sex trafficking

Year End – Part Two


POST 1243

The Terrible Truth

The DOJ, led by fearless suck ups Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, has complied with about one smidgenth of what is required of them by law. Legislation demands that they turn over to Congress all – as in: ALL – files, documents, images, video recordings and the rest of the material in its possession related to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes, not later than midnight, December 19. Instead they turned over just a small fraction of the materials, saying they’d dribble out more over the next weeks.

In addition, they redacted documents so heavily that there is page after page with nothing but a solid black mask. The redactions were supposed to be used only to protect the names of the over 1,200 victims of child sex trafficking and rape and to protect national security, in the imaginary instance that such protection were necessary. Instead what Congress and We The People received was an extensive exercise in the use of black ink, likely protecting those who deserve no protection. Worse, our corrupt DOJ exposed the names of many of the victims of those horrible abuses.

We are left to realize that any evidence of wrongdoing by Trump and those he wants to protect (read: donors, rich supplicants and political power suppliers) will suddenly vanish – POOF! – just like the text on those wholly redacted pages.

TOL’ Ya So

I told you this was going to happen and it took no clairvoyance to figure that out, because dishonest, illegal and morally corrupt is what Trump and his fawners do. Expect many months of stalling and lies waiting for the required documentation. And expect evidence of wrongdoing by big fish to somehow be “lost.” But something deeper is showing itself.

Given the disparity of the obscene tormenting by ICE and the Department of Justice of everyone who looks even a little Hispanic and the special rules that continue to enrich the already rich and the faux release of Epstein documents, we now have our perfect polar opposites richly displayed. Together they illustrate what we all know is the terrible truth:

  • There is a special version of justice
  • for the rich and powerful
  • and a very different and cruel version of it
  • for the rest of us.
Humans

Rodney King:

“Can’t we all just get along?” *

Me:

No. It’s not even a remote possibility.

You:

Why not?

Me:

Because some people are maniacal about dominating others. Fight them and there is literally or figuratively blood in the streets. Or if you go along to get along with the power Nazis, that will mean surrender and submission. Loss of your autonomy. Life as a door mat.

Some other guy:

But most major religions – that’s where we commonly turn for moral guidance – talk about some version of wolves living with the lamb and the leopard lying down with the kid and the calf lying with the young lion – Isaiah 11:6.

Me:

Right. But the actual outcome of that co-habitation is well fed wolves, leopards and lions. It’s the same kind of contradiction with beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks – Isaiah 2:4. There will always be bad guys and we better have more than fanciful wishes and bits of messianic philosophy for dealing with them.

Democrats are beginning to go on the offensive against the domination brutes and the freedom thieves, like taking the reins to drive the Epstein investigation. We are hearing from people with stiffened spines. Maybe we’re seeing the beginnings of hope.

See footnote ** below

Here’s an accurate, if hand-wringing, description from Bret Stephens about the orange menace to the world:

— what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.

And from Steven Beschloss

No matter how long I live after we get through this dark chapter, I will never get over the immorality, the amorality, the corruption, the criminality and the cruelty in service to one of the worst humans to ever walk the earth.

Key Learning

That is our starting point.
.

There will be a ton of work to do and it is going to take over a generation to fix what loathsome Trump has broken and to establish a new national ethos worthy of a democracy. A key question for all of us is whether we have the grit to stay that course. That won’t be easy in a country where instant gratification isn’t fast enough. Nevertheless, keep the faith and do the work, because it falls to us to fix this.

Finally, Ending the Year Like An Odd Animal

President Donald Trump continues to wag the dog to distract us from the Epstein trafficking and pedophilia and his cover-up. Here are some of those wags.

  1. Last week Trump had our mighty military send deadly rockets into northwest Nigeria. He said it was to attack ISIS because they were killing Christians. That looked so very satisfyingly protective of Christianity until the leader of Nigeria said that ISIS brutality wasn’t focused on Christians.
  2. Then he attacked Syria the same way and with the same lame excuse.
  3. Last week Trump also pirated another Venezuelan oil tanker and threatened to steal a third.
  4. Even as courts have slapped his hand he’s ramped up recruiting and training of new ICE agents. He promised yet more bonuses to them to induce more thugs to join and pretend to fight the few criminals they can find. Plus get them to imprison and rendition people who are here legally, including U.S. citizens.

Watch for more tails wagging the dog – they’re on the way. Woof.

_______________________________________________

* King is commonly quoted as having said that, but what he actually said was, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?”

King said that during the 1972 riots in LA, this from a guy whose Wikipedia entry begins, “Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965 – June 17, 2012) was an American victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was severely beaten by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department . . . ” That’s how the lambs, leopards and lions thing worked for him. Even so, he called for peace. If you need a dose of injustice outrage, read the Wikipedia entry of how he was brutalized. If you want to hear about a guy with class, you’ll get that from that Wikipedia entry, too.

Note that the Los Angeles riots were triggered by the police officers being found not guilty for beating the snot out of King. We humans don’t respond well to such injustice, so people spoke out in the only way they would be heard.

Come to think of it, those LA cops kicked and beat King as he lay on the pavement, even as he posed no threat to anyone. That sounds a lot like today’s ICE agents, our American Gestapo. It also sounds like our Defense Department dealing with shipwrecked survivors.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

People Are Saying . . .


POST 1212

The Trumpstein Slimepocolypse

To be clear, people like Jeffrey Epstein’s “clients” are commonly referred to on the street by “working girls” and by pimps as “johns” or “tricks.” And in this case we’re talking about people who assaulted, ravaged and raped underage girls as young as 13 – middle schoolers – That’s what these “clients” did for fun. These children were attacked and sex trafficked – sold – to Epstein’s “clients.” They carry emotional scars from pedophilia that will torture them for the rest of their lives.

Trump bragged that he was a star and

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful . . . I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

And he wrote to Epstein that they are alike, in that they like ’em young.

In legal venues that’s called assault – sexual assault – and it is a felony. But Trump bragged that he could do all that and implied he could get away with it. And it seems that he did, as at least 19 women have claimed that he raped them and he hasn’t been held to account. And his admission of having committed multiple sexual felonies didn’t stop millions from voting for him. That alone is a stunning and worrisome thing about us.

Now in this age of the Epstein slimefest, let’s see a show of hands of all those who believe that the self-proclaimed sexually entitled Trump does not appear on Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. Hold those hands high so we can get an accurate count of everyone who believes that Trump wasn’t an Epstein “client.”

No hands. It seems that people are saying .  .  .

Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein’s main procurer of underage targets for sexual opportunity. They targeted kids – little girls. She just got a transfer to a minimum security prison in Texas, where sexual predators are not supposed to be allowed. Put your hand in the air if you’re okay with this awful predator getting special country club prison treatment.

Again, no hands. It seems that people really are saying .  .  .

This horrid stuff is why this story won’t go away, no matter how many outrageous things Trump does to distract us. It even has conspiracy loving Marjorie Taylor Green (R-SC) hugging Ro Khanna (D-CA) at the presser for Epstein survivors and even MAGAs are demanding full disclosure from Trump. Apparently violating children is bridge too far for right wing extremists. Now we know how bad it has to get for them to break with Trump. Sexual exploitation and trafficking of underage girls is the bar and it looks like Trump cleared it.

From Rick Wilson

Click me

The old Washington logic of dutifully keeping the government functioning died years ago. It died when Mitch McConnell smirked his way through blocking Merrick Garland. It died when Trump turned the White House into a kleptocracy of golf carts and grift. It died when January 6 was not the end of Trumpism but its baptism into holy war against America and its system of government, when the barbarians didn’t just storm the gates, but were recast as heroes.

The insurrectionists were/are traitors to America. Their “love fest” killed and maimed cops and befouled our Capitol Building. These creeps were convicted of felonies. Then they were pardoned by the convict-in-chief.

But it’s beginning to become clear that insurrectionists are, by definition, traitors. It’s beginning to become clear that Trump is powerless to stop any war, that he’s inept at managing our economy, that he’s cruel beyond anything anyone voted for. In fact, almost nobody voted for this Trump, It seems that many people are saying .  .  .

From Democracy Docket, by Marc Elias

According to a new poll, when asked what emotion best describes how they feel about Trump’s actions as president, 49% of Democrats and 11% of Independents chose “furious.” Another 20% and 10%, respectively, chose “angry.” In total, 69% of Democrats and 21% of Independents are furious or angry about what Trump has done so far in his second term.

People are damn well saying. No speculation. No guessing. Just plain fact: People are saying Trump is enormously bad for Americans and America. So are his lying, cheating, reality denying suck up mobsters of mendacity.

More people every day are seeing the harm he’s causing us, the crushing of our freedom he’s orchestrating, the cruelty he’s doing every day in our name.

There’s a log way to go, but at last, people are saying .  .  .

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • There are conditions of blindness
  • so voluntary that they become complicity.
  • Paul Bourget
  • Good thing we have the vision
  • to see what is happening.
  • He is loyal to his own career
  • but only incidentally to anything or anyone else.
  • Hugh Dalton, 1941
  • Mid-Term Election
    Goes fast, doesn’t it?
    .

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    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A Start


POST 1207

Congress

Amazingly, even Rs and performative MAGAs are offended by the sex trafficking of children and child rape, so they’re demanding all of the Epstein materials. It’s likely that these guys once knew someone who was a girl and are horrified by what Epstein, Maxwell and their clients (johns, really) did to them. Maybe the awfulness is close enough to home that they’re willing to displease even the foremost frequent flyer on Epstein’s Nubile Express, what with his attempts to cover up his behavior to avoid accountability for what pretty much everyone believes he did. Now we know what it takes to break through the Republican cowardice to get them to begin to stand upright. It’s a start.

Blast From The Past

Ronald Reagan, he of the “Government isn’t the solution to our problem; government is the problem” brain-free campaign sloganeering, used to be Saint Ronny. Nobody talks much about him now, so perhaps his sainthood has been voided. Regardless, this former B actor had great White House script writers and he delivered his lines well.

Here he is explaining tariffs to We The Ignorant. Watch this and imagine what Trump would call Reagan today. Trump is the one who said John McCain wasn’t a hero and that our military dead were suckers and losers. He’s the one who turns on former supporters and friends for the most trivial of reasons, just to exact revenge. He calls it retribution. You can ask John Bolton how that works now.

And people are beginning to react to his thin skinned delusions. It’s a start.

Voting Rights

Paul Weyrich didn’t want you to vote, because far righties’ “leverage” goes up when fewer people vote. Click me.

Perhaps our greatest fighters for our supposedly Constitutionally protected voting rights are Marc Elias and his team of snarling, biting pit bull legal fighters. They file blizzards of lawsuits against gerrymandering, illegal purging of voters’ registrations, closing of polling places, removal of ballot drop boxes, the killing of mail in ballot options and more. We know that the cheaters will continue to cheat – they always have. And we know that the job of stopping their abuse of We The People will never end.

The Republicans have been public about their scummy tricks and un-American attitude on who should vote and who they think shouldn’t vote at least since Paul Weyrich, a founder of the hateful Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), guys who write extremist legislation for Republicans to pass. He openly declared his un-American recommendations in 1980. Click the pic and hear the slime drip from his mouth. The good news is that Elias and his team are on duty, doing great work to protect all of us, to stop the cheaters. You might want to subscribe to his Substack and throw a few bucks their way. It’s a start.

Finally – as in: At Last

Gov. Gavin Newsome has taken the fight to Trump and shoved it in his face. He declared war on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his abhorrent Trump-demanded, mid-decade gerrymandering to create 5 more Republican seats in the House. Every day Newsome mocks Trump by tweeting at him in Trump’s own communication style.

I’ve been asking who will lead us out of the valley of democracy death for a long time. We’ve been hoping for a Democrat to stand up and smack the far right liars and cheaters and now we have one. It’s a start.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • It is against Stupidity in every shape and form
  • that we have to wage our eternal battle.
  • William Booth, 1890
  • Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist
  • while you react to life on his own terms.
  • Elizabeth Bowen,1938
    Mid-Term Election
    Countdown Timer
    Goes fast, doesn’t it?
    .

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    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

On Not Being a D*ck – v2.0


POST 1201

The Trumpstein Catastrophe

Perjurer, sex offender, human trafficker and pedophile Ghisiaine Maxwell has been transferred from the Tallahassee women’s prison to Club Fed, a minimum security day camp prison in Texas. There are tennis courts, a putting green and lots of fun things to do there. We have just a few questions, starting with these.

  1. The prison transfer happened following a visit to Maxwell last week by Trump’s former lawyer, Todd Blanche. He is no longer busy trying to protect Trump from 34 felony counts (he failed) and is now Deputy Attorney General to Attorney General Pam “The files and list were on my desk for review but, golly, I don’t know where they are now” Bondi. How did Maxwell earn this vacation prison privilege? You don’t suppose that she promised to keep silent about Trump’s participation in the goodies that she and Epstein offered Trump, do you? Trump did make it clear that he likes girls “on the young side.” You don’t think Blanche was there to offer her a deal, do you? You don’t suppose she agreed to say nothing about whatever Trump did to those girl children in exchange for being transferred to prison day camp, do you?
  2. You don’t suppose that Todd Blanche offered that for her silence that soon Maxwell will be pardoned or her sentence commuted, do you?
  3. If your middle school daughter (referred to as a “nubile” by Maxwell) were one of the sex trafficked girls, how would you feel about sexual abuser Maxwell’s good fortune? How would your sex trafficked daughter feel about that?

What crimes are worse than arranging for the raping of a 13 year old girl multiple times a day? Maxwell made that system work on over 200 young girls and now she’s getting this special treatment. Trump’s ass saving fix is in and it may save Maxwell’s ass, too. This whole thing stinks so bad.

Everyone in that monster convict cabal is a d*ck.

Your blood should be boiling over this, especially if you were one of those girls. Or you’re a betrayed MAGA. Or if you were once a young girl. Or if you have a daughter. Or if you know a daughter. Or if you have a sister. Or if you had a girlfriend when you both were in high school. Or if you have even an inkling of the difference between right and wrong.

D*cks.

Health – Or Not

This piece of health news comes from STAT.

“Immunized kids are healthier kids who can focus on growing, playing, and learning,” Kristina Bryant, a member of the AAP’s infectious diseases committee, said in a statement. But flu vaccination rates among both children and adults have dropped in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Wait just a second. Vaccinations have dropped? That same STAT report opens this way:

The flu death toll among kids during the 2024-2025 season has reached an astonishing 266, the worst single season total — except during the 2009 flu pandemic — in the 21 years that the CDC has recorded pediatric flu deaths. Five new deaths were added on Friday, and it’s likely that number could rise further before the 2024-2025 season officially closes at the end of September.

  • So, wait just another second. We had the COVID-19 pandemic that killed over 1.1 million Americans and millions more have been debilitated. The pandemic was finally stopped only after enough of us had been vaccinated.
  • Measles killed many millions over the centuries. It is one of the most infectious of viral diseases. It was at last stopped through universal vaccination. Until now.
  • We had the Spanish Flu in 1918 that killed millions. Now we have a vaccine that prevents that flu and most others, too. That’s a huge success.
  • Nevertheless, some parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids against flu, measles, COVID and more and the body count continues to rise.
  • Isn’t there a lesson that even stubborn people can find in all that success in disease prevention? And yet vaccinations against the flu have dropped and our anti-vaxxers are allowing their children to go unvaccinated against measles, allowing the disease to spread once again and kill.
  • This medical craziness is promoted by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert “Brain Worm” Kennedy. Susceptible to his medical and scientific ignorance are fiercely independent “You can’t tell me what to do” Americans. They puff up on their proud distrust of government, science and the reality of medical experience, along with their mighty resolve to preserve their right to self-destruct.
  • Their refusal of vaccinations against these awful diseases and the consequential peril in which they put the rest of us, as they breathe, cough and sneeze nearby us is, I believe, a demonstration of their contempt for human decency. They may be the very definition of d*cks.
  • Safety Advisory: Your kids will be back in school in a couple of weeks, mixing with unvaccinated children of the indecent ones.

Important Fact: Those 1.1 million people who succumbed to COVID were real, just like you, and they suffered and now they are dead. Don’t let the impersonal nature of statistics separate you from the heartbreaking reality of the personal suffering and loss of every one of those people and the impact of their deaths on the people who loved them. The same goes for unvaccinated children dying of flu or measles.

  • My Toilet Seat

  • The other day my wife showed me that one of our toilet seats has a crack that’s widening and needs to be replaced before it splits. I was in a silly mood and responded jokingly, “If the toilet seat has a crack, whatever can we count on?” Obviously, not great humor; it’s just silliness.

  • But if Democrats have a crack, and it sure looks like a tectonic fissure that’s propagating, who are we to believe in?
  • We need strong, new Democratic leadership.
  • And I need a new toilet seat. I’ll stop by Home Depot today and hope that faceless ICE d*cks without a warrant won’t be there to lawlessly arrest me and send me to be tortured in a foreign gulag.
  • That worry isn’t just silliness.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
  • [He] was his own world,
  • and nothing that concerned anyone else
  • was important to him . . .
  • and nothing that touched him unimportant. 
  • Kathleen Thompson Norris, 1933
  • Look at [his] comments . . .
  • They prove that the senator speaks his mind,
  • and that he is not working with much when he does so.
  • Anna Quindlen, 1993
  • _________________________________________________
  • * The Florida Department of Corrections offers this bold declaration:

AS FLORIDA’S LARGEST STATE AGENCY, AND THE THIRD LARGEST STATE PRISON SYSTEM IN THE COUNTRY, FDC EMPLOYS NEARLY 24,000 MEMBERS, INCARCERATES OVER 89,000 INMATES AND SUPERVISES MORE THAN 145,000 OFFENDERS IN THE COMMUNITY.

Yes, they put it in all caps. This is what Ghislaine Maxwell just escaped through no merit of her own. What does it say that this is “Florida’s largest state agency?” Floridians must be very proud.

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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Missing


POST 1198

What Are We Missing?

On top of the furies of indignation, betrayal and the immoralities of the bitter poison that is every day Trumpism lies the Epstein criminal conspiracy on top. It has oddly joined MAGAmites with 90% of the population to call for the release of the Epstein list of sexual predators who abused and sex trafficked underage girls and perhaps others.

The MAGAmites wanted and were promised by Trump that once President he would let it all fly and the anticipated list of degenerate Democrats, Hollywood big shots and various coastal elites would be exposed. Then Republicans could splash about in moral superiority over the decadence and depravity of woke hypocrites. There would be no more hiding the truth, no more protecting the rich and powerful. Trump would uncork the drain of the DC swamp and all the bad guys would drown on the way down.

Except that’s not what happened. Trump is hiding the facts, the evidence. He’s doing exactly what MAGAmites were furious over when they dribbled conspiracy crazy on Dems, whom they were sure were getting away with horrible stuff, but they couldn’t prove it because facts were withheld. But this isn’t about Dems. Turns out MAGAmites are a lot like you: they don’t like being betrayed, even by their cult leader.

Trump is a master of distraction, the King of Bright Shiny Objects to direct your attention away from something damaging to him. His withholding of the Epstein list is widely believed to be his effort to prevent information incriminating to Trump from becoming public, but it does far more than that. Refusing to make the information public has transfixed public attention on the sordid Epstein mess, leaving us to wonder what Trump is doing that we aren’t focusing on, terrible things that are cruel, criminal and destructive.

Like:

Hiring thousands of additional ICE agents to act as his private, masked army, his Gestapo.

Putting thousands of immigrants into inhumane cages and holding them incommunicado

Arresting and incarcerating American citizens solely because they didn’t have citizenship papers in their possession and look Hispanic (read: Brown, not White)

Renditioning thousands of prisoners to various countries around the world

Setting the stage in Los Angeles for us to accept our military being deployed in our own country.

That last may be the key to what we are missing.

“Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released.” anonymous source. Getty image

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits deployment of our military on U.S. soil except for the most unusual circumstances, like an invasion from another country. No invasion has happened to the U.S. since the War of 1812.

Trump’s many horribles are at least as bad as you think they are, but the Epstein distraction may be hiding something far worse. We may be missing a looming final lurch into crushing authoritarianism.

Reference my post about that very thing. The Epstein distraction may be the preparation for some terrible event which Trump will use to declare martial law and become de facto dictator. Such actions are what dictators do and Trump is clearly a megalomaniac eager to burn our Constitution and aggregate all power and gobs of money for himself alone.

Yeah, we’re missing something critically important, for sure.

Who Will Lead?

Regular readers have likely recognized my discontent with the Democratic National Committee, a supposed leader of the right values and against the wrong values, We look there and to members of that tribe’s muck-a-mucks to do valiant and effective battle against those who would violate our values and do us and our nation harm. We expect them to vigorously promote our general welfare. My discontent boils for the lack of all that.

Who will lead us out of the morass of today to avoid the far worse morass of tomorrow? I’ve asked this question many times and we see some capable people speaking out (sometimes) against the cruel and the outrageous. Nevertheless, it remains opaque as to who will stand and declare, “THAT way – Follow me!” in such a compelling way that We The People will follow with our passion, our wisdom and our patriotism.

Truth be told, we Boomers made this horrid mess. George W. Bush lied us into two “forever wars” that killed and displaced millions, leaving brutality in its wake. Now Trump is clawing and scraping away our Constitution to institute dictatorial control and eliminate our rights and our freedom.

Both of these elected ones are charter members of the Boomer generation, each wholly unfit to lead a nation. Each enlisted many other Boomers and others into their perfidy, all to create their version of destruction and abandonment of facts and reality. Many in Congress and the courts are Boomers, too.

Here’s the key:

  • We cannot find our way out of this morass
  • using the same thinking and the same tools that got us into it.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, recently announced that they will conduct a postmortem of the 2024 election. It took them 8 months to decide to do that. His examination won’t focus on the campaign, he said, as though the Committee’s lack of relevance to over 77 million voters and 90 million who didn’t bother to vote can be explained by an arcane partial study.

But that won’t help. Not for a party that dumped David Hogg from their leadership. Hogg is an established voice of Gen Zs. They listen to him. They sure as hell don’t listen to Boomers and X-ers, the very people who have made it next to impossible for them to find a path to the American dream. And the DNC dumped the very guy who can help to enlist the people who can clean up the mess. Suicidal.

I rest my hopes on our Gen Zs. There are enough of them, they are educated, packed with energy and more accepting of others than any other generation. Plus, they don’t want to live in the mess we’ve made.

We Boomers, Xers and Millennials aren’t off the hook. We, too, must continue to fight the good fight. And we must continuously invite our Gen Zs to join and to lead.

Here’s a quotation courtesy of friend Mardy Grothe, author of Deconstructing Trump*:

  • Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country
  • do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented.
  • I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong,
  • not with feeble negative complaining
  • but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity. — Pearl S. Buck
  • Pass that along to the Zs you know.
  • Let’s be clear about missing. It seems we are missing Democratic leadership. Demand nothing less.
  • The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
    .
    • A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger
    • is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
    • Alexander Hamilton,1797
    • It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion
    • will legislate its creed into law
    • if it acquires the political power to do so.
    • Robert A. Heinlein, 1953
    • _________________________________________

    * Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

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