. Why not? … Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

Definition: treason – the crime of betraying one’s country.

Apparently, failing to applaud Trump is the same as betraying one’s country, at least in the mind of the Great Thought Mangler. Is it possible, though, that treason is flowing from a different source? Wouldn’t undermining the fundamentals of our country be treasonous?

Some examples:

From The Onion, of course! Consider this as a placeholder for all the betrayals of this administration

  • – Violating the separation of powers
  • – Attacking the Justice Department, the FBI and the press in order to undermine an investigation
  • – Bringing to the inner circle of the White House people who CANNOT GET A SECURITY CLEARANCE, at least one of whom has been targeted by a Chinese influence operation and several of whom put themselves in a position to be blackmailed by foreign powers – and they all had access to top secret information
  • – Refusing to be loyal to allies and sucking up to tyrants, both large and small
  • – Threatening nuclear annihilation
  • – Double-crossing Dreamers and CHIPs kids
  • – Abandoning the people of Puerto Rico
  • – Blatantly disregarding the emoluments clause, making millions for himself, and
  • – Failing to protect and defend this country against invasion by a hostile foreign power

Not one of these actions is partisan in nature or even a policy issue and none is in dispute. Each is in direct opposition to the welfare of this nation and every one is poison to democracy. They are simple questions of right versus wrong, patriotic versus treasonous. This is about betraying one’s country.

From How Democracies Die:

Click to watch the interview of former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan about the Russian invasion of America.

“An essential test for democracies is not whether such [authoritarian] figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place.”

Congress, you miserably failed the first test. Protecting the FBI and the Justice Department may be the last chance to stand up and fulfill your oath of office. The only question is whether you will wake up to your responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and intercede to stop treason, the betrayal of our country.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Fable


Flag of the United States of America

Reading time – 2:10; Viewing time – 3:25  .  .  .

Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. It was thought of by many as the shining city on a hill. It was the best hope for millions coming there from around the world and proved to be a land of opportunity. It had many strengths and valuable resources, but the most powerful of all was its people. They had enduring values and a can-do culture that made them the envy of the world.

One day the people found that they had been frustrated and angry for a very long time. Their leaders had failed them, lied to them and stolen from them, so they looked for a new leader and chose one who roused them with words of anger and grandiose promises. He had many obvious flaws and he lied to the people repeatedly, but they didn’t care about the lies because he spoke to their decades-long frustration, so they elected him to be their leader. Then things turned very bad for the people.

They learned that this new leader had ties to an Evil Empire and he was beholden to that empire in very suspicious ways, including great sums of money. And he surrounded himself with many others who also had ties to the Evil Empire in suspicious ways. He dismissed allies and warmed up to vicious autocrats around the world, especially the leader of the Evil Empire. He had many contacts with that leader and refused to report the contacts to his own intelligence agencies or to the press of his own country, so the people had to look to the Evil Empire for the truth of what was happening in their own country.

He began to dismantle the country’s foreign service infrastructure and weakened the Justice Department with an ineffectual leader. He demeaned key government people and agencies, especially those looking into his affairs and who could unmask him. He fired many long time public servants and pressured still more to resign their posts. He constantly demeaned the press, those who could hold him accountable publicly. He bullied legislators and they knuckled under, refusing to challenge him.

Flag of the Russian Federation

He created great sideshows, including threatening nuclear war with a petty tyrant in order to distract the people from his wrongdoing. He packed government with those he could control and demanded loyalty to himself, instead of loyalty to the people and the country, as they had pledged. He caused his top intelligence people to meet with the top intelligence people of the Evil Empire. Then suddenly the people found that their flag had been changed to a very different red, white and blue.

*  *  *

Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. You can read about it in the history books.

——————————–

Click me to find the event in your area. Then sign up and show up when Trump fires Mueller.

Want to do something to change the end of this fable into something more to your liking? Register for a Rapid Response event in your area by clicking on the logo to the right  .  .  .

.  .  .  because you need to stand up and be counted if you’re to get a “lived happily ever after” ending to this fable.

Want more on this? Have a look here.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Best Metaphor


Reading time – 43 seconds  .  .  .

Crozet, VA, January 31, 2018, 3:10PM EST

The Amtrak train left the station this morning carrying GOP members of Congress and their families to their annual party conference at a retreat facility in West Virginia. The train crashed into a garbage truck at a crossing near the town of Crozet, VA. The truck was demolished and garbage was strewn across the landscape. On-site accounts indicate that one person  was killed and at the time of this writing there are a handful of minor injuries reported.

The NTSB is on the way and will do its customary professional investigation to determine what went wrong. As of now, though, there has been no explanation offered for the reason the truck was on the tracks.

We offer condolences to the dear ones of the person who died, as well as good wishes for the injured.

Intending no disrespect whatsoever, this crash is a near-perfect metaphor for every day in DC. We see legislators barreling down their own narrow tracks. They can’t get where they want to go because they run into an obstruction. Some won’t negotiate fairly to find a suitable solution and we the people are left with a big mess.

This qualifies as the best metaphor of 2018 to date. It may not be bested all year, although it likely will be figuratively repeated often.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Invertebrates


Not so long ago the Republican Party proudly boasted of being the party that stood for law and order. They let us know in no uncertain terms that they were the guys who would defend against international threats. They were the tough guys who were best suited to ensure our national security.

Apply Trump’s words about voters to the majority of Republican members of Congress.

Now, though, they cower before the Mad Goon-in-Chief, doing his bidding and refusing to challenge his dishonesty and his devotion solely to himself, rather than to our nation. He’s callously made 1.8 million DACA kids (his number) mere pawns in his game of chicken to get his stupid, unnecessary wall, the security tool that assumes that Mexicans don’t know about ladders or tunnels. That’s the wall he told us time and again that Mexico will pay for, but now he wants each of us to pay hundreds of dollars for it. Today’s Republicans are sucking up to this scoundrel by playing his game and have abdicated their responsibility and their oath of office to protect and defend. They’re no longer the fierce guardians of our Republic; they’re the cowering lapdogs.

It took just 96 years for H.L. Mencken’s prophesy to come true.

Trump leads them in taunts to diminish our  institutions, like the press, the FBI, the CIA, the entire Justice Department and specific people in those agencies. He has Senators Ron Johnson (R-MN), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and others making flagrantly idiotic, scary sounding accusations about the FBI, substantiated solely by hot air, demeaning the very people who make sure we’re safe. That doesn’t sound much like the party that used to stand for law and order. That sounds more like self-serving people being manipulated by moneyed interests and lacking a spine to stand against what they know to be wrong.

Rep. Devin Nunez (R-CA) is cavorting about DC right now with a memo he wrote, claiming McCarthy-like that his memo contains a smoking gun that has the fingerprints of the evil FBI on it. The memo contains classified information that he carelessly didn’t review. And he carelessly has shown that classified information to most of the Republican members of Congress and is threatening to carelessly release it to the public. That whooshing sound you hear is Devin Nunez sucking up to Donald Trump.

The Justice Department has pushed back, making clear that Nunez will do damage to our national security should he release the memo. To understand the full importance of that, you need to know that at the same time that Nunez is doing his Trump suck-up dance, a tsunami of Russian bots is inundating our social media, calling for the release of his memo. Did I mention that the memo contains classified information? In other words, Republican Nunez is brainlessly playing directly into the hands of the Russians.

So, let’s be clear about what’s important:

Think: Congress

  • What is important is that unlike Nunez and the rest of the suck-ups, you and I see this for what it is: the next self-serving, transparent attempt at misdirection from what is important, the Russian hack of our election.
  • What is important is Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible conspiracy – not collusion: conspiracy – by Trump and his organization to get the Russians to help him win the election.
  • What is important is the investigation into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
  • What is important is to discover if Trump – the President of the United States – has been part of a massive money laundering scheme and whether that has made him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

The good news is that Mueller doesn’t care about Nunez’s dingbat grandstanding or Trump’s demonizing attacks or the spinelessness of what passes for Republicans in Congress today. He cares about justice. So do we.

We care about the abdication of duty to country by the jellyfish in Congress.

We care about the baseless attacks on the very people we count on to keep us safe.

We care that the people who thump their jellyfish chests about how strong they are for America are the very people who have abandoned their integrity and, through their obstruction, are enabling Russia to hack our next election.

These Republicans, the ones who are making fatuous accusations about the FBI, as well as all those in Congress who stand silently by and won’t call out Nunez or the president – and that especially includes Spineless Speaker Paul Ryan – have sold out their country to appease the infant tyrant, Trump.

The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan summed up the aspiration of everyone in this country: “What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.”

We aren’t getting that America from either the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch of our government. And we’re going to remember that this coming November and in 2020.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

A Special Message to Congress on Your Win


Reading time – 2:05; Viewing time – 2:54  .  .  .

Dear Congress:

Well, really not all that dear.

This week we had a train wreck in Washington, as an Amtrak train flew off the tracks near Tacoma. People have been injured and some have died; perhaps yet more will die.

We’ve had another train wreck in Washington, as our Republican majority Congress (that means YOU, Republican senators and congresspeople) has managed to pass tax legislation that will further injure an enormous number of Americans and will allow many of us to die prematurely.

In both cases you who are in charge seem to have forgotten that your job is to protect and serve the people and to do it with care.

With the passage of the Republican-only, so-called tax reform act, once again you have managed to do exactly the opposite of what the American people want you to do.

By an overwhelming majority we Americans disapprove of your hateful bill and wanted you to stomp it to death. You didn’t do that.

Study after study have shown that we want sensible gun safety laws, universal healthcare, protection of our national parks and wilderness areas, clean air and water, excellent public education, an end to our endless wars, a solid battle against global warming and more; but you consistently deliver the opposite.

This time you managed to put yet more billions of dollars into the pockets of already rich people, create an additional $5,000 of debt for every one of we 320 million Americans and you dumped the burden primarily on the backs of our poor and middle-class children. Congratulations on successfully sucking up to your rich donors, padding your own pockets and the pockets of the President and blowing off the rest of us.

You Republicans passed this junk legislation without any input from Democrats, with no input from tax experts and with no hearings in Congress, listening only to yourselves and those rich interests that have their hands up your back. This is exactly why we don’t trust you.

See if you can answer these three simple questions:

  1. We want you to do things cooperatively and help to end our culture wars, not to make them worse. Exactly what is your problem with that?
  2. How you can be so dumbfoundingly deaf to the voices of the people?
  3. 81% of Americans disapprove of you (that’s you, personally) and the job you’re doing. Can you figure out why?

C’mon now, Republican congresspeople – you’ve been in charge for 7 years and ought to know by now what we the people want. Yet we’ve known for a long time that you don’t want to hear from us, but we want to hear from you. Answer my questions.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead – Or Is She?


Reading time – 1:01  .  .  .

Hooray Alabama! Hooray America! Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!

Yes, in deep red Alabama the voters told Roy Moore to go home. On his horse, in a car, on foot, whatever. “Just go home, Roy.” And that surely is a victory for sanity and decency.

Click me

I’m pretty much an optimist, but have a look at the final results in this chart. 650,436 Alabamians – 48.4% of voters – voted for the homophobe, the twice-bounced judge who doesn’t obey the law, the alleged, well documented child sexual predator, the Islamophobe, the xenophobe, the nostalgic-for-slavery candidate. Without the disgusting sexual predator accusations, this hate-filled thug likely would have won.

While Alabama is not fully representative of any other state, it does provide instruction as to the ability of Americans to rationalize and compartmentalize shameful, hateful attitudes and behaviors, and there is a lot of shameful, hateful stuff in this country. Proof: a self-aggrandizing, self-obsessed, continuously offensive congenital liar became President of the United States by spewing vitriol.

So, immerse yourself in the glow of victory in Alabama, a win for decency in America, for as long as you like – say, 45 minutes. Then get back to the reality that we need to deal with the root causes of our national disaffection from one another, our intentional dysfunction and our willful embrace of our basest instincts. Alarmingly, that describes 37% of us nationally.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Duplicity


Reading time – 2:56; Viewing time – 4:27 .  .  .

The congressional act that followed the 1995 Oslo Accords called for the U.S. to recognize Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, as well as move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. There was an escape clause in the act that allowed the President to delay recognition and the move by 6 months. That escape clause has been exercised twice a year ever since – until now. There are at least two noteworthy observations to make about these events.

When Bill Clinton first exercised the escape clause in 1996 he was viciously attacked by Republicans, notably by Senator John Kyle (R-AZ) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS, now the bankrupting governor of his state), claiming that Clinton was in contempt of Congress. You may recall that this was during the Newt Gingrich, Contract With America era, when the Republicans in Congress made it clear that they had the sole objective of opposing anything Clinton.

What was so very odd is that each time George W. Bush signed that same escape clause, which he did 16 times, neither Kyle nor Brownback nor any other Republican seemed to have a problem with that. And that same kind of duplicity on every issue is exactly what happened in the Obama era, those heady Republican days when Mitch McConnell reminded us that job one for Republicans was ensuring that Obama would be a one-term President. Let’s look at this type of behavior in another context.

During the Clinton presidency Gingrich and his howlers appointed Ken Starr to be Independent Counsel to investigate Clinton’s dealings in the failed real estate deal known as Whitewater. Finding nothing legally actionable there, Starr proceeded to investigate every nuance of both Clintons for five years and continued to find nothing actionable until the the Monica Lewinsky affair at last allowed them to smear the President publicly. There were no Republicans then claiming that Starr’s wandering investigation was a witch hunt. There were no objections to partisan digging for dirt, no attacks on the Department of Justice, no wailing of improper actions on the part of the Independent Counsel.

Now, though, there is a chorus of Republicans in Congress with abhorrent accusations against both the FBI and Robert Mueller, as he conducts his investigation into Trump campaign collusion with the Russians. It’s the same kind of duplicity as for the Jerusalem issue. That leads to the second point.

I’ve scoured sources looking for an upside to the U.S. of Trump’s declaration of formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. That’s something that most nations have not done, this in an effort to avoid becoming an obstacle to a peaceful solution to the strife in the region. What is the possible good that will come of recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol and of moving the embassy?

Trump’s declaration has surely been good for militant Palestinians and Muslims around the world, as they have already reacted with demonstrations and violence. Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli hardliners like the in-your-face value that comes of Trump’s declaration, but what about value for the U.S.?

All I can find of value here is the pleasure that so-called Evangelicals derive from some self-satisfying biblical notions they hold, as well as the glee of hard-core Trump supporters for his sticking it to somebody. That might garner more votes for Roy Moore to become Senator Pedophile and keep that Alabama Senate seat Republican. That, in turn, may help Trump to further destroy American culture and values. Truly, I have not found a single benefit to the United States beyond that, if you can truly call those benefits.

Meanwhile, connect the dots to congressional Republicans. Where is their outrage over Trump sabotaging the possibility for peace in the Middle East? What happened to conservative calls for what serves this country?

This isn’t my father’s Republican Party and we are the worse for that.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

For Alabama Voters – And The Rest of Us


Reading time – 2:29; Viewing time – 4:31  .  .  .

John Pavlovitz is a blogging minister, a posting pastor, who regularly comments on what’s going on. He recently published an open letter “To The 100 Million Americans Who Didn’t Vote;” I highly recommend it to you because he’s nailed a central point of what has driven our circumstances.

In that essay he wrote:

I’ve heard every reason and excuse, every justification and motivation [for not voting] and I honestly don’t disregard them—it’s just that none of them seem to be worth this unequivocal mess we currently find ourselves stuck in.

Angry people vote – they’re motivated, so they show up. When those of us who aren’t angry decide not to vote, we leave the choice of our leaders to those angry people and they choose based upon which candidates have the most prominently extended middle finger. That leaves out of their consideration things like candidates’ capabilities, moral fiber, fitness for office, vision for America and any sense of caring about the people or the country. That’s a really big problem.

Tuesday there is a choice to be made in Alabama. One of the candidates is an accused pedophile and stalker and abuser of women. He has twice been removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for his refusal to obey the law. He glorifies slavery, hates gays and Muslims and worse. The other candidate is pretty much a normal guy, except that in deep red Alabama he’s a Democrat.

It is beyond outrageous that the President of the United States and the Republican National Committee have endorsed the pedophile, the stalker and hater who doesn’t obey the law. That’s because the official Republican view is that this hateful man is better than an unblemished Democrat.

And that’s what America has come to, in part because of 100 million eligible voters who refused to show up on election Day. This isn’t about laying guilt; it’s about declaring fact.

Let’s be fair and admit that the gut level baseness represented by our abhorrent current reality is the BIG deal. It just wouldn’t have been made manifest so  horribly without the passive approval of those who didn’t show up to vote and instead allowed power to go to this amoral Congress and administration. That has permitted them to make enormous strides in destroying all that we hold dear.

Surely, we have to deal with the real issues. Meanwhile, we have to stop the drivers of our destruction.

So, citizens of Alabama, your number has been called and you’re up. Your country and the world are counting on you to make the right choice for the America we believe in. Show up on Tuesday.

And another thing – This may not be popular to say, but .  .  .

We have decades of reacting to women accusing men of stalking, rape, abuse, molesting, groping, grabbing and all manor of predatory behavior and not believing them. We’ve allowed law enforcement that should have been protecting women to instead make it SOP to blame the victims. He said – She said has mostly been settled with humiliation for women and in favor of He.

Now we’re convicting men in the court of public opinion solely on the basis of accusation and the outfall is enormous. Separating out of this discussion the cases where there’s clear evidence of wrongdoing, as in Roy Moore, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein and perhaps Al Franken, is just an accusation enough to derail a life?

Let me poke at this a bit. What if some of those anonymous accusers are really political operatives for the other side? What if some of the Me-Too folks are pissy at all men and act out of a perceived opportunity to do some men-bashing? I had an experience of that from a woman I barely knew, whom I had not wronged in any way – she later agreed to that – but who tried to beat me up anyway.

This is not to diminish in any way the importance of this issue, nor the legitimate grievances of women who have been abused. But whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Emerson Was Right – Twice


Reading time – 1:21; Viewing time – 2:09  .  .  .

Chris Matthews’ new book about Bobby Kennedy ends with the words of John Glenn, former astronaut and senator from Ohio, relating his taking Kennedy’s children to their home following the assassination of their father and staying the night with them. He found himself in Kennedy’s study and saw on his desk a collection of poems and essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a couple of which Kennedy had marked in the margin. Emerson wrote,

“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it [emphasis added].”

Surely, ours is a time of revolution, a time of massive upheaval in our country and the voices of change are loud and intractable. Oddly, the voices resisting the din of the revolutionaries aren’t embedded in the status quo, but instead are calling for their own change. Returning to the way we were seems to be dissatisfying to all.

That, then, focuses us on Emerson’s final sentence: “This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.” Who, indeed, has what it takes to declare, “THIS is what we will do with it”? I don’t think a hate-filled, exclusionary specter will do, nor do I believe that just being against things is adequate. Our times call for wisdom in the face of our daily cacophony. We need a visionary who can see both the forest and all the trees, who can make sense of our reality and show us the better tomorrow we’ll build together. Then, in Emerson’s words, we’ll know what to do with it.

The other passage Kennedy had marked in his copy of Emerson’s poems and essays is critical to our time and will remain so:

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!

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

1 … 11 12 13 14 15 … 31  Scroll to top