Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler

propaganda

Dysfunction Junction


Post 1,041

On February 18 Steve Sheffey wrote,

” . . . House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says he won’t allow the House to vote on the emergency funding because it doesn’t contain money for border security. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) accurately summarized Johnson’s position: The Speaker said he wouldn’t pass Ukraine funding without a border deal and we got a deal and then he killed the deal because he said we didn’t need a deal and now he says he won’t pass our Ukraine funding bill because it doesn’t include a border deal. . . Johnson adjourned the House until February 28, preventing any action before then and leaving Israel and Ukraine twisting in the wind.”

“One day Republicans are opposing aid to Israel because it doesn’t include cuts to the IRS [for the purpose of helping rich tax cheats], another day they are opposing aid to Israel because it is coupled with funding for border security, another day they are opposing aid to Israel because it doesn’t include border security funding that they themselves opposed days earlier.”

Said Sheila Markin on February 18 about Republican dysfunction:

“[The MAGAs] Can’t pass legislation. Makes false claims. Embarrasses itself by impeaching a cabinet member, Mayorkas, for failing to harden the border WHILE Mayorkas is hammering out the toughest deal in recent history with a bipartisan Senate group THAT WOULD HARDEN THE BORDER and then REJECTS that legislation to appease Donald Trump. Fails to fund Ukraine, helping Putin gain ground in that war. Fails to fund Israel. Fails at pretty much everything. This dysfunctional House has only passed about 40 pieces of legislation into law, by far the least productive House in recent history. Many of the bills that did pass were pro forma – like giving Secret Service overtime pay or allowing Duck Stamps to be printed.”

That’s dysfunction as a fundamental principle. It’s as though they think nihilism and chaos are virtues.

From Meet the thought police of Rockingham County, VA, by Kate Cohen in the Washington Post:

They really don’t want you to read this book. Also, see note #5 below.

“The Rockingham County [VA] School Board recently took up the question of whether to remove 57 books immediately from school libraries, claiming it needed to create a process for … removing books from school libraries. Four members voted yes, and one voted no.”

That’s right – they banned 57 books so that they would have a process to ban books.

Seriously, is anyone unclear about who and what these MAGA Republicans are? They keep telling us who they are. We should believe them. It’s like Trump telling us he wants to terminate the Constitution. Does anyone think he wouldn’t if he could?

These people are dangerous. They are propaganda (read: lies) saturated. They want to be the thought police limiting what you can think. They want to keep freedoms from you. They want to dominate you and all you believe in, and they’ll do it by baffling you with bull shit and the tyranny of the minority. If that isn’t already clear to you, reread the quotations above.

George Orwell painted an accurate picture of what Republicans want to force on you. Either we stop them or they will stop us.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

Changing Minds


The Economy

For those dedicated to wringing hands over the economy, here’s the beginning of Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s post of July 25:

President Biden’s determination to “build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” appears to be paying off. Last Friday the global financial services company Morgan Stanley credited Biden’s policies with driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing, a boom large enough that Morgan Stanley revised its gross domestic product growth projections upward to 1.9%, a projection almost four times higher than its original projection.

Analysts doubled their projections for the fourth quarter, and raised forecasts for next year, as well. “The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated,” Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner wrote.

Read her essay. It’s full of wonderful news and vitally important truth, stuff that the crazies attack and lie about.

Will our outstanding economic performance change the minds of Trump voters or the hallucinatory far right crazies?

Answers: NO and NO.

But that doesn’t matter. They’re the crowd that’s super-glued to conspiracies and obstruction.

The battle is for those who are open to accurate information. This positive economic news just might change their minds and motivate them to show up to vote for candidates who will fight for our democracy because there’s something in it for them. It’s about changing these minds with the truth.

Lies

From reader and contributor Diana Dobrovolny Hefter:

It’s all beginning to fall apart.
.
Last [Tuesday] Rudy Giuliani admitted in a court filing that he made false claims about Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.
.
These are the two individuals that Trump, his attorneys and his followers claimed to have committed election fraud in the state of Georgia, leading to Biden’s victory.
.
Giuliani now admits that it was fabricated.
.
Will this change the minds of Trump voters who still believe Trump’s lies of massive election-changing voter fraud? Will Trump stop pushing these lies?
.
Answers: NO and NO.
.
Once again, from an election perspective, the truth is only valuable to people who are not super-glued to fantastical, extremist lies. The rest of us think democracy, rights and freedoms are good things. We think lying like Giuliani lies is a bad thing. If we can change some minds, these folks just might get off their La-Z-Boys on election day and vote. That would be most democratic – lower case “d” – and helpful – for a change.
.
The Fall of the FBI
No, it didn’t fall. But trust in the Bureau is extremely low. The important part is why it’s so low and it turns out that it’s extremist propaganda, conspiracy lunacy and a very large number of googly-eyed lies told over and over. You know, like The Big Lie.
.

Dana Milbank has detail on this in his Washington Post piece, Republicans celebrate their successful deception of voters. Here’s a summary.

The extremist Republicans are and have been on a relentless tear of  telling lies to poison the minds of We The People. And they’ve been quite successful at undermining trust in the FBI, the Justice Department and our intelligence agencies. Here’s a piece from Milbank’s post:

[Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA)], the leadoff questioner at Wednesday’s hearing, told [FBI Director Christopher] Wray about a recent NBC News poll in which “only 37 percent of registered voters now view the FBI positively, down from 52 percent in 2018. That’s a serious decline in the people’s faith, and it’s on your watch,” he told Wray.

Milbank goes on to say,

The Republicans are well aware of “those numbers” — because they are the ones who assassinated the reputation of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. [emphasis mine]

Those prevaricators sure did change some minds, but not for the better.

Sensitive readers are cautioned to read Milbank’s piece with no sharp or heavy objects nearby. The story is, let’s call it, unsettling.

The point is that the hyperbolic crazies, using a tsunami of misinformation, is driving down public trust in those who keep us safe. It’s a garbage dump of Big Lies. And that affects our elections.

BTW, weren’t Republicans the ones who claimed to carry the mantle of law and order and tough justice? Big supporters of law enforcement? But now they’re ripping the FBI. What happened to that mantle?

Good Guys Winning Elections

It is beyond human capability to change minds of the super-glued crowd. If we’re to get sane, democracy loving officials, we’ll have to appeal to independents, those with minds open to reality. We’ll have to appeal to every non-extremist voter to vote. In short, we’ll have to do whatever it takes to motivate ALL OF US to participate in our democracy. That would be a fine change of minds.

Would that there were moderate Republicans with the courage to speak out against the lies, but alas, we cannot count on them to do the right thing. Those with a backbone seem to be on the edge of extinction.

“We are the people we’ve been waiting for.”

There is but one way to stop the flood tide of dishonesty and that is for us to saddle up and be the cavalry charging over the hill. Obama said it best: “We are the people we’ve been waiting for.”

We are the ones who have to protect and defend rights, freedoms and democracy because we are the ones who believe in reality.

This is no thought exercise. This is a call to action, to canvas, to text, to donate, to make calls so that those who believe in truth and democracy are the ones who take office in January 2025 and in the states following the state and local elections between now and then.

We have to change a bunch of minds – for the better.

Betcha You’ve Never Heard of This Kind of Thing Before

Jadarrius Rose, a 23 year old Black man, was driving his 18-wheeler in Circleville, OH on July 4 when he was stopped by the State Highway Patrol for a missing rear mudflap. He got out of the cab of his truck and was told to get on the ground. Instead, he threw his hands up in obvious surrender.

In the body cam footage an officer can be heard repeatedly telling Circleville Police Officer Ryan Speakman, who was the handler of a police dog, “Do not release the dog with his hands up!”
.
That was when Speakman released the dog. It savagely attacked Rose.
.
  • It’s easy to understand how that might happen, as Rose was quite obviously guilty of surrendering with his hands up while being Black.

Oh wait: maybe you have heard of such a thing. And maybe refusing to teach kids the truth about systemic racism in America is a very bad idea.

A lot of minds need to be changed about this.

Just For Fun

Now that there are 37 charges against Trump in the documents case, it’s time to see how the We The People feel about this.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


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

Woke, Parents Rights, Covid & Court Watch


“Woke” Update 2

Given the decades of Republican and so-called conservatives’ efforts to establish absolute power and wealth into the hands of (guess who?) the wealthy, including themselves, it seems this mania to attack whatever is “woke” was inevitable. It’s undefined by those same Republicans and so-called conservatives so that they can use the term just as playground brats would, to ridicule others.

Paul Krugman has given us some definition of what “woke” is, as used by these hateful culture warriors (the brats). In his essay Wonking Out: Conservatives Face a Rude Fiscal Awokening [sic], he explains,

“So now we know what many conservatives mean by being woke: It means showing any concern for and offering any help to, Americans who are victims of adverse circumstances.”

That means that many of We The People, those whose safety and security we claim to protect, are instead blown off by Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and the rest of the frothy-mouthed usual suspects.

Those suspects aren’t just brats. They are thugs.

Parents Rights

The so-called “parents rights” temper tantrums polluting our Republican controlled states have resulted in faculty firings, book bannings, book burning, race negating, history denial, bullying, board of education upheavals and more. These tirades long ago reached a level of refusal of learning that is gut wrenching to any thinking person. This is, in fact, a denial of education and learning.

Public education is for the public. All of it. It isn’t just for kids whose parents are an angry, frothing few. Surely, parents have the primary responsibility for their children’s education and should have a voice in what that looks like, even when parents don’t know much about educating kids. But public education isn’t just for a small minority of vocal thugs who want to force their narrow, angry beliefs on everyone else.

So, for parents who think the statue of David is pornographic; for parents who think Toni Morrison’s writings are racially offensive or harmful to their fragile White children; for parents who don’t want their kids to know that not every other kid is exactly like them; for parents who think their kids should be told only that Rosa Parks was a woman on a bus, this without mentioning that she was Black; for parents who want to micromanage every classroom and who just can’t abide a complete education for their kids; there are two simple solutions: either home school your kids or send them to a private school more in line with your narrow notion of education.

And you can pay the entire bill for either of those options with your own money. Vouchers transferring public education money to private schools are a scam and an offense to the Constitution.

But don’t worry. The public schools will be there for your kids when you run out of anger and money, just as the Framers intended – even if Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis and their private, for-profit school CEO buddies don’t like that.

Covid

“If you are up to date on your vaccines and you get treated with Paxlovid, if you get an infection, you just don’t die of this virus,” [Dr. Ashish Jha] said. “Almost every one of those [Covid] deaths [of un-vaccinated people] is preventable. And yet people are still dying [at the rate of 200 – 500 per day]. And that is the power of misinformation. That is the power of disinformation that we all have to work on countering.”

  • – Dr. Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House Covid response team,
  • speaking to an audience of physicians at a
  • conference near Boston, Friday, March 28

Even as our people die, Republicans in Congress and big megaphone blatherers continue to do diaper-clad political performances to incite an angry army of malcontents (dunno where I saw that, but I sure like it) to self-harming craziness.

It’s safe to say that we have an large part of our population that has been trained over decades to see themselves as victims of some other group of Americans, so they’re angry. They are angry to the point that they won’t do the simple things that are necessary to save their own lives, let alone the lives of Granny, their kids or the check-out lady at the supermarket. They prefer anger over continuing to live.

That’s a lot like our gun safety refusers, who love their guns more than they love their own kids – or yours.

And That Connects With .  .  .

The alt-right (aka, radical extremists) have been hyper-crazificating for at least three decades to get Americans to distrust and hate:

government

healthcare professionals

healthcare insurance

journalists

democracy

the media

all politicians with a “D” next to their name

all politicians regardless of party who don’t toe the extremist line

the courts

elections

any Democratic president

truth, justice and the American way

anybody not just like themselves

And if there are real, Earth #1 facts that refute the distrust and hate disinformation, it is labeled fake news or assigned some other form of reality dismissal. This is blind acceptance of propaganda to the point of self-reinforcing, evidence-free belief in the unbelievable. Here’s an example.

Take a look at this chart from a recent Gallup survey.

The study was done following Vice President Harris’ visit to these three African countries. You can see that roughly half of the respondents approve of our job performance there, which means that roughly half of the respondents disapprove.

Questions:

  1. What percentage of US adults can find any of those countries on a map, even if the countries are labeled?
  2. What percentage of US adults can name even one US policy regarding these nations?

Bolstered by their ignorance, half of surveyed adults disapprove of the work of our government. Hint: they were propagandized to disapprove, to believe the unbelievable.

Here’s another Gallup chart showing President Biden’s approval rating at just 40% (green). It also shows that 56% disapprove of his job performance (orange).

We can ask survey respondents the same type of questions as for the African countries and the results would yield the same kinds of answers: they really don’t know any reason for their negative opinions except that a lot of very loud, self-serving people have been exhorting them to distrust and hate, to believe the unbelievable.

Too many of our citizens have been trained that way all their lives. That sadly defines our challenge to restore our institutions, our values and our country to something that resembles a democracy.

“We live in an age of explicit disinformation—that is, disinformation that is publicly confirmed as disinformation yet still succeeds as disinformation.”

David Corn, Our Land newsletter, April 4, 2023

Court Watch

Perp walked, finger printed and indicted on 34 felony counts in New York.  √

That’s one.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


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

Winning, Part One: The Numbers, Rage and Yoda


This is just simple math.
.

                                STATE                           POPULATION (millions)

Wyoming                                    0.58

Vermont                                      0.62

Alaska                                         0.73

North Dakota                              0.76

South Dakota                              0.88

Delaware                                     0.97

Rhode Island                               1.1

Montana                                       1.1

                TOTAL                         6.73

Those eight states have 16 senators representing them.

Indiana has as many people as all those states combined, but has only 2 senators to represent them. It’s about the same for Massachusetts, Tennessee, Missouri and Maryland.

New York has over 3 times as many citizens as the total of those eight states, but has only 2 senators to represent them.

California has 6.5 times as many citizens as the total above, yet Californians have only 2 senators.

All power to the low population states! Minority rule today! Minority rule tomorrow! Minority rule forever!*
.

And it’s nuttier than that.

There are roughly 40 million more people in blue states than red states, yet senatorial representation is roughly equal, which means that 40 million blue state people are under-represented and discounted in the Senate. To be fair, that is due not just to our two-senators-per-state rule, but also because of voter suppression and gerrymandering that favors and keeps red states red. No way to paint a happy picture about that. It’s just what Republicans do.

In case you wonder why this mangled representation exists, read the explanation from Senate.gov.

What that explanation won’t tell you is that the Framers didn’t trust our mostly illiterate population to select well, so they created both the Electoral College and this presumably deliberative body, the Senate. Both were supposed to be safer when chosen by land-owning, literate white men.

Kyrsten Sinema

That assumption of the Framers has brought us presidents elected by a minority of voters (2 of the last 6 elections, plus some others and Republicans have lost the popular vote in every presidential election but one since 1988). It has also brought us a non-representative Senate. The primary present-day duty of the Republicans in the Senate is to obstruct progress for our country and to manipulate for their individual power – minority rule – which means they’re all about protecting and promoting the interests of big money donors. (See: Kyrsten Sinema receiving huge money from Big Pharma, then refusing prescription drug pricing reform. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.)

Red-Blue politics ebbs and flows (at least it used to), but common sense says that head count representation ought to be proportional in the Senate. It isn’t. That has substantive impact on the lunacy of our current politics and it’s related to our vaccine refusers in a very loud way.

The refusers are exhorted every day to refuse vaccines by breathtakingly false and destructive information coming from state and national leadership. They’re told to refuse the very thing that can save their lives and the lives of those they love. They surrender their facility for critical thinking and embrace only what stokes their rage.

They scream about the infringement of their freedoms. They proclaim entirely untrue propaganda, like that the vaccine will make them sterile, or that there are nanobots in the vaccine and Bill Gates will be able to track and control them, or that vaccines have killed more people than the disease or any of a hundred false claims from sick imaginations. And Americans continue to die at the rate of 1,400 per day.

The constant is the presence of  rage. It’s stoked every night by Tucker Carlson and during the day by Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott and the know-nothing TV and radio blabbers who rake in money from advertisers because our rage-ists tune in. And the refusers vote for red state politicians who tell them what they want to hear and who then go to Congress and state legislatures to fulfill the role of rage in minority rule. That’s the Senate-rage connection and the Republicans work it to perfection to win elections.

I think there’s something else going on and it fits hand-in-glove with rage. It’s fear. Fear of being controlled. Fear of being wrong. Fear of smart people. Fear of science. Fear of change. Fear of government. Fear of globalization. Fear of “others.” Fear of the future. Fear of needles. Fear of their own ignorance. Fear of complexity. Fear of everything they don’t understand. Fear of a world they can’t make sense of.

Keith Olbermann says it more flamboyantly than I do and I’m not crazy about the name calling parts of his post, but fundamentally, I think he has it right: our refusers are afraid. They won’t acknowledge that, because doing so wouldn’t be manly. It would pop their rage-puffery and they wouldn’t get to feel as powerful. Their refusal, though, doesn’t erase their fear or the tribalism it spawns. And their fear, stoked every day by Republicans, is causing more of us to die from the pandemic and is igniting violence around the country.

Perhaps you thought the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Rs was the entire problem, but I tell you with certainty that it is not. Its matching bookend is wimpy Democrats enabling their anti-democracy, letting Republicans get away with that.

In 2002 Republican Senate candidate Saxby Chamliss cruelly attacked Viet Nam vet and triple-amputee Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA), who was slow and not aggressive in response. He lost his reelection bid.

In the 2004 presidential race John Kerry was attacked and called a coward by a Republican group that came to be known as the Swift Boaters. He kept silent about them, not wanting to give them credibility by responding to their their lies. When he at last did speak up it was too late and he lost the election.

Both of those Democrats were defensive and failed to attack. They failed to aggressively call out the lies. That’s how to lose an election, as both of them did. And I’m disgusted by Democrats who won’t do what’s necessary to win an election now.

Required homework assignment

Read Sheila Markin’s exceptionally clear, shocking and sadly accurate post. This will count for 50% of your Civics grade. The final will be on November 8, 2022.

Wisdom Wake-Up Call

From my Yoda-like friend, Ozzie (all italics mine):

“Reality always (and probably all ways) wins. Our only job is to get in touch with it.”

Enough with the illusions and wishful thinking.

“Or as the Little Prince shared: It is with the heart that one sees rightly. For what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Enduringly true. And there is plenty that is essential and easy to see with the eyes. Keep them open and see what is plainly before us.

“Or: If you want to live your dream: #)#_!%^ WAKE UP!!! (Screamed as loud as humanly possible).”

If your dream includes a healthy democracy that serves the people, sleep walking through life just won’t do. #)#_!%^ WAKE UP!!!

See Winning, Part Two on Sunday, November 14 to learn what to do about it.

—————————

* Paraphrased from Gov. George Wallace’s (R-AL) inauguration speech, January 14, 1963. Even with the word swapping, my meaning is pretty much the same as his, except that I mean it as sarcasm. Wallace meant it as enduring hatred.

————————————
The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  3. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.

JA


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

The American ISIS – Part Two


This is Part Two of The American ISIS. Part One was published on Wednesday, July 7, 2021. You can find it here.

————————

Kurt Andersen’s 2017 book Fantasyland is a remarkable journey through our 5 century endeavor to perfect our ability to believe almost anything. It’s about how we blind ourselves to obvious reality and embrace outrageous explanations and fantasies to fill our gaping ignorance and feed our passions. We may be reaching perfection in that right now and could achieve escape velocity.

I recommend Andersen’s book to you but caution that you may find some of his views objectionable. Should that happen, simply focus on the basic American manias of belief in whatever puffs our bubble and our need to be wowed by ever more spectacular wow. There are hard consequences to those vulnerabilities. Our enthusiasm to believe the otherwise unbelievable is especially true when we live in fear of the ground shifting farther away from what feels solidly familiar. We clutch after vaporous memories of an imagined better time that never happened and we demand that it return.

He concludes his book quoting Hannah Arendt, who escaped Germany in 1933, came to America and became a leading political philosopher. In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism she wrote, “The essential conviction shared by all ranks [in a totalitarian movement], from fellow-traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating.” Consider that in the context of our fellow-traveler mobs chanting “Stop the steal!” and their dear leader having whined, accused and lied incessantly since 2015 about rigged elections and who now donkey brays about how the 2020 election was “stolen” from him and his mobs.

Back to Arendt:

“A mix of gullibility and cynicism have been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true  .  .  .  Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable truth of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

Her references were to Stalin and Hitler but she could as well have been writing about 21st century America and Donald Trump. We’re not a different species from any other people at any other time and this story is a recurring one. The difference is that it is being played out on us today and it is our democracy that is in danger.

The Nazi Brown Shirts and Stalin’s Death Squads and Pol Pot’s Kymer Rouge were each absolute followers of an absolute, tyrannical leader. They were constantly infused with propaganda. So, too, were and are the al Qaeda and ISIS vengeful mobs.

Right here at home our American ISIS is propagandized by Trump. He is yet another megalomaniac who will get his way or he will burn it all down. His followers have promised death to whomever he points a stubby finger at, including the Vice President of the United States. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in America and most are owned by a relative few, meaning that we have propagandized militias with over-stocked arsenals and barely contained rage. Even some of our military and police are fully propagandized.

These American ISIS members have promised ongoing violence fueled by their self-righteous certainties of patriotism and their imagined unity with 18th century revolutionaries. They have demonstrated their eagerness to inflict their violence on others. In fact far right extremists are the biggest perpetrators of domestic terrorism in America – by far. Now consider what will happen when their tyrannical leader, their Caligula, is indicted and convicted of his crimes.

Consider, too, how critical it will be to pass S.4263, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and H.R.1, the For The People Act to stop a Republican steal of our upcoming elections and of our democracy.

The facts are before us, so expecting the American ISIS to make good on their threats is an exercise in reality. Believe your eyes.

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Good News!

On Friday President Biden fired the Trump appointed head of the Social Security Administration, Andrew Saul, and solicited and received the resignation of his chief deputy, David Black. Saul spent the past years doing everything he could to deny benefits to seniors, our disabled and others for whom the system is supposed to work. He tried to bust the employee union and more.

Saul’s firing is a fine start to removing all the Trump toadies who have their jobs due to campaign donations and blatant conflicts of interest with the agencies they lead, like Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who spends his days hobbling the post office system and slowing your mail.

Well done, President Biden. Keep purging!

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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.
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JA


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

Liberal and Most Illiberal


Liberal

New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens has an interesting post on our politics. He says we’re not divided by liberal versus conservative; we’re divided by liberal versus illiberal. Here’s what he says liberal democracy is supposed to be:

By “liberal,” I don’t mean big-state welfarism. I mean the tenets and spirit of liberal democracy. Respect for the outcome of elections, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the principle (in courts of law and public opinion alike) of innocent until proven guilty. Respect for the free market, bracketed by sensible regulation and cushioned by social support. Deference to personal autonomy but skepticism of identity politics. A commitment to equality of opportunity, not “equity” in outcomes. A well-grounded faith in the benefits of immigration, free trade, new technology, new ideas, experiments in living. Fidelity to the ideals and shared interests of the free world in the face of dictators and demagogues.

If he’s right in his definition (and I think he is), then we’re not even hitting the liberal barn door today, much less the center of the bulls eye painted on it. And “illiberal” is probably too cozy a term. It’s more like outright hostility to democracy.

Perhaps ’twas ever thus, but we’re living in an age when outrageousness and high volume dominate. Given our wealth of venues for instant dissemination of whatever drivel dribbles from lips and finger tips, that makes every blowhard a blow torch that easily burns down decorum, critical thinking and even our sense of reality.

Stephens’ column was nicely book-ended by that of Ross Douthat, who wrote that voting restrictions aren’t really as impactful as lefties think they are. I wonder what response he’d get if he were to run that by the people in North Carolina where most polling places in Black areas were closed and people were forced to travel long distances and wait for hours to vote. Did he check in with the voters in Georgia and Florida whose names were removed from the voting roles solely because they missed voting in the last election? So many questions, so little liberal democracy.

Most Illiberal

In an interview on the Joe Pags show Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Racism) spoke of the insurrection against the Constitution on January 6, declaring,

“I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.”

“Now, had the tables been turned — now, Joe, this will get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

Never mind that the rioters clearly didn’t love this country – they were attacking it – and rather than “never do anything to break the law,” they were in constant violation of the law. And no, they didn’t honor Blue Lives Matter, either – they attacked over 140 police officers. And let’s ignore his blatant racism implicit in “I might have been a little concerned” if the rioters were BLM or Antifa. Instead, let’s look at how Johnson defended himself against the justified excoriation of his racist comments.

“This isn’t about race, this is about riots. I have been attacked and criticized because I pushed back on the narrative that there were thousands of armed insurrectionists, and that’s just a small part of the 74 million Americans that voted for President Trump that also need to be suspect of being potential domestic terrorists or also potentially armed insurrectionists. This is a false narrative, and so the few of us that push back on that we get mercilessly attacked.”

Since making his disingenuous comments, Johnson has been roundly accused of slimy, miserable scum bucket racism. Full disclosure: those are my adjectives and not necessarily those of all the senators, congressmen/women, pundits and ordinary folk who have called him out.

As you can see by his last sentence, he has advanced to the next step of despotic manipulation as instructed by Trump. After doing his own version of “fine people on both sides,” Johnson has taken refuge in sulking, declaring himself a poor victim. Just look what those unfair critics have done to him!

Ron Johnson is so morally bankrupt that he isn’t worth this much space in a blog post, except for one thing: he speaks for all the Americans who manage to rationalize their fear and hatred and notions of supremacy, somehow justifying their joy in discrimination. Holding him up as a fine example of this cowardliness is useful.

Michael Gerson says Johnson is no outlier. Writing in The Washington Post he says,

“There have always been bigots with access to a microphone. But in this case, Johnson did not face the hygienic repudiation of his party. Republican leaders preferred a different strategy: putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Republicans have abolished their ideological police.”

“It matters whether leaders delegitimize hatred or fertilize it; if they isolate prejudice or mainstream it. If political figures base their appeal on the cultivation of resentment for some group or groups, they are releasing deadly toxins into our society without any idea who might be harmed or killed. Such elected leaders might not have blood on their hands directly, but they are creating a society with more bloody hands.”

To be clear, I do not know if Ron Johnson (or any other illiberal posing as a Republican) is feeble minded, galactically ignorant or if he is a vicious, pandering liar. I do know that he is dangerous because he perpetuates hatred that does more than upset people; it gets people killed and it can upend our democracy. That pleases Vladimir Putin, whose propaganda Johnson and other Republicans trumpeted loudly in the last election and beyond. Johnson, like so many other chaos generators, is actively working against America, and that is very illiberal. Read this from Anne Applebaum.

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

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

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