Stephen Altschuler

thoughts on environment, politics, health, life issues

2024 election

“Cause that’s where the money is”

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Someone once asked Willie Sutton “Why do you rob banks?” “Cause that’s where the money is,” Sutton famously replied. Same thing Trump would say if someone asked, “Why do you continue with the Big Lie?” Or “Why do you support LIV Golf?” Or “Why do you continually attack Liz Cheney?” Or why do you now attack the FBI?” Or “Why do you call the Capitol rioters patriots?” Or “Why do you continue to dangle the possibility of running again in 2024?” All the same answer for the same reason. Trump’s father drilled it into his head early on, “Whatever you do, go where the money is and do whatever you need to do to get it.”

And for Trump, all of the above leads to incoming money from gullible followers who will indeed support their cult leader, as he said, “even if I went out and killed someone on 5th Avenue.” It’s a sickness, on Trump’s part, certainly; but on his follower’s part as well, voters and politicians who each have their motives for supporting a terribly off-balanced human being who happens to have a lot of political power at the moment.

I say “at the moment” for that won’t always be the case. One day, Trump will be a cipher, a footnote, a paragraph, at most, in an exhaustive history of the U.S. We will survive Donald Trump. But, unfortunately, we must endure more of his intractable behaviors and shenanigans. How much more? A blip in the scheme of history, but a significant blip in an era of unbridled and unrestricted social media, conspiracy theories raised to the toxic level of truth, and fake news raised to a level of real news perpetrated by Fox “news”, “News”max, and One America “news”.

So, for the moment, we are saddled with the reality of a Donald Trump and friends such as Taylor Green, McCarthy, McConnell, He-Hawley, etc. etc. etc. It will change. And that change will occur through the action of voters like you and I, as long as trust in our election process remains intact.

Unfortunately, that faith and trust is weakening, and so our democracy is on the brink of crumbling. For what is a democracy if not the sacred ability of the people to choose its electorate? With dictatorships like China, Russia, Hungary, Afghanistan, Cuba, elections are a sham, decided in advance by the ruling party or leader. Rules and laws are also determined by the few loyalists to the leader or the leader himself. The Taliban now forbids girls from advancing their education, orders women to wear a full body veil, and bars them from holding government jobs. Stalinist Putin imprisons or has murdered those who actively oppose him. Xinping keeps his country’s people in a continual state of fear via the secret police and civilian informants.

As we’ve seen, Trump has similar inclinations, seeking revenge on all he deems enemies, weaponizing “his” Departments of Justice and Defense, and actively instigating a violent insurrection against the U.S. Government. He is a criminal, plain and simple. And we’ve only seen a preface to what will come if he, or any of his surrogates, is reelected in ’24.

But ’22 is still ahead, and Trump’s influence has been alarming in the primaries. So the lines are clearly drawn: Trump extremists versus Dems. It will not be an easy fight. Dems will need money, for with politics, money talks. Dems will need grassroots volunteers, for only volunteers can canvass neighborhoods directly, making eye contact with voters. And Dems will need voters to vote in record numbers, up and down the ballot to prevent the kind of results Republicans are crowing about will happen.

For if the radical GOP takes over either of the two Houses, they will stymie Joe Biden as they stymied Barack Obama, thus paving the way for a Trump run in ’24.

We can’t let that happen!

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Will 50 States Devolve into 50 separate countries? Seems like it!

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What the Supreme Court is doing is what white slaveholding southerners tried to do in the many years before slavery was abolished: to give civil rights granted by the federal government back to the states to decide what laws were right for their state. If that were carried to its utmost in our country at present, then on this July 4th, 2022, you might as well separate this union into 50 separate countries, each with its own legal system, monetary system, health care system, regulatory system, law enforcement system, legislative system, etc. so then traveling from state to state would be near impossible not knowing the differing laws, customs, mores, and traditions. One state/country might bring back slavery, while another might make it punishable by death. One may ban any and all gun restrictions, while another has extensive regulations that include thorough background checks, licensing that involves test taking as is required of a car license, and banning open carry. And of course one may allow unlimited abortions while another may ban them altogether with no exceptions for rape or incest (at the moment, in an actual case, a raped and pregnant 10 year old girl in South Dakota is ineligible for an abortion by state law, a fact confirmed and apparently supported by its present GOP governor!). There may be checkpoints at state borders not just for contaminated fruit but to check your car for abortion pills!

Not possible, you might say. Not in America. Well, we have already taken some major steps in that direction. This Supreme Court that we are saddled with seems intent on taking us back in time to before the Civil War. And given the ages of the reactionary justices, they will have many years to accomplish their caustic agenda. And these justices may be harder than presidents to impeach. The only option I can see is to increase the number of justices to balance its present right wing extremes.

This court has become a political party unto itself, apparently becoming part of a conspiracy to shift the country in a highly dangerous, anti-democratic direction. FDR threatened to increase the size of the court in 1937 when it gave strong indications they would declare Social Security unconstitutional. He called their bluff and they backed down without his having to follow through on his threat. But Joe Biden does not have the wisdom, courage, or the guts of a Roosevelt. He’s a cautious man. He’s a good man but a calculated Centrist who fears doing anything that would draw criticism from conservatives or progressives or liberals or independents. Perhaps he fears probable retribution of any acts deemed too liberal or progressive or over the top.

So we are essentially stuck with this SCOTUS for the next 45 years or so. But we are not necessarily stuck with a fascist-leaning Republican Party. On this Independence Day we are still, in theory, a democracy with a government elected of, by, and for the people. That’s important to keep in mind as election day approaches. The key of course is how many and who votes. In the controversial presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, it was 54.8% and 62.0% respectively. Nothing to write home about, but with midterm elections, only about 40% of eligible voters take the time to vote. When you consider the consequences of the next midterm, that’s downright discouraging, especially when you count the number of right wing wackos, Trump cultists, ’06 Capitol Hill insurrectionists, QAnonists, and other GOP snake oil salesmen and women running. Let me now change “discouraging” to “alarming!”

Of course, before and during the Revolutionary War, there were monarchist Americans who stayed loyal to the king and considered patriots extreme insurrectionists. But that was the 1770s. Things have gotten a little more complicated since then. Today, one man, Donald Trump, has been able to knock us off our democratic experiment as our Founders called our fledging country declaring equal rights for all. One man has shown us how fragile our democracy was in 1776 and still is. Perhaps more so.

So on this Independence Day perhaps we should all reflect on what it would take to keep this experiment in democracy intact, growing, and stronger than ever. Even with such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, our country has never depended on the allegiance to one person as we did to King George III before 1776. Never has our country granted each state sovereignty over itself. For that would not be a United States. And if we are not united, at least in the value of democracy, what it entails, and what constitutes a patriot, then we are woefully divided, and a United States is no more.

Happy 4th, y’all.

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The Trump Conspiracy: Then and Now

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It started when Trump tried to prove that Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen, which helped Trump build a following, a base, and ultimately a cult. He sensed the undercurrent of racism in 2016, linked it with xenophobia around Hispanic immigration and fear of Islamic terrorism, enlisted the support of Russian cyberterrorists and was able to paint Hillary Clinton as a candidate worthy only of a prison cell. With a scorched earth approach, Trump blasted anyone who opposed him, regardless of party affiliation. He essentially and ironically stole the 2016 election, blatantly promising to appoint anti abortion judges to the Supreme Court, again parlaying a hot button issue among evangelical Christians and pro life Republicans to energize the Republican base to come out and vote for him, despite his obvious moral shortcomings.

Once elected, he conspired with Mitch McConell, another power hungry oportunist, even before the election, to block the Obama nomination of Merrick Garland to the court several months or so before the election, something entirely unorthodox as well as unethical, and probably illegal. It was also in violation of the Constitution but no one took any significant action to block McConnell. It was part of a plan to put a minority party into a majority position and essentially control the federal government through judicial control of the courts.

With McConnell’s help, a president Trump was able to nominate and push through three right wing judicial extremists to the high court who as he and the radicalized GOP had hoped would set the country back about what…50,60, 70 years, defining “Great Again” as white and segregated again and where women would return to the kitchen and their traditional place of mediocrity?

The next phase of Trump’s take over plan is to fill the congress with representatives and senators who are beholden to him for their election, and are therefore pawns in the game of his ambition, which ultimately is designed to increase the financial fortunes of the Trump family dynasty. That will lead, he hopes, to his regaining the presidency in ’24, and his solidifying his oligarchy–an essentially fascist rule which has absolutely nothing to do with government of, for and by the people. The people under Trump’s rule will be just that: under his thumb and forced by fear to pledge loyalty to him and his chosen oligarchs, modeled after his friend Putin’s increasingly fascist rule in Russia.

It’s not a very copacetic scenario, is it? We’ve not seen anything like a Trump before and so don’t quite know what to do with him. The 14th and 25th Amendments address it but no one really knew or knows how to enforce the Constitution, especially when trying to figure out how to handle a seditious ex president who attempted a bloody coup against the government, who would not agree to a peaceful transition of the presidency after he lost, who instigated a violent, armed mob to attack Congress with the intent of stopping the counting of electoral votes and hanging Mike Pence, who even tried to commandeer the car he was in after Ellipse rant, trying to grab at the wheel and choke the driver and head secret service agent who was insisting returning to the White House instead of joining the rioters as Trump wanted–a loyal civil servant who would take a bullet to protect this asshole. First time for that. Go figure. It’s got many of us pretty buffaloed, hasn’t it? As Riley (played by the great William Bendix) used to say, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

Good day, y’all. Be well. Sleep tight tonight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

***

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Heavy National Karma

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I hate to be a prophet of doom, but America has some pretty dark karma to work through–karma that started well before the official start of our country. Since that time we’ve fabricated myths to deny the realities of that karma, myths that are apparent to this day and that have created a polarized country that is, in effect, fighting another civil war. As in 1860 when half the country professed fealty to slavery and half the country was against the further enslavement of human beings, we’re now divided into Trump Republicans and Liberal Democrats.

Whether we proceed to enter a physical war remains to be seen but the two sides are deeply opposed to even talking to one another. The only thing they seem to be in agreement on is opposition to the war in Ukraine, although there are a number of Republican politicians who are against any further military aid to Ukraine and even lean towards supporting Putin. Their number one goal, amidst all the problems we have is apparently to make Joe Biden look bad so he will lose support in ’22 and ’24. Mitch McConnell has been obsessed with this strategy since Barack Obama was president. And with Manchin siding with the GOP on major issues and the Supreme Court taking an ultra conservative tack since Trump’s three appointees were confirmed, the Democrats busy themselves with defending against the baby formula shortage. It’s discouraging to see a democracy swirl down the drain without much attempt to plug the leaks in the tank.

We need an Abe Lincoln with the courage of a lion and not a bunch of whimpering victims of a junior high bully. We need someone with the guts of Lincoln who could beat Trump and his Republicans like a rug on a clothes line.

But that’s not the main reason I’m writing today. I have a theory as to how we got in this mess and how we might begin to extract ourselves before we end up like the Holy Roman Empire, and everybody knows what happened to it. Charles Darwin showed us how animals evolve in reaction to their need to survive and continue their species. (Although even there, many Republicans don’t ascribe to Darwinism and don’t want it taught in our public schools!). Animals make changes over time in response to the changes and threats in their environment-changes that eventually become so ingrained that they solidify in their genetic DNA material generation after generation. Human beings, of course, being mammals, are no different.

The seminal epoch in the history of our country was the advent and continuation for several hundred years of slavery, a time when human beings were treated worse than animals and were actually tallied as three-fifths of a human being in the original Constitution. You all know by now how they were abused, bred, and murdered over those horrible years so I needn’t inventory it all in these pages. Consideration was given to enslave Native Americans, called Indians by the original white setters, but they resisted from the start, drawing inspiration from courageous chiefs and wise elders. Instead, they were banished from their ancestral lands and murdered.

So attention turned to merchants who were selling Africans as slaves. Despite any moral considerations, landowners in the South seized the opportunity to secure free labor and proceeded to become rich men with vast political power as a result. So from 1619 to 1863, human slavery was the law of the land. And from 1870 to 1964, brutal Jim Crow practices and laws, particularly in the South, but also in varying degrees in other parts of the country, essentially enslaved Black Americans further.

What effect did this have genetically on Blacks and Whites in this nation? I submit that hatred and suspicion are largely prevalent in both races to this day, directed towards each other. Due to how they’ve been treated over these centuries, Blacks keep their distance from Whites, live in their own communities, work at jobs friendly to minorities, bank where they can obtain loans without discrimination, and make friends mostly with other Blacks. Whites also live where mostly other Whites live, shop where Whites shop, work in White controlled businesses or corporations, and fraternize mostly with other Whites. Generally if a White sees a Black, particularly a Black man or teen, approaching them on a lonely street in a city, they will more than likely cross the street to avoid the confrontation. A Black person will not cross a street to avoid a White, but will avert their eyes, genetically remembering the consequences for looking at a White directly from millennia of cruel punishment for doing so in the American South.

Behavior is largely conditioned as psychologists have shown. And conditioned behavior usually translates to corresponding genes that get passed from generation to generation. The behavior of white slaveowners has also embedded genetically, manifesting in today’s conservative politicians, in hiring practices, in blocking civil rights legislation, in continued housing discrimination, in educational opportunities, in blocking internal and external infrastructure, in income discrepancies, in police protection, in health care advantages. The list goes on and on.

Laws have been passed to right the wrong, but conservatives constantly push against these laws, and the often conservative courts follow suit. Even our present ultra-conservative leaning Supreme Court has reversed long standing civil rights legislation, along with other established precedents. And GOP-controlled state legislatures have enacted voter suppression laws not unlike the laws that blocked Black voters and politicians just after the Civil War.

This last point is critical given the inbred nature of systemic racism. In order to change the societal genetic landscape, the government and the courts must support laws that right the wrongs of the past. Otherwise nothing will change, and the principles put forth in the Declaration of Independence will be for naught, thus furthering our moral and legal downward slide as a culture and a viable democratic republic where “all men/people are created equal.”

Presently, we are a divided country, racially, politically, and, seemingly, morally. That can only be sustained for so long, as we’ve seen historically. Discord devolves into turmoil. Turmoil devolves into anarchy. Anarchy devolves into dictatorship and fascism. And this kind of fall is a result of years and years of genetic karma–the word karma coming from the Sanskrit word for action–of the kind I’ve described. The Buddhists say the way to change karma is to hold past actions up to the light and make a conscious, enlightened effort to see the error of that action and change direction–with honesty, courage, fortitude, compassion, understanding, and wisdom.

It’s not easy to change the karma of a nation. In a sense, each individual of that nation must also look at their own past actions and make changes on that level. There must be a common goal, a common mission statement, of which the United States has two: the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule.

Let’s live by them, shall we!

Do You see what’s coming, boys and girls?

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Do you see WTF is coming? It’s a steamroller coming down Main Street, USA. It’s a GD, SOB, MFing, right-wing, fascist Steamroller steamrolling down through Kalamazoo and every other red town America. And its coming fast. And its coming furious. And shit, it’s already here. And we don’t see it because most of us are fogged out asleep, are in such denial we don’t know the sound of our own names, are so overwhelmed that if a tornado hit us at this moment, we would be taking out our beach chairs to enjoy the brisk night breeze. And whammo, we’re hit with a load of right-wing, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Donald Trump, shit. No shit! 4chan, 8chan, 16chan like a line of asteroids coming at us like some blitzkrieg of old, some Nazi volcano on its side, spiting mercury and sulfuric acid and rat saliva and death threats up the wazzoo. Watch out, y’all. Here she comes, all festered like a fingernail been bit too close. “I’m not kiddin’ ya. No, I’m serious, says the Pres. “No, I wouldn’t kidgya. Like my Dad always said…You see all these Fox news people here tonight: They all had to show full vaccination. I’m not kiddin’ ya.”

In the meantime, some 4chan-infused white supremacist asshole just shot four innocents, including a 12 year old girl because he just wanted to kill however many he could kill. He fired 200 rounds at whoever was in range and then posted it online as the police closed in on his apartment. They found 800 more rounds after they burst in and after he killed himself which he planned to do from the start.

Why? Because someone told him to on 4chan, the online source started by some asshole who is now running for U.S. Representative in Arizona. No lie! Guess what party? Guess who probably endorsed him? Right, you guessed it. I don’t f…ing believe what’s happening to this country at this time in history. You know how water as it goes down the drain goes faster and faster. That’s our country right now. And the only way to plug up the drain is with a vote that has been gerrymandered, suppressed, manipulated, defrauded, and, yes, rigged by…you guessed it: The Trump-infused Republican National Socialist Nazi Party. Ain’t that a pisser! Stop the Steal, indeed! And BTW, what bunker is Merrick Garland and his DOJ hiding in? I’m just saying, as we used to say.

One friend of mine asked me what can we do as individuals to stop the steamroller? Well, not much, but at least we can wake up from our dream life and pay attention to reality, take it in, worry about it, curse like I’m doing (OK, maybe not that much!), catharsis with a capital C. Shit, at least you won’t have to lose sleep over it than if you kept it all in in massive denial mode.

What can I say? Write to your congressperson? Yeah, right (the only time in the English language when two positives equal a negative!). Write to your minister? Uh huh. Write to the President? I did and got a reply that referred nothing to what I suggested in my note which was a copy of my last blog post. Besides, the President probably never saw it, as my wife pointed out.

But even with all the Republican dirty tricks to keep Dems from voting, we can still get out there and vote. They can put up all kinds of obstacles but if we are determined we can still vote in this country. And ultimately the Trump Republicans who run for office are, yes, scumbags, but the voters who vote for them are bigger scumbags. They will make or break this country, and believe me, when we break, we will break bad. Like other failed democracies, there will be no returning. It will be autocracy and dictatorship spewing fascism or communism or anarchy. Then, when any of us leave our houses, it’s Russian Roulette 24/7. The bullets will come unannounced, unbidden, and random like the 4chan guy. You can bet the white supremacists and other Trump cultists are lying in wait for that day.

What about money? Should we send money to ActBlue et al? Go ahead, but I’m not (with the exception of Stacey Abrams Fair Fight). With a few exceptions, people’s minds are made up already. The Trumpsters on one side: The Dems on the other. Some of the Dems are progressives and often don’t vote if a centrist Dem is running like Hillery in ’16. They’re scumbags too, and paved the way for Trump to win that year. All because their Dear Leader Bernie wasn’t on the Presidential ballot. It was the same when Nader ran in 2000 and 2004. His ego took away enough votes from Dem candidates that they lost to incompetent Republicans who further contributed to the demise of our country and our planet. So yes, my beef is also with progressives who always want it their way or the highway. I suggest we switch to European forms of democracy where we have multiple parties in a coalition form of government. In America presently, we’ve devolved into government by the minority, namely Trump Republicans, who essentially include Joe Manchin.

What that has led to is three Trump Supreme court inductees who lied their way into confirmation, particularly, as we’re seeing now, in regard to Roe vs. Wade. They are staunch political conservatives whose aim is to turn governance over to the states, emasculating the power of the federal government to insure constitutional civil rights, essentially the same situation as before the Civil War. Are we headed to another Civil War? I certainly hope not, but that water is draining away faster and faster down the political drain.

So vote, and vote Democrat, up and down the ballot. Surprise Democratic landslides in ’22 and ’24 really are our only hope.

Our Age of Disinformation

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This age of disinformation certainly hasn’t started with Trump and the Republican Party, although they’ve done yeoman’s work to perpetuate it. When Jesus was crucified, his followers had to blame someone so they first took it out on Judas Iscariot, then extended it to all Jews. Only thing was that Jesus himself was Jewish, as was Judas, and, with the exception of Romans, so was everyone else in Jerusalem at the time. I’m puzzled why the Romans aren’t now blamed for the death of Jesus, since, well, they tried, sentenced, and put him to death on the cross. Then came the Middle Ages and the Crusades, when word was that Jews along the route were killing Christian babies and drinking their blood. This of course was not true, but, the Crusaders believed it and murdered as many Jews along the way to the Holy Land as they could find. So far, those two myths, along with the Aryan crap advanced by Hitler and his Nazis, persist today with the help of Neo Nazis and, well, many Republican white nationalists. Then in the mid 19th century, white slaveholders in the American South contended that people were unequal with the White race entitled to enslave the Black race and do with “their property”, i.e. their slaves, (including breeding them as they would with any animal!), as they wished. They even fought a Civil War over this disinformation and sacrificed the lives of over 800,000 people over it. We, i.e. the Republican Party, are still, in effect, fighting that war, with disinformation today whitewashed and scrubbed as something other than the racist tropes of 1861.

All was relatively quiet on this Western Front until Donald Trump took power in 2016 when the engines of disinformation really got going via social media and particularly Twitter. QAnon, White Supremacist groups, and other fringe far right radio and TV networks, all got the go-aheads they were looking for in a president that openly supported such disinformation, and gladly retweeted it and even cooked up quite a bit of his own brazen lies, culminating in his biggest whopper that the election of 2020 was stolen from him via election fraud. Of course when you think about it, how could there have been fraud when he was defeated but many Republicans down ballot were elected in the disputed battleground states. Of course, cult members don’t think for themselves so they wholeheartedly swallowed the lies, culminating in the the most virulent attack on democracy since the Civil War: the attack on our very way of government on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters who even carried Confederate flags into the breached Capitol building with the entire roster of Congressional officeholders present at the time gathered to verify the election of the legitimate elected president, Joseph R. Biden.

Now, after a year and a half of Trump continuing to peddle his rubbish, he is threatening to run again in 2024, something that is looking like a continuation of the coup he started on 1/6/21. Remember, Hitler was jailed after his failed putsch, only to come back in a few years to assume the chancellorship of Germany. As with Hitler (and now Putin, I might add), Trump never ceased spewing his vile and incendiary oratory to a duped and dispirited populace with the intent of casting aside democracy in favor of autocracy and the Fascism that usually follows. He just can’t resist himself, as his father’s voice echos in his head like a blast of tankfire. Of course he also has the support of Fox “News” with their chief morons Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham leading a battalion of conservative disinformationalists, all in line behind their chief marketer of greed, Rupert Murdock; and the leadership and frontline of the Republican Party speaking in lockstep with their “dear Leader”, as they do in North Korea.

In that regard, it’s not much different here as it is in Russia right now with Putin duping his people into believing in his inhumane massacre in Ukraine. Thankfully we do have a sane leader in Joe Biden to help unify the world against the lies of Putin, and encourage the material and moral support of Zalensky and his Ukraine. Biden is the world’s champion of liberal Democracy while Putin and China’s Xi are its foe.

Am I too harsh? Am I just a rabble-rouser, a fearmonger, a liberal, a proud democratic Democrat, or some hysterical bigmouth? I will not defend against any label you wish to put upon me. I am who I am: an American citizen who is alarmed to see our nation slip into the jaws of fascism.

What about you? Where do you stand? What do you think?

***

BTW: Happy Spring, and may peace come soon to Ukraine, restoring its esteemed position among the democratic countries of the world.

How much more of Trump do we need to hear about before…we stop him cold!!

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Donald Trump is a con man supreme and those who follow and kiss his ring are just as bad. Most of us know that but still this joker still manages to get himself off the hook. Teflon Don I call him, much like we called Reagan Teflon Ron in the 80s. Part of the problem is that not enough key people are committed to going after him. These include Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director and Trump appointee Christopher Wray, and head honcho Joe Biden, himself. For whatever reason, they have avoided investigation and prosecution of this obvious and chronic criminal, and in doing so, create the possibility of his running and winning reelection in 2024 as president or even as a backbencher Representative from his Florida district where he could be elected Majority leader or even Speaker of the House. It also creates the possibility and probability of the Republicans taking back majorities in the House and Senate in 2022, which in turn will hobble Biden’s presidency and further enable Trump (or one of his surrogates) to win in ’24.

Biden and Garland are living in bubbles, unable to see the realities of the present political climate. I hate to say that because in some respects Biden has done a commendable job given all that he had on his plate when he assumed office. He’s a good man, a moral man, an ethical man, a man I’m happy to have replaced Trump, the opposite of the above traits. But he is wedded to the past way of doing things in Congress. Unlike it used to be, Republicans have created an atmosphere of contention and anti-cooperation with Democrats. And that seems to be their only policy statement: oppose everything Democrats propose regardless of how good those proposals may be for the country. Biden is invested in bipartisanship. Manchin and Sinema, whatever their true motives, also preach bipartisanship. And Merrick Garland? I just think he’s a bit of a wimp unwilling to take on Trump and his death-threatening cultists.

I say all this not to be a wiseguy, as Biden might call me, but to sound the alarm bell of danger if Trump is allowed to continue riding roughshod over our democracy. For if he returns to political office, in any form, our country will soon cease to be recognized as the fully democratic power that it is. It will quickly devolve into an autocracy in the mold of Putin, Xi, and Un–all Trump chums. So go ahead and try and convict him court, but his father taught him all the dodging tactics he needs to avoid that. I say a better bet would be to use the 14th Amendment and stop this insurrectionist cold!

In the meantime, what can we do to block this devolution towards destruction? Well, as I’ve said before, we, as voters, need to make a statement in the 2022 election. And that statement needs to read, “Dems Score Landslide Win in Midterms. Increase Majorities in Both Houses!”

As Danny Kaye once said, I believe in the Court Jester: “Get it? Got it! Good!

Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

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In 1864, East Tennessee native Admiral David Farragut shouted those words as his ships were stalled in Mobile Bay by Confederate torpedoes. Here’s how Ned Jilton II of the Times News described the dramatic and critical battle in a feature piece on 8/13/20.

“Early on the morning of Aug. 5, 1864, Farragut’s fleet began to advance. The monitors and the forts started to exchange fire. To better evaluate the battle, the admiral climbed up into the rigging of his flagship as officers and sailors took up positions to relay his orders to the crew.

As the fleet entered the bay, the lead monitor, the USS Tecumseh, began to turn to engage the CSS Tennessee when an explosion ripped through its hull. The monitor had struck a torpedo and quickly sank with most of her crew.

The ships behind Tecumseh, fearing more torpedoes, slowed and nearly stopped as the vessel sank, forcing the ships behind them to slow. The fleet bunched up, giving the big guns of the forts easy, slow moving targets. The admiral’s plan was quickly falling apart.

Farragut shouted through a trumpet to the USS Brooklyn ahead, “What’s the trouble?” To which he received the reply, “Torpedoes.”

Farragut gave the legendary reply, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

Spurred on by those words, the fleet began to move forward again and into the bay. There they attacked the Rebel fleet until the only ship left fighting was the CSS Tennessee. Farragut’s fleet converged on the mighty Confederate ironclad and pounded it with cannons and then resorted to repeatedly ramming the vessel before it finally surrendered.”

So why do I bring this up at this time? News reports these days are full of scary predictions of how Republicans will more than likely retake the House and possibly the Senate in the ’22 midterm elections. Despite every sign, every indication that Trump-led Republicans have become the party of No, of obstruction, of blocking all Democratic initiatives despite their obvious benefit to ordinary Americans struggling with the realities of a deadly pandemic and its effect on employment, the world economy, action against the climate crisis, and of supporting a megalomaniac autocrat who instigated, and possibly organized, a coup against our government, voters are still ready and poised to turn the Congress over to this party of do-nothings and death threats. It’s discouraging, to say the least, and causes me to lose hope in the efficacy, wisdom, common sense, and even sanity of our country.

My only hope is the battle cry of Admiral Farragut, which I’ll paraphrase here: Damn the predictions. Full speed ahead! Often in our country when we hear a prediction of a sure-thing defeat, the underdogs get inspired and show the pundits a thing or three. We’ve seen it in sports many times, witness the ’69 Mets, witness Jack Fleck beating Ben Hogan in the U.S Open in ’55, witness the “Miracle on Ice” when the men’s U.S. hockey team beat the Soviets at Lake Placid in the gold medal game in 1980. And we’ve seen it in politics. Witness Lincoln beating Douglas in 1860, witness Truman beating Dewey in ’48, witness Kennedy beating Nixon in ’60, witness Clinton beating Bush in ’92, witness Obama beating McCain in ’08, witness Biden beating Trump in ’20, and witness two unknown Democrats beating shoe-in incumbent Republicans in the crucial Georgia U.S. Senate races in ’21.

What happens in both sports and politics is that people get inspired, and when people get inspired all bets are off. It’s Katy bar the door! And I think that could well happen in 2022. The constant barrage of media prognostications of Republican victories will scare the pants off Democratic voters nationwide, not only retaining the Democrats’ control of Congress but widening the party’s majorities, giving Joe Biden a tremendous victory and restoring the country’s forward movement under his leadership. The case against Trump’s seditious acts will continue, leading to a ruling that, if not landing him in prison, will deny him the opportunity of ever running for public office again, from dog catcher to president.

How about it Dems? Isn’t that enough to get you out of your pandemic malaise and get to the polls this November? Let’s show the bastards something they never figured: a Democratic landslide significantly increasing Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. That’ll put the nail in the political coffins of such spineless cowards and traitors as McCarthy, McConnell, Hawley, Taylor Greene, Jordan, Cawthorne, Brooks, and, yes, Donald Trump. It also relegates DINO’s Manchin and Sinema to the back benches where they belong. It lets Joe Biden proceed with an agenda that will reenergize this country in ways we haven’t seen since FDR got us on the path out of the Great Depression, or JFK had us believing in Camelot for the coming 60s.

All because Dems came out in droves and voted in such numbers in 2022 that no amount of Republican voter suppression or partisan Trump-infused election officials or even the toxified Trump Supreme Court could reverse. It’s all in your hands, my hands, our hands.

Just do it as Admiral Farragut did it, and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

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Two new books of mine will give you further insight into my thinking and may inspire you further in dealing with the challenges our present world presents. They are Into the Woods…and Beyond, and The Valley Spirit, both available at Amazon. Thank you.