patriotism

Learn Something


Just back from the demonstration / counter-demonstration in Northbrook Friday night. Did you make it? Good on you. If not, see you next time.

There was a good turnout on both sides of the street but the crowds were very different from one another.

I was good to my word in promising to do my part to engage in civil discussion and avoid name calling. It proved to be quite a challenge and that’s the learning, even as it may come to no surprise to you.

One female Trump supporter crossed the street and was near me, so I approached her, asking if she would talk with me. She agreed, so I asked her about her support for Trump and did she have concerns because of Trump’s behavior toward women? Her answer stunned me.

She said she is from Montenegro, part of the former Yugoslavia. It’s a totalitarian state, she said, which is why she came here.

“Okay, but you’re a woman and Trump has a very bad reputation with women.”

“Well, Kennedy did bad things  .  .  .” I stopped her and reminded her that Kennedy is not on the ballot in November. She went on with other politicians’ names, claiming they all do it. Then she attacked Jill Biden and her morality. I pointed out that she, too, is not on the ballot, which she dismissed, indicating that I just don’t get it.

“All powerful men do those things,” she told me.

Things went on a while longer, but everything she said was some form of whataboutism. She’s a Trump supporter and justifies her support with the rationalization that “They all do it.” She made it clear that she is stuck where she is. And she likes it there. She seemed for all the world an angry woman who simply wanted to lash out at something. Anything.

A fellow across the street was wearing an olive t-shirt, camo pants and a ball cap turned backward. He had a loud electronic megaphone and talked incessantly. What he said was inflammatory toward Biden, liberals (“go take your meds”), anyone standing across the street and more. That paired nicely with the flyer for the Trump demonstration naming the opposition “socialist morons.”

There was anger and hatred coming from Mr. Camo nonstop, so I approached him and, like the Montenegran woman, I asked him if we could talk and could I ask him a question?

I told him my name is Jack – what’s yours? “George,” he said. “George McGovern.” He and his friend shared a snarky smile.

“As you know, you’re saying things that are inflammatory to the people across the street. My question is why are you doing that?”

“Because I can.”

“Yes, of course, but  .  .  .”

“First amendment. Because I can.”

“Right, but you can say anything. Why are you saying these things?”

He went off on what sounded like a cocaine-fueled rant, becoming indignant, defensive, threatening, demeaning and more, so I walked away. He continued spouting accusations, schoolyard bully name-calling and more (“China, China is for Biden”) until I left the scene an hour later with his continuing rant fading away over my left shoulder. He wasn’t alone among the Trump supporters in behaving that way.

And the point – the learning – is about the power trip these Trump supporters are on. It’s about dominance, venting their rage, demeaning others, taunting, braying their real or imagined grievances and their victimhood and deliberately ignoring reality.

It’s the aphrodisiac of feeling powerful.

These are the people who are supporting Donald Trump. These are the people who want him to get away with subverting our election – anything for him to stay in power. They wave their flags even as they support Trump’s destruction of our democracy. That their bullying works against their own interests doesn’t seem to enter into their thinking.

We love to claim American exceptionalism. We love to proudly announce that we are the greatest nation in the world. If all that is true, then why do we need all the hatred?

I was interviewed by a couple of news agencies at the demonstration and was asked why we were there. Here’s what I told them.

This is a fight for the life of our democracy and it falls to us, we the people, to win this fight. It always falls to us. It’s just that we’re so perilously close to rule by thug now.

Better vote early.

And read Dana Millbank’s essay here. Many thanks to JB for pointing me to it.

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

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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 mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

A Modest Proposal – v4.0


Reading time – 5:35  .  .  .

We are locked in an increasingly bloody and always hateful conflict. Red America and Blue America think in different ways, speak different languages, recognize different facts and are unable to communicate with one another except with threats and mean-spirited accusations. The differences and animosities are growing and the situation seems to be intractable. Writes Anand Giridharadas, We Are In A Cold Civil War. I think he’s right. David Frum has written that Trump Is a Secessionist From The Top and his followers seem to revel in how separate they are from the rest of us. Truth be told, I’m weary of it all.

I’m sick of the hateful speech and the denials and contortions of reality. I’m disgusted by the ever more common brandishing of assault weapons by strutting tough guys. I’m offended by the easy acceptance and even the promotion of criminality at the top. And I’m disheartened by the obvious welcoming of fascism by followers of this autocratic, dictator-wannabe president. There seems to be no courage left in Red America to commit to what many of us had thought was the American way. There don’t seem to be many patriots left who will stand and be counted when it’s time to stop a tyrant. That says to me that there may be no possibility of narrowing the chasm of our national divide.

Well, I have a solution – a modest proposal. I confess it isn’t original. I read something about this many years ago when the first storm clouds of our cold civil war reached the horizon. It seemed absurd at the time; not so much now.

Since we are already steadfastly, both by culture and core values, unaligned, we’ll formally divide America into two independent nations. For the most part the geographic division will be easy. We’ll just separate out all the steadfastly red states, like South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Kentucky, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Utah, Indiana and West Virginia. There will be some difficulty in placing the purple states, like Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio. The rest will be Blue State America. You get the idea.

We’ll have details to iron out, like border protections and passport requirements, trade and the decision of which America gets to keep DC and the stars and stripes. Plus, we’ll have to figure out who gets the might of our military and there will be yet more questions.

A benefit of this solution is that Red State Americans will get to keep their Confederate statues and memorials and will be able to proudly display Confederate battle flags. They can choose whatever distortion of reality suits them and the Ford F-150 pickup truck can be their official national vehicle. All those proud, rugged individuals will be able to walk with heads held high, chests out, safe with their concealed carry and in the knowledge that no elite* weenies from Blue State America will be dictating their fates or limiting their freedoms. No overblown government bureaucracy will take their money and regulate them to death.

Gone will be the self-important scientists telling them to wear a mask and stay out of churches and bars to avoid infection. They won’t have to justify going to Trump rallies by claiming patriotism or announce they’re accepting of the consequences of refusing pandemic protections, only to hear Blue State Americans tell them that their freedoms stop at the tip of the next person’s nose. In fact, they’ll be able to go about their business in the certainty that COVID-19 is a hoax, right until they gasp their last breath.

There will be no more federal government standing in the way of their personal liberty. The new Red State American government will be benign and will never intrude on their lives. And there’s even more for Red State Americans.

They’ll be able to listen to their president’s “straight talk” and not be bothered by Blue State American busy-bodies howling about how his straight talk is actually a pack of lies. They won’t have to listen to audio recordings of the president proving his homicidal dishonesty leading to tens – maybe hundreds – of thousands of American deaths. They won’t have to listen to Blue State Americans whine about his over 20,000 lies to the public (over 16 per day, every day).

There are a couple of points that will be important for Red State Americans to know. For example, those horrible things that FDR created, like Social Security and the terrible things Lyndon Johnson did, like Medicare and Medicaid, will disappear for them. Each citizen will be on their own to pay for all of their own healthcare, including when catastrophic health issues arise. They’ll simply have to deal with their lifetime of debt or bankruptcy.

Each will have to fund all of their own retirement, too. Failure to do so will cause them to live in abject poverty until death finally brings relief at the end of their rugged individualism, pretty much as it was before Social Security.

This national split will have substantial business impact, too. For example, Fox News will relocate from Manhattan in New York to Manhattan in Kansas, a huge cost saving. Koch Industries will be perfectly positioned in Wichita to take control of the Red State American oligarch government.

Click me for a full scale map

There are important issues of independence to consider and Alabamians, for example, will have to do some adjusting. Once separated into two countries, Alabama will no longer get back $2.02 for every $1 they send to DC. It’s a similar balance in West Virginia ($2.08 for every $1 sent to DC), South Carolina ($1.62), Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky ($2.41) and for most of the rest of Red State America. Economic life is going to become much more challenging in those places, as funding for roads, bridges, schools, healthcare, disaster relief and more becomes either far more individually burdensome or they will have to dramatically ratchet down their way of life. Of course this change will create an economic windfall for all in Blue State America, who will no longer have to fund Red State America.

Still, this separation will give everyone what they want. We can stop accusing and attacking one another and each make our own way. Gone will be charges of racism one way and burdensome elitism the other way. No longer will we argue about protests or whose life matters or whether our troops are losers and suckers. We’ll end our contentiousness over the president’s supplication to authoritarians and his solicitations for foreign election interference. Each America can choose its own allies or none at all. It’s the ultimate freedom of choice.

So, just when it seemed there wasn’t one, there is a way forward. Take a deep breath and begin to make the decision where you’ll want to live.

To put a fine point on this, read Eugene Robinson’s essay on Trump’s racism, and – this is critical – watch the 11-minute video embedded in his piece, Voter Suppression Never Went Away. It Evolved. Once we split up the country, we won’t have to worry about such things.

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End of satire. What follows is deadly serious.

From Harlan Coben’s The Boy From The Woods, page 285:

”  .  .  .  it will now be easy to destroy the social order. The middle has become complacent. They are smart, but they are lazy. They see the grays. They get the other side. Extremists, on the other hand, see only black and white. They are not only certain that their vision is absolutely correct, but they are incapable of even understanding the other side. Those who don’t believe as they do are lesser in every way, and so they will kill for that vision.”

“Extremists are relentless. They don’t see right or wrong – they see us and them.”

I’ve been warning of creeping autocracy and fascism for a long time (click here for a list of some of those posts). It’s easy to pin that clear and present danger on Trump, but it’s critical that you see him as the embodiment of the forces of absolutism running hellishly in our society. Trump is both the repugnant inciter of rage and a tool of the brutal, angry mob. He wouldn’t be in office or be getting away with his criminality, his cruelty and the destruction of our democracy if there weren’t millions of people who want that, who think his behavior is okay, who believe the end justifies the means. It doesn’t matter to them how evil and eventually tyrannical both the end and the means will prove to be.

That is why we must not be complacent. That is why we dare not be lazy.

Vote to stop this insanity. Help to register others to vote – click here and scroll to the Opportunities section for resources to make a difference. Encourage everyone you know to vote. Early voting has already started, so there is no time for delay. Act now, because there may not be another chance.

This is the only way.

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  • * Do you remember when “elite” was a good thing? That was before Barack Obama became president. He is monstrously bright and knowledgeable and had checked all the “smart” boxes, so White guys felt threatened and “elite” got warped into a negative thing and has been used ever since as a dog whistle for racist animosity.
  • “Elite” was good back when we wanted the brightest to be the ones who thought through and solved our toughest challenges. “Elite” meant “the best.” Clearly, we have need for some truly elite people right now.

_________________________________________

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

Here’s How To Fix This


Reading time – 6:15  .  .  .

Preface: Presidential Leadership In The Time of COVID-19

In Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s new book Rage we see the words of the President of the United States acknowledging the deadly danger of this disease. He says it will infect “through the air” and is five times more deadly than the “most strenuous flu.” Then he says that he wants to “play it down,” rather than marshal our national resources and the public to fight this pandemic. That’s what he’s done and continues to do, as Americans die.

We don’t have to take Woodward’s word for all of Trump’s deceit because Woodward has audio recordings of their conversations. They are as clear and as damning of this president as can be.

He’s lied to us over and over and put us all at lethal risk. He’s held election rallies that he knew would cause the spread of infections. You could ask Herman Cain about that, but he attended a Trump rally and then died of Covid-19.

Trump has ridiculed those advising and those practicing proper precautions, influencing millions of Americans to refuse those protections. That has unavoidably caused the massive spread of this infection. The result of that behavior is that a lot more people have suffered, a lot more will live with terrible debilitation that may last years and a lot more people have died.

In an Oxford study earlier this year they reported that between 70 – 99% of Covid deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had this president provided proper leadership. We’ve suffered nearly 200,000 deaths from this disease, so in the most conservative estimate there are 140,000 dead Americans who would still be alive had the President of the United States not been intentionally derelict in his duty.

What is every bit as important is to recognize that the Republicans in Congress have never confronted Trump on this. They’ve said not one word about his intentional and deadly betrayals, even as the CDC projects that we’re headed toward 415,000 Americans dead of COVID-19 by the end of the year.

In fact, the Republicans in Congress have never confronted Trump on anything.

This package of lethal deceit and cowardice is our current reality. It should never happen.

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Here’s How To Fix This

I’ve been clubbing Republicans since the Gingrich Vigilante Inquisition in the 1990s, especially those in the age of Trump. Let me be fair and say from the heart that every bit of it is deserved.

If you disagree, please list in the Comments section following this post the names of all the Republicans in the House and Senate who have done the right thing and stood up to any of Donald Trump’s horribles, be they illegal,  unconstitutional, anti-democracy, culture and values destroying, immoral or cruel. I’ll give you Mitt Romney as a part-time critic; very occasionally, tepidly, Lisa Murkowsky and Susan Collins have spoken up.

Former Senators Jeff Flake and  Bob Corker realized that their days as senators were numbered when they saw that their opposing Trump resulted in the rest of their colleagues hiding under their desks, so they left the Senate. Who are the others in Congress who did more than whisper in the cloak room? I must have missed them when the call to stand and be counted was sounded.

They all knew that Trump attempted to extort President Zelensky of Ukraine, demanding his unconstitutional foreign interference in our 2020 election. Trump pressured him by threatening to withhold from Ukraine desperately needed military assistance. These Republicans also knew that Trump obstructed justice in the investigation of that wrongdoing, yet on an almost complete party line vote (Romney voted yes to obstruction of justice), the Republican controlled Senate voted to acquit this criminal president in his impeachment trial.

Following that Republican disgrace, not one of these cowards has demanded that Trump confront Vladimir Putin about the bounties he’s paying to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. Are you seeing the pattern?

John Bolton outlined a lot of examples of Trump obstructing justice and these legislators knew about many of them even before Bolton’s book was published. The Mueller report outlined 10 specific charges of obstruction of justice (refer to Section II) and they knew about all of those, too. Still, Republican crickets.

These legislators know that Trump has manipulated the Justice Department, too, to get away with his wrongdoing. To put that in perspective, think of those westerns where the bad guy, the wealthy cattle and land baron, has the sheriff and judge on his payroll and in his pocket, enabling him to control and fleece the townspeople. You hated that bad guy, right? Well, now he’s in the Oval Office and Attorney General William Barr is that sheriff and judge in Trump’s pocket. He is yet another Trump crime enabler.

Trump has constructed his swampy Cabinet to benefit himself with no concern at all for ethics, like posting former lobbyists as “acting” department heads. And the Republicans in the Senate, which should have been vetting and rejecting these guys, instead has abdicated their duties and enabled Trump’s swamp to stink yet worse. Congressional Republicans know that he’s crashed through every guardrail of democracy that stood in his way and that he is consistently undermining our international safety and security. Still, these Republicans in Congress sit on their hands.

I ask again, who are the Republicans who have spoken out against Trump’s assault on American bedrock? Show me who has cast a vote against this child tyrant, sitting in his high chair, kicking, screaming and banging his fork and spoon on his tray. They cave in time after time. What happened to the courage of these Republicans? Their cowardice has earned them a Jellyfish Award.

Sadly, the cowardice doesn’t stop on Capitol Hill.

The state government of North Carolina was controlled entirely by Republicans until the 2018 election, when a Democrat was elected governor, although the state house remained in Republican hands. Just before the gubernatorial switch was made the Republican majority in the state house and the outgoing Republican governor (Pat McCrory, the guy who refused to concede and said he wouldn’t leave office) enacted laws to hamstring the incoming Democrat governor. They made it so that he would be unable to undo their horrific voter suppression acts – things like stripping voters’ registrations, closing polling places in college towns and in poor and non-white areas, and requiring IDs that are difficult for many poor people to obtain.

It isn’t just in North Carolina where the Republicans have done these things. They’ve done it in Wisconsin (why are there only 5 polling places – down from 180 – in all of Milwaukee?) and in Kentucky (only 1 poling place in Louisville – the same in Lexington), in Texas (how come it’s so hard to get a mail-in ballot for those under age 65, but for the likely Trump voters – those over 65 – it’s automatic?). And it’s just as cowardly and corrupt as that in yet more states.

Just as for the Congressional Republicans, these state Republicans have earned a Jellyfish Award, too.

We love our equivalencies, be they true or false, so let’s be fair and ask the equivalencies question: Don’t Democrats do such things, too?

Of course they do. Or, rather, they have. But Democrats haven’t tried to suppress anyone’s vote for a really long time. If you think I got that wrong, please note your examples below.

We’ve known since at least kindergarten that cheating must be punished or it will continue and become worse. Indeed, we’ve seen that worsening happen in the Trump administration every day since January 20, 2017, with Congressional Republicans remaining silent all the while. What is the proper punishment for our spineless, cowardly Republicans? Try this:

VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE – EVERY ONE OF THEM!

Okay, let’s be reasonable. We need traditional conservatives to repopulate the Republican Party into something that doesn’t look like it came from the House of Horrors. The ones who must go are the Trump Republicans, the Freedom Party wackos and every one who chickened out and refused to speak up. You know who they are. Give them the boot – every one of them.

Click me to hear a speech by a 17 year old kid that’s better than anything Trump has done.

I don’t know Emma Gonzalez, survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre and co-founder of Never Again, but I’ve seen her work. I feel confident she and her generation will call “BS!” to Trump and to our Republican jellyfish. The rest of us must do the same.

The past 4 years have been a most amazing demonstration of both fraud and Congressional cowardice. It’s time to put an end to this reign of terror.

NOTE: I’m not a registered anything and certainly am not a Democrat shill. I used to think of myself as an Eisenhower Republican, but that’s pretty much an extinct species. There are a few proud Republicans (mostly former) with starch in their spines and I’ll be publishing a list of some of them on September 30. We’re counting on those folks to resuscitate the Republican Party once our long national nightmare is over. Until they do, it’s up to us to fix this.

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The Simple, Clear, Non-negotiable Marching Orders To Beat Covid-19

 

  1. Wear a mask in public.
  2. Socially distance.
  3. Wash your hands often.
  4. Put your damn mask on.

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Click me

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

A Critically Important View From Europe


Reading time – 7:15  .  .  .

Presidential Befoulment of the Military Update

It has been 3 days since the foul statements of Donald Trump about our military were exposed. To date, not a single Congressional Republican has spoken out against his cruel, disparaging words and behavior. Not one.

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The G7 Summit is scheduled to meet virtually in November or perhaps later. In anticipation of that and our mail-in ballot season, some notion of how the rest of the world sees America is crucial, because America’s world leadership is on life support. That makes our election choices and actions critical.

A friend forwarded the opinion piece below from The Irish Times (many thanks to JS) and it gives us a view into what America looks like from a European democracy. Consider it in the context of my piece last April, Absolute Power, as well as the closing section of Potpourri v11.0 – The “How Can We Be This Stupid?” Edition.

Donald Trump Has Destroyed The Country He Promised To Make Great Again
The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now for the first time, we pity it.

Irish Times-April 25, 2020 – By Fintan O’Toole

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicenter of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – willfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fueled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralyzed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority;” and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.  And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realization that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behavior has become normalized. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show anymore. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is reveling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

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If this report seems far-fetched; if the perspective seems far too narrow; if you’re inclined to dismiss this as just one disgruntled Irish guy opining, then I urge you to have a look at Tom McTague’s essay from London in The Atlantic entitled “The Decline of the American World.” Be clear that Trump is engineering that very thing. E.g. last week Trump announced that we won’t participate in the worldwide effort to develop a vaccine to battle Covid-19. What do you suppose that looks like from abroad?

From McTague’s post:

Bruno Maceas, Portugal’s former Europe minister, whose book The Dawn of Eurasia looks at the rise of Chinese power, told me, “The collapse of the American empire is a given; we are just trying to figure out what will replace it.”

You can check with the folks at Gallup for more. Here’s a recent graph of how Europeans view American leadership. The charts for how Asians and people in the Americas see American leadership look the same. Be clear that the rising black line on the right represents increasing disapproval of U.S. leadership over the past 3 years.

On the left of the graph you can see the high disapproval of the leadership of George W. Bush. Then there were eight strong years of approval for American leadership during the Obama administration (the green line). Now Trump has managed to achieve the highest leadership disapproval of America by our global neighbors. Ever. This is what Trump’s destruction of alliances and his sucking up to tyrants have done to our place in the world. Click the chart and read the report for yourself.

Consider if you were accosted by a street tough. You likely wouldn’t respect him. On the other hand, you’d be keenly aware of and have great respect for the assault rifle and semi-automatic pistol he carried and you would be exceedingly clear about the destruction and chaos they can cause. It’s quite the same for the the way the world views the United States of Trump.

———————-

Finally, five years ago the offices of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo were attacked and eleven of its staff were murdered by Islamist terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. The trial of some accomplices to those murders began last Wednesday and Charlie Hebdo once again published the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed and Islam that triggered the attack. Once again they’ve put a stake in the ground to declare freedom of the press will not be stifled. So, once again we can all declare, Je suis Charlie.

——————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

EXTRA! EXTRA! – v1.0


Reading time – 1:57  .  .  .

This is a special edition for a special reason. A regular Sunday feature will be posted tomorrow.

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In a well researched essay in The Atlantic which has now been well vetted by other news agencies including Fox News, Jeffrey Goldberg has detailed some of the most hurtful, disqualifying, reprehensible things the President of the United States has said. Goldberg detailed Trump’s own words and they uncover his true contempt for our military personnel and his mind-numbing, boundless ignorance of even the most basic national history. Here’s what we learned about the president’s beliefs and values:

That the boys who stormed the beaches at Normandy, especially those who died there or who left an arm or leg there, were losers.

That the 1,177 sailors who are still aboard the USS Arizona submerged in Pearl Harbor were suckers. It was revealed in Phil Rucker and Carol Loennig’s book A Very Stable Genius that Trump barely understood the obvious meaning of the memorial for the ship and those men.

That the 10 crewmen aboard each WW II bomber that went down in flames were losers. Some days hundreds of men were lost that way. All losers, according to the Commander in Chief.

That my dad and his band of brothers who flew cover for the bombers in their fighter aircraft were suckers, especially the ones who were shot down.

That the over 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood in 1918 were suckers for getting killed.

That he thinks that the over 58,000 of my contemporaries who died or just disappeared in Viet Nam were losers and suckers, too, because they were “too dumb to get out of” serving in the war.

That the Commander in Chief doesn’t know who the “good guys” were in WW I and he hasn’t a clue why we would intervene on the side of the allies.

That John McCain wasn’t a war hero and was a loser. And President George H.W. Bush was a loser for getting shot down.

That the men and women who currently wear the uniform and voluntarily serve our country, who will willingly put their lives on the line for us, including for this disdainful, disrespectful President of the United States, all 1.3 million of them are losers and suckers.

That Trump revealed his utter cluelessness while standing over the grave of Marine First Lt. Robert Kelly, son of General John Kelly, who was present to hear the president say, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

This is the same U.S. President who learned many months ago that Vladimir Putin is paying a bounty to the Taliban for every Ameican troop they kill and Trump continues to refuse to confront Putin about that.

This is what we have learned about the Commander in Chief and his utter contempt for our military. If there were no other reason to remove this man from office, this reason alone is reason enough.

——————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

We’ve Always Known


Reading time – 3:42  .  .  .

Be sure to see the Bonus Opportunity at the end of this post.

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Regular readers of this column will recognize my occasionally offered behavior geek comment that most people simply don’t react to danger until it is in our faces. Climate warming is an easy example, as most people have not been significantly affected by it and consequently they don’t recognize it as a threat.

Source: Berkeley Earth
For expert commentary, contact Tim Rumage, Professor of Environmental Studies, Ringling College of Art+Design at
[email protected] and read his book..

We pay little attention to reports that nearly every year since 1975 is the hottest on record, right until the following year comes along to become the newest hottest year on record. Here in the Midwest the worst thing most of us have noticed is that we have to water our lawns more frequently, a minor nuisance, and we shovel less snow, which we like. That we don’t feel significantly adversely affected by global warming is both understandable and precisely where the roadblock to preventing this looming catastrophe lies. So, too, for the global pandemic.

We all see the numbers of infections and deaths and we watch the news reports of over-maxed hospitals and exhausted nurses, techs, doctors and sanitation workers. But unless you or someone close to you has been exposed to or infected by the virus, it’s unlikely you feel the threat. Perhaps you’re well informed, like my neighbors at a recent block party, who, despite their understanding, didn’t wear masks and did a poor job of social distancing. They weren’t uninformed about the threat or what they needed to do; they were unmotivated.

And that’s the obstacle to beating the virus in the United States; we just aren’t motivated to do what’s necessary to beat it. We’re annoyed that our kids aren’t back in school full time and it’s a real problem for parents who need to leave the house to work and where school is effectively their child care service. We’re frustrated by stores that won’t let us in without a mask. We want to sit indoors as we eat at our favorite restaurant, but that isn’t possible. We want our jobs and income and our old lives back, but there’s a roadblock in our way: the pandemic.

And it’s worse, because the information from the federal government often conflicts with that of the experts and even with itself. We don’t have a clue what to do with that, so we tune out. Perhaps there isn’t a big outbreak nearby or at least we believe that to be true, so we figure the virus won’t touch us. That’s using wishful thinking as a strategy. Not recommended. Here’s some good news.

Read COVID-19 Is Transmitted Through Aerosols. We Have Enough Evidence, Now It Is Time to Act from Time magazine and America Could Control the Pandemic by October from The New York Times. As you’ll see,

We’ve always known what to do to beat this thing and begin to get our lives back.

Yeah, I know a lot of people will dismiss the facts in those essays because they believe that the mainstream media is an enemy of the people. They believe it’s populated by antifa anarchists, socialists, mongrels, pizza shop child sex traffickers, advocates of poor and Black people moving into your white suburban neighborhood, Second Amendment haters who want to take away your guns and drinkers of children’s blood. News flash: All of that and more is Trump and Q-anon BS-smeared propaganda. Feel free to forward this paragraph to your Uncle Bubba.

Meanwhile, read the above pieces because,

We’ve always known what to do to beat this thing and begin to get our lives back.

We’ve seen nearly every country in the world get the job done except our own nation, even as we proclaim our American exceptionalism. And because of our exceptionally inept handling of this virus, most nations have declared that every American is a persona non grata.

We don’t do what’s required, like contact tracing, and then we see our friends and family members get sick and die. All we have to do to beat this pandemic is to take politics out of the driver’s seat.*

We have the plan, we’ve read the classified briefs, we know the secret handshake, we have the well-folded roadmap with the X that marks the spot, we have the secret decoder ring, the Sherlock Holmes spyglass and double-billed hat, and the L-shaped Boy Scout flashlight – everything we need except the will to act. But the disease of inertia can be cured.

Are you willing to sacrifice just a little for just a short time in order to stop this ongoing horror show and then get your life back? That’s the question for every one of us and the correct answer is YES.

Until we get strong leadership, just follow the

Simple, Clear and Non-negotiable Marching Orders To Beat Covid-19

⋅

  1. Wear a mask in public.
  2. Socially distance.
  3. Wash your hands often.
  4. Put your damn mask on.
Now you know what to do to beat this thing and begin to get your life back. There is no other path, so just do it. I’ll do it, too. Then the day will come when we celebrate V-P Day.

————————-

The Trump Unbelievable, Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen Election Rigging Show

This will be a regular feature of these posts to and through the November election, as Trump attempts to manipulate, lie and cheat his way to staying in office. Recall that he must win the election in order to avoid criminal indictments for fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice and more the moment he leaves the protection of the Justice Department memo. Let’s just say that he’s motivated to be creatively criminal.

  1. Trump installed Louis DeJoy as postmaster general. DeJoy is no joy, as he has removed 600 high speed mail sorting machines, removed hundreds of mail drop boxes, eliminated overtime for postal workers and he makes postal trucks run around empty. The result is a hobbling of the Postal Service, such that it has advised 46 states that mail may not be delivered in time to meet state requirements for the election. That will effectively throw millions of ballots into dumpsters. Trump wants to see that happen.
  2. Trump has accelerated his attack on the FDA. At first it was just blatantly disagreeing with the science around the pandemic. Since then it has become pressure to approve treatments that aren’t fully vetted and even more pressure to produce a vaccine , whether vetted or not – and he’s promised that it will be delivered before the election. He’s called the FDA part of the “deep state”** and now,
    1. ”  .  .  .  the administration recently installed a gun-rights advocate and right-wing journalist as the FDA’s chief spokesperson, allowing for partisan communication from an agency that has historically put out apolitical messaging. Last weekend, Trump baselessly claimed that the FDA was part of a “deep state” conspiracy to harm his reelection campaign.”
  3. He constantly makes completely fact-less accusations of in-person and mail-in voter fraud.
  4. Trump used the White House, National Mall and other federal properties for his campaign. That ain’t kosher. You can look it up.
  5. He had Wm. Barr’s Justice Department investigate the investigators of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is just another episode of pulling the rug from under government, especially those parts that examine him and his behavior. Look for the release of the report from this fraudulent investigation, as well as Barr’s lying, suck-up summary of it in mid-October. And just like the Mueller Report, Barr will issue his Trump supporting lies about the report, then withhold its distribution so that there isn’t time to get the truth out before the election.

That’s just top of mind stuff. What’s missing? Provide links if you can. With your help we’ll keep a running tally until and beyond this election, showcasing this most brutally anti-democratic act of the most obviously un-American president in U.S. history.

————————-

  • * You’ve seen how Trump handles this and the results are the worst in the world. To get politics out of the driver’s seat, Trump has to go. Otherwise, he’ll continue to watch our friends and family die, cavalierly saying, “It is what it is.” So vote him away.

** There is no deep state. It’s just another enemy Trump has made up to rally his base. Think: Nothing makes fast friends as powerfully as a common enemy, and Trump is always in victim mode. It appeals to all those whining, “Look what they’ve done and are doing to me.”

————————-

Bonus Opportunity

I’ve signed up to register voters in Wisconsin with Rust Belt Rising on Saturday, Aug 29, 2020. Here’s a link for you to sign up, watch the tutorials and get comfortable with these neighborly chats. I’ll be on more calls in coming days, too, so join me. Let’s turn Wisconsin BLUE!

—————————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

The Real GOP


Reading time – 1:51  .  .  .

President Trump signed an executive order on August 8 to temporarily delay the withholding of employee contributions to Social Security payroll taxes from September 1 to December 31 for people making less than $2,000 per month. I have just two comments about that executive order.

First, this is no gift. Gotta wonder how that EO helps people to pay the rent or mortgage or feed their kids or pay for their meds or repair the car, because they’ll have to pay back every cent soon. And because people are likely to spend those extra bucks, they’re going to be in a nasty bind in January. But, of course, that will be after the election. That temporary extra few bucks is just more Trump smoke and mirrors to get re-elected.

Second, it took 3 months for Trump to do even this hollow BS executive order. (To be fair, he signed 4 executive orders which, in the aggregate, amount to nothing.) That includes his refusing to do good faith negotiating with the House and the complete absence of Mitch McConnell’s Senate from negotiations. Where’s the concern for the people? Oh, right; Trump and the RNC aren’t about the people.

——————————–

The Republican National Convention started of with an  impressive parade of lies, misleading statements and a massive airing of grievances, most of which refer to things that don’t exist on planet Earth. There were reality-free attacks on Joe Biden, a continuing hatefest (easy for them – think: children in cages), never-ending claims of America as dystopia and a brainless fealty to Trump. We knew about the brainless fealty in advance of the RNC–Trump reality show, partly because the Republican Party flatly told us that’s where they stand.

This Republican Party literally has no platform for the 2020 election and they will be creating no policy statements at all. Nothing to tell us about their values. No way for us to know where they stand on anything. Their entire statement is a one-pager.

Well, there is one thing they’ve told us about where they stand. It is that they exist solely to serve Donald Trump. Here’s a direct quote from their 1-page non-platform:

RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

That’s it. All Trump, no brain, all the time.

Download the entire 67-page non-platform here and see for yourself. You’ll only have to look at the first page, because pages 2-67 are the 2016 platform. Perhaps the RNC included those outdated pages to make the document thicker so we’d think there’s something of substance there. Of course, there isn’t.

The Republican Party has formally declared that it is de facto a cult of personality. They have terminated all of their higher brain functions in favor of robotic declarations of Trump fantasy and blind support of Dear Leader, Mein Fuhrer, His Majesty or whatever is today’s groveling object title. They are formally no longer conservative. They stand for subservience. They are the Door Mat Party. And they’re proud of that.

This quote from the1997 movie The Rainmaker seems to fit for today’s members of the Republican Party:

“Do you even remember when you first sold out?”

—————————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

No Time To Be Silent


Reading time – 2:31; Viewing time – 3:34  .  .  .

It was a November evening in Chicago in 2008 that was much warmer than we had a right to expect. Hundreds of thousands of us gathered in Grant Park along Lake Michigan to watch the election returns on the Jumbo-Trons set up for that purpose. The cops were there on their gorgeous thoroughbreds, but there wasn’t any crowd control needed. In fact, the cops were off by the vendor stands eating pizza.

At last we saw Wolf Blitzer on the CNN screen near us and heard him announce that Ohio (I think it was Ohio) had gone for Obama and that put him over the top – he had won. People in the park were cheering, dancing, jumping, hugging, crying, smiling and doubled over in relief. We were there with our family that night and we did all of that and more. I recall yelling what Rachel Maddow had said when Obama won the 95% white Iowa caucuses 10 months earlier: “This is the kind of country I want to live in.”

Of course, much of the celebration was because a Black man had been elected president, with all that implied. It would be a mistake, though, to fail to recognize the long dark night that was the administration of George W. Bush and which led to that November celebration that was in stark contrast to the Bush years. The relief that November evening was one of at last having a feeling of hope once again, a feeling that had been absent for 8 years and two stolen elections.

I was reminded of that celebratory night following Joe Biden’s acceptance speech last Thursday. Gone were the gaffs, the missteps and fumbles. Before us was a warrior for the people, for democracy, for the United States of America and for the entire world. And he showed up just in time, as we’re neck deep in the cesspool of Trumpism. It’s been an inescapable nightmare of corruption, of subverting the rule of law, of manipulating the government solely to serve Trump, of division and cruelty and we have been absent of hope for four years. To paraphrase President Gerald Ford, the long national nightmare of Trump may soon be over.

And that’s why following Biden’s speech I thought of Grant Park on that wonderful November evening 12 years ago.

Now we have to complete the story. Now we have to do the hard work to make hope real. Now we have to make the twister that causes Biden’s house to fall on the Wicked Witch of Mar-a-Lago. Only then can we cry out, “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”

So, it’s time to get to work helping people register to vote, to help them sign them up to vote by mail, for voting early ourselves and by doing all the things that will raise Biden’s house into the sky so that it will drop in just the right place.

From Elie Wiesel:

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

This is no time to be silent.

Remember:

Democracy is a participation sport. Its a patriotism thing.

Be a patriot. The Founders would be proud.

Opportunities

Speed counts, because early voting and mail-in voting start in some places as early as two weeks from now.

Phone bank for candidates – pick any state or race you like. It’s way easier than you may think – and it’s non-confrontational.

Volunteer with MoveOn – lots of ways to put a stake in the ground.

Check to make sure you’re registered to vote and haven’t been voter suppressed – go to Vote.org.

Send post cards to swing state voters to urge people to vote with the simple system of PostCardsToSwingStates.com.

Volunteer with Biden For President.

It’s hard to read, but the add-on at the bottom reads, “FUNCTIONING ADULT”

Volunteer for the candidates of your choice by going to their websites. Find them by googling, e.g.  “Ooblick for Senate.” I shouldn’t have to say this, but substitute the candidate’s name for “Ooblick” and don’t include the quotation marks.

Post a lawn sign and get a bumper sticker for the candidates you support. Go to the website of your local Democratic Party affiliate. Start here. While you’re there, kick in a few bucks to help out.

Go to Mayday America and volunteer – lots of ways to do this.

Check with friends, family and the elderly people in your life who aren’t online savvy. Offer to help them and remind them to vote.

In my neck of the woods, go to the Tenth Dems site or the Democrats of Northfield Township. Go to Indivisible Evanston (there are links to affiliates in other states) and review their list of ways to make a difference.

Go to Media Matters to stay informed.

To be clear on why this isn’t just important, but is critical, read this from Ben Rhodes. He served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. Then pass this post along to others.

“This is a battle for the soul of our nation.” – Joe Biden. So, put your soul into this – JA

—————————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

Questions For the August Town Halls


Reading time – 2:56  .  .  .

The House of Representatives remains in session this month. In contrast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called a recess for the month of August for the Senate. That means that August town halls are solely with senators. Feel free to ask any of these questions of your Republican senator, as they don’t apply if s/he is a Democrat.

From constituent #1:

Senator, thank you for taking my question.

There is a pandemic in our country that is taking down millions of Americans. Over 158,000 of our friends and family have died from it and the disease is extending its reach and accelerating its spread.

Our economy is cratering, as GDP has fallen more in one quarter than at any time in the past 150 years.

Tens of millions of Americans are out of work, with a million more joining the ranks of the unemployed every week. The supplemental aid package ran out at the end of last month and millions are facing the inability to pay for their housing, which will lead to foreclosures and evictions. Millions of Americans will be unable even to feed their families.

Congress is willfully paralyzed over extending a hand to our people. Sen. McConnell called a recess of the Senate and you and your colleagues dutifully vacated the premises as directed.

It’s your job – we pay you – to represent us and promote our welfare, but instead you’re here politicking for your next election, working for yourself. My question is simple:

Why aren’t you back in Washington working for us?

From constituent #2:

Senator, you’ve been in Congress for a long time and have been a staunch promoter of American values around the world. You’ve been a forceful opponent of Russian aggression and a plain spoken critic of Vladimir Putin.

President Trump fails to confront Putin for his paying bribes to the Taliban to kill Americans; he failed to forcefully oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the Crimea; he fails to confront Putin over the ongoing Russian cyber-espionage on the U.S. and now is pulling a large percentage of our military from Germany, weakening our position throughout the region and further damaging our  relationships with NATO allies. There is nothing conservative about any of those failures.

Throughout all of this and worse from this president you’ve remained silent, without so much as voicing a single objection, much less mounting opposition to Trump’s dereliction of duty to protect and defend. In your silence you have been an enabler of his sell-out of America, meek as a lapdog. Why aren’t you speaking out, senator?

From constituent #3:

Senator, you voted against the PPP program and every other measure to help working Americans during these perilous times. In contrast, in 2017 you voted for the tax cut bill that sent 83% of its benefit to the richest people and corporations in the country. You vigorously promoted it, saying it would generate wage increases, but that didn’t happen and the economists told you that’s what would happen. But corporations did buy back their stock, which boosted stock prices solely to the benefit of rich people.

Tell us why you like rich people so much and clearly don’t care about middle class or poor people.

From constituent #4:

Thank you for being here today, senator, and for taking our questions.

My question is about the anonymous federal troops that President Trump has sent to 7 of our cities and who have brutalized and terrorized largely peaceful protesters. We’re told that these troops are from the Department of Homeland Security, the purview of whose policing force is solely to defend federal property. However, nearly all of the actions of these troops has taken place well away from federal property.

These troops are heavily armed and anonymous, as they wear no agency or unit identifying insignia, police star numbers or name badges and they drive unmarked SUVs. They have kidnapped our citizens without warrant, have failed to Mirandize those they have kidnapped and have held them without cause and without charge.

Please don’t claim that the demonstrators were violent, because we have amateur video and press coverage that plainly shows that’s a lie. My question is simple: Why have you remained silent as our friends and family are being beaten, gassed, shot and pepper sprayed? Where is your voice to stop this brutality?

From constituent #5:

Thank you for taking my question, senator.

The manufacturing facility where I’ve worked for 14 years is shut down because of the pandemic. The extra help I used to get from the federal government made it possible for my family to hold on, but that’s cut off now. And you’ve opposed financial aid to laid off workers, saying that providing that aid is a disincentive to working.

I’ve played by the rules all along and am now in a really tough spot because of a disease over which I have no control, and you’ve essentially called me and millions of other Americans bums. I invite you to apologize to us all right here, right now, and then go back to DC and do your job to work for us. Otherwise, you can come to my house and explain to my kids why there not only won’t be any birthday presents, but that they should be happy with just 1 or 2 meals a day. And you can explain to my wife that she’ll have to do without her insulin that we can’t afford.

So, what’s your choice, senator: my house or DC?

——————————-

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

It’s About the Dog


Reading time – 5:41; Viewing time – 8:22  .  .  .

The political circumstances and the prospects for the future quality for life for the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are becoming increasingly shaky and he is becoming more and more unhinged. Even desperate.

He knows that if he is removed from office he will immediately face criminal charges. That’s why he must stay in the White House bunker, hiding behind the Justice Department memo – not law – that says a sitting president cannot be indicted on criminal charges. That’s a very handy memo for a presidential perp to have. But the walls are closing in, driven mostly by self-inflicted errors and blatant cruelty.

It was only a matter of time before his complete bumbling of the coronavirus catastrophe would take a huge bite out of him. After all, the American public has a way of becoming very cross, as friends and family die alone with tubes down their throats, and the rest of us live knowing there are ventilators with our names on them in a parking lot being used for hospital overflow. Tens of millions have lost their jobs and are struggling to feed their children and we don’t know when children will be allowed back in school. Still, that occupant lies to us that the global pandemic will magically go away. About 1,000 Americans are dying every day waiting for that magic. And this American story gets worse.

People of all colors have at last figured out that Black lives actually do matter. Who would have imagined that? And these people picked a time to make a statement which was quite convenient for the aforementioned occupant for his use as a reelection scheme.

The videos of the murders of unarmed Black men at the hands of police and vigilantes went viral and they called people out of their homes and into the streets to grieve those losses and so many others, and to wail their sadness and their anger. Some became violent.

Federal goons in Portland. Click for the Washington Post story.

At least we think some of them became violent. We don’t know who lit the matches and many wonder if violent right wingers staged the violence to make the demonstrators look bad, even un-American, and thereby incite a backlash. Not surprisingly, the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue occupant turned out to be Backlash Individual #1 and he’s making the most of it. However bad things have been for the past 401 years, he has made them incendiary and continues doing that today.

I’ve written many times, predicting that Trump would wag-the-dog (here, here, here and more) in a desperate move to stay in power and now he’s doing it, lying about the protests and starting the wag using his private thug army.

He’s sent federal storm troopers to Washington DC and to Portland, Oregon to crack down on (read: attack) protesters, whether they’re peaceful or otherwise. He’s showing what a tough guy he is. It’s his desperate political play to be the law and order candidate and thereby garner white votes, because “law and order” is a dog whistle for “whites keep their power over those horrible, savage Blacks.”

It’s unconstitutional to send our armed forces into our cities, so Trump found another way to have thugs do his thuggery. It turns out that the Department of Homeland Security has its own policing force, created to protect federal property, not city, state or private property. It is composed mostly of “contractors.” That doesn’t mean plumbers and carpenters working a second job. It means mercenaries. Guns for hire. Eric Prince’s Blackwater/Xe Services army.

Trump has used these as his private army, not to protect federal property, but to violently attack peaceful protesters in order to distract us. That’s how he’s using these protests to his advantage. Doing so keeps voters from focusing on his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, his failure to confront Putin over paying bribes to kill American troops, his blatantly illegal commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence, his ongoing violations of the Emoluments clause, his multiple obstructions of justice and more.

He’s wagging the dog not against a foreign nation, but against our own people, our friends and neighbors, claiming he is the law and order president who will protect us and the Constitution from socialist mobs.

He consistently stokes hatred and violence, thereby inflaming racial tension and division. Then he presents himself as the hero who will save us from the violence he stokes. It’s classic wag-the-dog. This miserable, dangerous cartoon character of a dictator is wrapped in erasable red, white and blue and is carrying a bible upside down as he sends thugs to our cities to make himself look tough.

Make no mistake: He’s brutally cruel to our people and he’s destroying our democracy. There’s danger coming soon to a city near you, especially if your mayor is a Democrat. The dog of tyranny bites selectively at first. Then things get much worse.

Read Tom Friedman’s piece for more.

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Resource Materials

Here are some book recommendations to explain more fully what this post is about and the danger we face.

First, read Professor Timothy Snyder’s small book, On Tyranny. Read it as a foundation piece, a context setter to understand our reality. It’s a quick, if scary read, as it’s not much bigger than a small pad of paper.

Next, read Jason Stanley’s book, How Fascism Works. That will put meat on the bones of Timothy Snyder’s work, but I warn you that you’ll be frightened for your children, which is why you need to read this book.

As long as you’re reading Stanley, get a copy of How Propaganda Works. From the first page you’ll recognize the political manipulation that has been and continues to be aimed at you.

No list like this would be complete without How Democracies Die. Levitsky and Ziblatt lay it out for you to see how brick-by-brick democracies are torn down, including our own.

I’m only a third of the way through Anne Applebaum’s brand new book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. The lessons are clear and powerful and you need to see them. Get this little book.

Finally – and this is prompted by the behavior geek in me – if you want to know why you in your progressive bubble are afraid to talk to your neighbor who wears a MAGA hat and he’s not too crazy about talking with you, either, why last Thanksgiving devolved into a shouting match with Uncle Bob across from cousin George’s wonderful green bean dish and why those “other people” just don’t seem to get it, read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. You’ll instantly understand why it’s so easy for politicians to divide us.

In addition, read any of Thomas Edsall’s essays in the New York Times.

Go buy and read these books. If you’ll only actually read one, get Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny. Plus, read Edsall.

I have not provided links to purchase these books on Amazon or from any big box store. That’s because I want you to buy your books from your local Ma & Pa bookstore to help keep your neighborhood vibrant.

Now, go do your homework. There absolutely will be a test.

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

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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