Stephen Altschuler

thoughts on environment, politics, health, life issues

democracy

Mass Murderers are All of a White Supremacist State of Mind

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Think of the 18 year old murderer at the Uvalde elementary school facing 9 and 10 year old children with an AK 47 high capacity rifle and consider his state of mind at that moment. He was apparently not a white supremacist, per se, but I submit that his state of mind was no different than the state of mind of white supremacists (aka fascists) the world over now and deep into the past. Consider:

* The Crusades. At the pope’s orders, we assume, on the way to the Holy Land, crusaders detoured to villages along the way and slaughtered all the Jews they could find, lumping them with the infidels they were out to slaughter in the Holy Land. They saw these Jews as not human beings but as infidels who didn’t believe as they believed, and killed women, children, infants, adolescents, men, elderly, disabled, clergy, all without remorse, without compassion, without guilt, without consideration, without any feeling whatsoever, without thought except identifying who was Jewish and the satisfaction they would feel as if they were eliminating a nest of rats in a cellar hole.

* The Inquisition. Throughout the Middle Ages, the ruling Catholic Church institutionalized the torture and murder of millions of non Christians, particularly Jews, demanding they renounce their religion of birth and adopt the Catholic faith under threat of severe punishment that included torture, lengthy imprisonment and death often by immolation. They felt entirely justified performing this religious extortion, feeling no guilt, remorse, or blame. On the contrary, feeling they were doing the work of God. In 1492, all Jews were banished from all regions of France and Spain, triggering a diaspora that sent them fleeing to all parts of the globe, some retaining their Judaism but many adopting the Catholic religion out of self preservation.

* Czarist Russia. All Jews throughout this vast empire were eventually herded into a huge territory know as the Pale of Settlement where they were treated as lesser human beings than Christians. Young Jewish men were often conscripted into the Russian army and sent as cannon fodder to the front lines of insane wars of conquest. But even more lethal, were periodic pogroms where the Czar’s cossacks would attack entire villages and kill as many Jews as they could find, the last one happening in 1905, prompting my grandparents to flee the Pale (now Ukraine) for the United States.

* The Bolsheviks. And after their 1917 Revolution, more pogroms, more deportations, more Jewish harassment, more genocidal pressure on the Jewish population, prompting many to leave for Israel, if they could still escape.

* The Nazis. Needs no further explanation.

* Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, NRA, and most Republican Party members. Through relentless lies, misinformation, shaming, extortion, and death threats from cult members they continue to plot the overthrow of our democracy to be replaced by a fascist, white supremacist government.

* Domestic white supremacists. Their goal is country that is white, Christian, straight, with subservient women under a patriarchal family structure. They are gun carrying, highly aggressive, and often resort to violent demonstrations, and mass shootings of the minorities they detest, particularly Jews and Blacks.

The Uvalde mass murderer had no criminal record, had no contact with the mental health establishment, had never been expelled from school, was a loner who never participated in such activities as group school photos, but who posted violent intentions on social media. He was a loose and hidden cannon just waiting until his 18th birthday so he could legally buy weapons and ammunition to “shoot up an elementary school” as he texted a young woman in Germany just before he did just that.

After entering the building and entering the classroom, he pointed his AK 47 semi automatic rifle at the face of the teacher and said, “Goodnight” before shooting her and her co-teacher to death and then 19 little children with over 1600 bullets. Crusaders, Cossacks, Communists, Nazis, Putin’s soldiers, American white supremacists, 9/11 hijackers, ISIS, 1/6 insurrectionists, and Trump death-threatening cultists did and do just the same.

The only defense against such people is to reduce the possibility of their obtaining firearms. As a retired mental health practitioner with 35 years experience counseling people with severe mental disabilities, I can tell you that increasing mental health services will not solve this problem. Increasing security at schools will not solve this problem. Trying to decrease bullying will not solve this problem. More active shooter drills will not solve this problem. Arming teachers will not solve this problem. Because as I write, there are thousands of loose cannons like the Buffalo and Uvalde shooters out there like pressure cookers waiting to blow.

There are only two reliable solutions:

* Place a metal detector with two armed officers at the entrances of every vulnerable building in America.

* Make it near impossible to purchase military-style assault weapons in this country.

Of the first, I tried to push for a metal detector in the State building I used to work in but was told the cost, which included salary and full benefits for the two officers, was too prohibitive even for just that one building, and so, request denied.

Of the second, Republicans in Congress, lobbied by the NRA, will not even approve of laws that require safety locks on guns or locked gun cabinets so children can’t accidentally shoot their siblings let alone a total ban on military-style assault weapons.

So the mass shootings will continue as our country continues its slide towards fascism.

When the Fox is guarding the henhouse

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So one of the cops on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre told Anderson Cooper that the cops chose not to enter the classroom when the shooter was in there because “they didn’t want to get shot at and get killed.” So the fox–the shooter–was guarding the henhouse while law enforcement cowered outside actively not doing their jobs. You see, the fox was shooting at the cops with weapons even the cops apparently didn’t have so the cops retreated, busying themselves handcuffing, pepper spraying and tasing the parents who wanted to go inside and save their kids from oblivion, then blamed the parents for resisting them for their inability to enter the building and kill the shooter (one mother actually did break away from the cops and did indeed dash inside, saving her two daughters from certain death!). These are the “armed good guys” that the Republicans–apparently just about all Republicans–claim are the solution to the mass murders that are rife in this country. The problem is the guys not the guns is their favorite catch slogan.

What absolute bullshit! What an abnegation and dereliction of duty! What ignorance! Allowing the the foxes to guard the henhouse and kill as many hens, aka innocent children, as possible while the cowards cower outside arresting panicky parents. Please Uvelde parents, please, sue the pants off these cops right up to the governor of Texas who so righteously praised them. And after you sue them, fire their asses, and hire some competent people for their police force. There are competent cops out there, believe me.

This whole miserable episode is representative of how sick this society has become. It started with Reagan and the GOP cancer has spread from him. I know about cancer. I’m recovering from stage four. It takes strong medicine to stop its spread. It took courage and wisdom for my oncologist to prescribe that medicine. She was a petite Chinese American woman who used words like “hit it hard” and R-CHOP. Strong action to knock out the poison.

Now we are needing just as strong political medicine to subdue this poison that has invaded our system of government. The Republican Party will not enter the henhouse to rid it of foxes, and that must change to allow civil rights to flourish. Of course, they’ve learned to use dog-whistle words like socialism and liberals and communists and immigrants and Mexicans and Moslems to scare a sufficient number of citizens, mostly white citizens, to go along with their cowardice, to hang back and let the foxes of opposition and obstruction create the Party of No, making it impossible to realize the principles of the Declaration of Independence that set our country apart from all others in the world at that time and even now. They took the Constitution and Bill of Rights and cherrypicked them to irrelevance much like Southern Baptist ministers do the Bible.

And we do have the right medicine to stop this poison. In our democracy, it’s called voting. One citizen of proper age: One vote. But like my Chinese American oncologist, we need our voters to have wisdom and courage. We need them to stop and consider the power of that vote and what that vote could potentially produce. Unfortunately, that wisdom and courage is absent in a large percentage of those voters.

These days, all you have to do is examine the voting records in your State Houses and in the U.S. House and Senate. What has each party, each candidate, proposed and accomplished for We, the People? From what I see, Republicans mainly obstruct whatever Democrats propose. This is not what our Founders wanted in a well functioning democracy. There can be disagreements, certainly, but there must also be common goals towards the commonwealth. When all is said and done, it’s the needs of citizens that take precedent, not the careers of politicians. Not sure what I mean? Imagine the car salesman who seems more concerned with his own bottom line than your needs around a car. I walk away from such salesmen and go to an agency that asks me about my needs in buying a car.

***

Reporters these days don’t ask enough relevant questions. I understand Gen Z and Millennial workers are quite burnt out. Some major ones I have are as follows:

* AK 47 assault rifles cost anywhere from 600 to 1600 bucks. Ammunition is about 38 cents per round. The killer in Uvalde had two such rifles and fired some 1600 rounds during his assault on the kids and their teachers. My question, which reporters so far haven’t asked: Where did an 18 year old boy, unemployed and in his last year of high school get the money to buy all that weaponry and bullets to pull off a mission that was able to repel an army of police for over an hour? And if he didn’t have the money, who bought this weaponry for him? Who taught him how to shoot it? Where did he learn to shoot it? This is not plug and play machinery. It kills innocent people as we have just seen.
* Where was the arsenal bought from? Did the boy buy it himself? Did he use cash or credit? If credit, how did he get a credit card?
* Did the arsenal belong to a relative? His grandmother? His grandfather? His mother? A friend? If so, did they give it to him? Did he take the guns from an unlocked box? How did an 18 year old get such an arsenal?

OK, I have more questions not asked by reporters who seem more like infants being spoon-fed instead of adult consumers, but that’s enough for now.

***

Finally, let me say that my heart is sore over these most recent mass killings in Buffalo and Uvalde. Unlike Trump’s cruel and misrepresented characterizations of Hispanics in 2016 and Blacks in 2020, the Hispanic Americans in Uvalde are hard working, family-loving, honest citizens just living their lives as any of us. The Black folks of Buffalo are the same: good, caring people, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, students living daily lives and doing harm to no one. They deserved better. They deserved better. I wish the families and friends of the victims my deepest sympathy and to somehow heal and continue forth in living their lives with some semblance of peace of mind.

Pro Life? Who are the real criminals here?

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Nineteen fourth graders plus two of their teachers were murdered in a Texas elementary school by an 18 year old crazed man who was able to purchase an AK-47 automatic rifle without a background check a few days after his 18th birthday before the shooting as a birthday present to himself. Meanwhile, 50 U.S. Republican senators have steadfastly refused to even consider a bill that was passed by the House to require such background checks. So these “pro-life” senators were anything but pro-life. Quite the opposite: They are pro-murder and have contributed to the death of innocent children in our public schools.

The background check bill does not take guns away from anyone, as the NRA fears, but only prevents someone with a serious mental illness or a felony on his or her record from obtaining a gun. Ninety percent of the American public agree with the bill, including 78% of NRA members. That would expose the senators to a completely pecuniary motive for their obstruction strategy. For example, the NRA gave 30 million dollars to Trump’s 2016 election, more than any other group. So the entire caucus of Republican U.S. Senators is trading the lives of citizens who are murdered by mass killers who are able to easily obtain assault weapons for NRA dollars that are helping to keep them in office.

Pro Llfe? Far from it.

And what of the voters who vote these Senators into office? Pro life? They may use the euphemism but no, they are not pro life. They delude themselves into somehow thinking they are pro life, but when you stratch the surface just a bit you see the rot beneath the veneer. They offer their “thoughts and prayers” after each massacre, assuaging their own consciousnesses and returning to their own empty lives, full of empty rationales, and empty excuses, and empty memes and slogans.

So yes, the senators are scoundrels but the people who vote them in and absolve them of responsibility are scoundrels as well. Maybe more so. A representative democracy is only as representative or as democratic as the people who permit the representatives to act against their interests. In this case, it’s as obvious as a fox in the henhouse.

The young killer in Texas was lonely, bitter, angry, and vengeful from years of being bullied and taunted because of his stuttering. He was a shy, sensitive boy who had a drug-addled mother whom he fought with constantly. He did poorly in school and complained that he didn’t want to be there because of the constant harassment by other students. He was not scheduled to graduate with his class as a result and did not participate in the traditional parade of the graduates at the elementary school the day before the shooting. He had posted pictures of his rifles on Instagram, expressing pride in showing them off. No one alerted no-one as to his postings. He had received no mental health treatment during any of his childhood bullying, nor were there any apparent actions by the school to allay such bullying.

On the morning of the school shooting, he first shot his grandmother in the face causing serious injury. The grandmother apparently was able to call police but the die was cast. The killer headed to the elementary school in the small Texas town in which he lived and where he himself had attended elementary school, entered a classroom and shot and killed 19 kids along with two teachers. Police arrived and killed the killer after breaking into the classroom.

Why? We will never know, but a look at his history and you can put the puzzle together. It’s difficult to stop bullying. It’s difficult to identify mental illness and provide the right treatment. It’s difficult to intervene in domestic disputes and turmoil. It’s difficult to provide adequate security at schools, including the ridiculous right wing solution of arming teachers. But it is entirely reasonable to have enforceable laws on the books to make it difficult for those who should not legally own guns to not legally own guns.

Anything less is actually criminal, at least in my eyes. Yes, the 50 Republican Senators in the U.S Senate are acting criminally. The NRA hierarchy is acting criminally. The Supreme Court is acting criminally. And the voter who votes for politicians who acts criminally is acting criminally, not to mention unethically, hypocritically, cruelly, and immorally.

How will you vote in the next election?

Pro Life? Is a fetus a full human being?

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OK, let me get this straight. If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, many Republican states will legislate that all abortions will be illegal in their states. The Nebraska governor has even said that will apply to cases of rape and incest. No exceptions. So, in effect, that once the baby is conceived the state takes control of that fetus–a fetus that is legally a full human being, apparently with the full rights of any citizen. That opens the door to charge the mother with murder if she aborts the baby by any means available including pills. But if, before the abortion, the mother takes her case to court in an attempt to obtain an abortion in another state, or country, or where it is legal, or even that state where it is illegal, there would then have to be a lawyer for the fetus and a lawyer for the mother, if I’m reading this correctly. After all, since the fetus is considered a full and independent human being, it would be entitled by law to have legal counsel.

During the trial, the mother, of course, can speak for herself, but who speaks for the fetus? How do we know what the fetus is wanting in this case? Could be the fetus has a disability and doesn’t want to be born; or maybe the fetus does want to be born but has doubts about it given the world situation; or maybe is just feeling crappy that particular day of the trial–you know, moody and kvetchy or antsy and pissy and kicking a lot–and doesn’t really want to say what it wants. Actually, come to think of it, the fetus doesn’t yet know how to speak!

What happens then when the jury goes to deliberate? The jury has to start guessing what the fetus wants because they really can’t trust that a proper deposition has been done with the fetus. So how do they determine the truth of what the fetus wants? They know of course what the mother wants but not the fetus. They know what the fetus’s lawyer wants. So since the fetus is legally a human being, the jury finds itself in a quandary. Now picture this happening all over the United States. Needless to say, we quickly become the laughing stock of the world, and hopelessly stuck in a myriad of legal quagmires.

But perhaps, with our present Trump Republican Party, we already are the laughing stock, and the butt of jokes worldwide. It’s likely. But that doesn’t seem to deter Trump and his cult followers. Now if being a human being is defined as the taking of the first breath, same as any other animal, then things are much clearer. The decision about the fetus lies entirely with the mother–and father, usually. That’s how it’s done in most other advanced countries that are not governed by religious dogma. No legal issues there. The mother gets to choose. She is the only full human being here. The fetus is legally an integral part of the mother. The fetus actually is the mother since there is no separation between the fetus and the mother. The umbilical cord proves that–a cord that has certainly not been installed via medical procedure. Without the cord, the fetus dies.

Ironically, by declaring a woman’s right to choose illegal if she chooses abortion, we will be granting more civil rights to an unborn not yet fully human fetus than we do its mother! It’s makes no sense, mixing church and state like way too much salt in a pot of soup!

The state has no rights to any biological part of the mother, as it has no rights to any part of the father. If we start allowing the state to have such rights, that is tantamount to fascism, and exactly what Hitler set up in Germany before and during WWII. In fact we went to war to oppose this sort of state takeover of the human body, mind, and spirit. The Holocaust showed us the ultimate consequences of such a state takeover. Citizens had no choice over any aspect of their lives. Is such a government pro life? Certainly not.

And that, dear readers, is exactly where we, in America, are headed, and in some respects, already there. And this from a Republican Party that wants the federal government to regulate practically nothing, including business, food, health care, consumer rights, vaccinations, oil and coal extraction, ethics, guns, speech, transportation, mining of other natural resources, the environment and climate change, the economy, civil rights, etc., etc.

Why now women’s bodies and the fetus’s they carry?

And today yet more evidence of hypocrisy and ennui. Every single Republican in the House, save 12, voted against an emergency bill to address the baby formula shortage. Pro Life?

And today the House voted in favor of a bill, the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which steps up the sharing of information about domestic terrorism among government departments and creates an interagency task force to analyze and combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies. The House passed the bill by a vote of 222 to 203. All the no votes came from Republicans; all the Democrats voted in favor. Pro life? Pro democracy?

If you are thinking of voting for Republicans in the midterm elections, please, please think again.

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.

Ukraine vs. Russia: New Rules

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David Milliband, a former UK foreign secretary, said on Fareed Zakaria’s show Sunday that the world needs established rules to guarantee peace and harmony–rules that Russia is obviously not following under its strongman president Vladimir Putin. And because of this, the present conflict has a much broader scope. And that is an Armageddon-like struggle between the West and Putin.

But the first immediate factor in this conflict is what is happening now in Ukraine to the infrastructure of the country and to the terror being endured by its courageous people. Because of longstanding and irrational resentments of Russia towards Ukraine, there cannot and will not be a diplomatic solution unless Ukraine defeats Russia on the battlefield. In light of that, the West must continue to arm Ukraine with state of the art weapons, defensive and offensive, administrative, communicative, and digital.

Amazingly, Ukraine is now winning this war, and consequently, despite sanctions, Putin is continuing to pour in troops and heavy weaponry into Eastern parts of Ukraine with the goal of subduing the population and taking control of that part of the country. President Zelensky, forever a hero of democracy to his country and to the West, has offered to negotiate and even give certain security assurances to Russia in return for peace. Putin will have none of it. He is acting more and more like a 19th century Czar or a 20th century Stalin, the difference being he has direct access to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them.

Which brings me to my next recommendations concerning the call for new rules for a peaceful world order. Putin only seems to respond to power and force, just as Krushchev responded only to Kennedy’s threat of retaliation if Russian ICBMs were not withdrawn from Cuba in 1962. Those of us who were around then, myself included, thought nuclear war was immanent. But Krushchev backed down and pulled the missiles out in exchange for the U.S. pulling out some missiles in Turkey, close to Russia’s border.

Now, Joe Biden, possibly unilaterally, must say to Putin, if you use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, the U.S. will respond likewise against Russia. Ideally NATO would be part of this deal, but if not, the U.S. should go it alone. We have the fire power to do so. At the same time we should offer Russia the kind of security reassurances they are looking for, such as neither Ukraine nor other countries that border Russia would be permitted entry into NATO–the EU, yes, but not NATO. We could also include an initiative for a treaty to further reduce nuclear weapons. This would be accomplished through direct high level talks between the U.S. and Russia. And if Russia pulled its troops out of Ukraine and did not attack any other neighboring countries, all sanctions against Russia would be ended, and normal trade, including gas and oil to Europe, would be resumed.

I’ll leave the rest of the negotiation details to the experts, as I am not one of those. I am just a citizen of a still democratic country who has ideas that could lead to a diminution of human suffering and a return to peace and harmony in this old world, tired of conflict and war and war crimes. Our Declaration of Independence holds “these truths to be self-evident, that all men (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” I suggest our Declaration apply to any citizen of Earth, and the above rules presented to Putin could apply wherever weapons of mass destruction are used, or being planned to use, to subdue, subjugate, or conquer innocent citizens and countries.

To borrow Emerson’s words, I would call it a Doctrine of Compensation, or if that wasn’t clear enough, a Doctrine of Retaliation, or using history as a touchstone, the Kennedy Doctrine. Its purpose, of course, is preventative, causing dictators and demagogues to blink and pull back.

Election Fraud? Witch Hunt? Stolen Election?

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OK, let me get this straight: Trump and his surrogates have been crying election fraud for how long now, all of which has been rejected by the courts, but still prompting 19 state legislatures to pass voter suppression laws which are obviously geared to restrict Black voters from voting, and it turns out one of his closest aides and allies Mark Meadows has now been banished from North Carolina’s voters registration roles because in the 2020 election he voted not only in North Carolina but in Virginia. So the foxes in the henhouse are not Democrats who Trump has branded as election thieves but Trump Republicans like Mark Meadows who was actually caught rigging the election by voting twice in two different states. Fake news, Mr. Trump? A witch hunt? Stolen election?

No, it’s just you hiding what you have already done: Steal or try to steal elections! So finally the real foxes have been snared and captured. Can we now, Mr. Garland, mount a serious prosecution against these charlatans, these snake oil salesmen and women? No need to follow the complicated money: Just follow the voter registration roles of Republicans in battleground states. Just follow the words of Trump and other traitors at the Elipse before the insurrection. Just follow the Top Secret documents Trump stole from the White House and carted down to Mar a Lago to do what with? Share with Putin? Just follow any of Trump’s real estate dealings and manipulations to build your case. It’s all there, in plain sight which all of us have seen, all cleverly covered up, with guilt slyly deflected onto others, with lies finely honed and sharpened to escape detection.

How much more time do we need to prosecute this man and his cronies before he runs again and finishes his attempted coup to send democracy to its grave? The man is a menace to our society and to the world as a whole. We can stop him if, and only if, we have the will to do so. This former president is not above the law. The law in our country applies equally to everyone, without exception. Let me know if I’m wrong.

The will to prosecute Trump is not in the hands of you and I. That will must start from the top, namely Joe Biden, extending to Merrick Garland, and filtering down to more local attorneys general and district attorneys. Trump knows this and is trying to run down the clock until, he hopes, when his cult Republicans take back the House. So time is running out in that regard.

One thing you and I can do is write letters, call, or email the President and the head of the DOJ urging them to make the prosecution of Donald Trump a priority and, yes, build a strong case so as to nail this SOB to the political, and perhaps criminal, wall!