Stephen Altschuler

thoughts on environment, politics, health, life issues

Events

Ticking Time

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We are a society rather obsessed with time. We run out of it. We see it fly by. We don’t know where it went. We watch it flow through the hourglass. We cheer it as a ball drops in “Time Square.” In summary, we say, “It’s about time.” Yes, indeed, it is certainly about time. And yes, we are running out of it in relation to the 2022 election. Merrick Garland may be thinking, “I’ve got all the time in the world,” but he’d be dead wrong, for “there’s never enough time.” And Joe Biden’s hoping “a stitch in time saves nine”, wondering how he salvages his legislative agenda after the GOP, along with Manchin and Sinema, scuttled it. Donald Trump is right on Joe’s heels, stalking his shadow, like he once did with Hillary, “biding his time,” and never missing “a beat in time” to vilify his opponents and/or his friends. And Trump Republicans wish “to go back in time” when white Christians were in the majority and and it was “time out” for Blacks and women and Moslems and Jews and Asians, whose “time was over”, when they stayed in their places, and voters wouldn’t “waste their time” reading up on the candidates and make informed choices. The exception is Mike Pence who finally came out and told Trump “times up,” you’re wrong, bud!

Buddhists and other meditators know there’s “no time like the present.” While evangelicals obsess on the “End Times.” And the 1/6 insurrectionists tried to capture “time in a bottle,” but they dropped that bottle and it shattered all over the Capitol tiles leading to their arrests and prosecutions and “jail time.”

Then there’s white supremacists, anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, QAnon-ers, and pro-lifers, and Trump-appointed SCOTUS jokers who are still riding on Teflon Don’s coattails screaming “our time is now.” They live in a Back to the Future world where they’re “running out of time,” like history fading into “the annals of time.”

Well, as I “race against time”, having gotten out of bed way too late this weekend morning, I’ll end this “time-limited” screed and bid you a “see you next time.” It’s “high time” I move on to Saturday errands and such, complying with my wife’s “time-honored” honey-do’s, and thus blithely continue with “the time of my life.”

“Time to beat a hasty retreat,” lest the “time that waits for no man” is like the airplane within which “time flies.”

I know. I know. “Time to get the hell outta here!” “Time to get with it and get off that place where the sun don’t shine!”

And finally From Pink Floyd’s song, “Time”:

“Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say”

***

One of the times of my life happened when I took time out and lived in a remote cabin in the northern woods for almost four years. You can read all about my adventures and my love affair with nature and getting around mostly on my own two legs, “most of the time”, in my recent memoir Into the Woods…and Beyond, available via Amazon. I think you’ll “have a good time” enjoying it. OK, now I’m serious: Time’s Up!

The Story of Noah as it applies to our climate crisis today

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The writers of the Old Testament were wise men indeed, much wiser than many today who read the Bible literally. They think there really was a flood that covered the Earth as punishment for wayward human beings. Archeologists and geologists, of course, would have discovered evidence of this and they have not. Many people today think there really was a man called Noah who was commanded by God to build a giant ark where he would gather his followers and two of every species on Earth to weather the coming flood.

Well, I submit, it never happened. I submit that the story of Noah and the Ark was an allegory, a story to teach human beings to clean up their act and pay attention to how they treat each other along with the environment of their home planet. Noah and his followers, I believe, represent the potential of the human race. The ark is our planet. The flood represents God, a Higher Power, or Nature. The figurative consequences of the Great Flood are what will happen if we continue on our path of foolish destruction and disregard for mining and using fossil fuels. Falling levels of CO2 twice turned Earth into a snowball, completely covered with ice, and greenhouse gas emissions from volcanic activity warmed it up it again.
“Life is based largely on carbon,” explained paleontologist Andrew Knoll. “It’s a unique element that can give rise to the molecular complexity that characterizes life, but it’s also uniquely important to environmental history. The reason it’s getting warmer right now, is that we are moving a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere.”

Noah’s safe landing after the flood represents the salvation of people who follow the warning signs of environmental and social deterioration. The solution to our present climate crisis is in the hands of human beings who are the present dominant species on the planet. We are relative newcomers but we’ve risen very quickly to a place of such brain power and intention that we control and are married to the fate of the planet, for better or worse, till death do us part, as our marriage vows say.

We now have a small possibility of reversing our destructive tendencies since the start of the first oil wells on the planet were drilled in Russia in 1846 and the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 1859. We’ve obviously done a lot of damage in a very brief amount of time. And the figurative Biblical flood waters are rising quickly (quite literally with the rapid melting of glaciers worldwide).

Of course in order to accomplish that reversal there must be the political will to do so. And that’s the current rub. Trump Republicans, who are almost all of the Republicans, want nothing to do with climate change including nothing to do with counteracting it. Democrats, almost all of whom, are completely on board with acknowledging the human causes of climate change and the realities of converting to alternative fuels and lifestyle changes required of our citizens. The chasm between our political parties for this and other legislative changes is huge, and is literally a measure of life and death for our species and our planet. And ultimately our voters will decide whose side they want to rule the country and hence the fate of Earth.

Whose side are you on?

The War Against Democracy is On!

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The war against democracy in the country that has most championed it is now being waged as definitively as when Germany invaded Poland in ’39 or Japan invaded Pearl Harbor in ’41, specifically now by Republicans in Congress and some 19 Republican-led State legislatures, along with two turncoat Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin from West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, and, Oh yes, still Whiner in Chief, Donald John Trump. That’s a long sentence for a short headline, I know, but anything shorter and I might have lost your attention. And at this point, what with the pandemic inall, lost attention might result in a critical lost battle which Republicans would certainly seize upon to their strategic advantage.

And in a time of war, unity is only an issue if either side is disunited in their resolve to win. The Republicans, Trumpian to their rotten core, are indeed united. They could care less about democracy, a form of government that is anathema to their basic values of power, fear, greed, and intimidation. Those are values inherent in authoritarianism, in dictatorship, in oligarchies, in fascism. Democrats, excepting for the two previously mentioned, are for democracy, in full. Its values are governance by, for, and of the people–all the people, equally. They are in favor of a federal government using its financial resources to benefit the people via external and internal infrastructures. They are in favor of an open and healthy unobstructed debate of the issues of the day, hoping, even insisting, to come to consensus–that paragon of democracy that holds a country together, no matter how diverse its population. For without democracy, a country, as we have seen time after time, will lapse into the dregs of one-party rule which leads to dictatorship. And the world has rarely seen a benign and righteous dictator.

A time of war is a tense time, one of uncertainty as to how the outcome will manifest. Who will win? And what changes will unfold? And will the country survive as we’ve known it? It is a political war, yes, but it happens during a war on a lethal worldwide pandemic that should have drawn this world together but that has a further divided it. And to further complicate things, we are also at war with a rapidly changing climate that, because of human intransigence, ignorance, and greed, is rearing its head like the Buddhist realm of the hungry ghost with its figurative huge belly and an impossibly rope-thin neck that can never satisfy that chronically huge stomach. Forever starving; never satiated.

With all these rampant, out of control hungry ghosts, the prognosis for the health of humanity and the health of our Mother Earth is guarded, to say the very least.

In this political war, which, in a sense, is the keystone for the fighting of the other wars, we will see how resilient our democracy is. We are witnessing a kind of D-Day where the forces for democracy–the Commission to Investigate the January 6 insurrection, President Biden, the Attorney General, Stacy Abrams and her Fair Fight, most of the Democratic Party including its legislators and its voters, liberals, along with many anti-Trump Republicans and Independents–are massing its forces on the front lines to challenge the forces of fascism, or the governance by the few at the expense of the many. The fascist forces, which include Trump Republican legislators and election officials on local, state, and national levels, white supremacy gangs, QAnon crazies, anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, anti-mandaters, anti-Semites, anti-Moslems, our highly partisan Supreme Court, many white Christian evangelicals, and cult Trumpsters throughout the country, have fortified their armies with misinformation, conspiracy theories, ancient phony myths, Trump lies, false rationalizations, using social media, Fox “News”, extremist right wing radio shows, and Trump appointed federal judges.

Truth be known, the leading fascists are adept at manipulating facts to support their cause. They recruit their gullible minions then brainwash them to the point of their readiness to drink the proverbial Kool Aid. That’s when the minions get radical, as they are now, trained to threaten those they perceive as against their view of reality. It’s been happening like that for centuries. And the false thinking and intimidating behaviors from the time of Jesus when a Jew who preached peace and love for all was falsely accused and put to death, to the bloody and cultist middle ages when the end of times, called Armageddon, believed and feared by millions, was actually predicted to take place September 1, 1492, to present times when evangelicals still believe in the coming Armageddon when their Christ will return to Jerusalem, hence the only reason the Jews of Israel are at all tolerated, and lead the faithful to heaven while others who fail to convert, like Jews and Moslems, will burn in hell. Things really haven’t changed much.

So I say to fascists who forever pop up their heads like wack a mole puppets, I predict democracy will win this war. It won’t be easy but our motivation is extremely high. We have fought off attacks previously in our history: The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, World Wars I and II, The Depression, McCarthyism, and the Donald Trump presidency and its ugly aftermath. But the pandemic may be our most formidable enemy and we only have the Democrats fighting that. Unvaccinated mostly Republicans are, like cult members, apparently willing to die to make Joe Biden look bad. Very sad and very deplorable, indeed.

We still have time to mount that D-Day, though time is running out. The Commission on Jan. 6, Garland and the DOJ, cases against Trump are all moving along but at a snail’s pace. The 2022 elections and its Republican promise of voter suppression, gerrymandered districts, and partisan vote counting will ultimately tell the tale as to where we are headed as a democracy. And as I stand on the edge of the cliff looking out at a broad expansive sea, I have only a hope and a prayer that the country will do the right thing increasing Democrat majorities in both Houses of Congress thus allowing President Biden to continue making the progress he has already made.

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!

***

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.

The 14th and 15th Amendments: As relevant today as yesteryear

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The 14th Amendment authorizes the federal government to punish states that violated or abridged their citizens’ right to vote by proportionally reducing the states’ representation in Congress, and mandates that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States could not hold civil, military or elected office (without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate).

The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also part of the Bill of Rights, reads as follows:

Section 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Excuse my lack of legal expertise, but it seems these amendments, passed in 1868 and 1870 respectively, accomplished several things to protect our democracy which are still in place. First, they would seem to make the voter suppression laws enacted by 19 GOP-dominated state legislatures illegal and unconstitutional. If that is true, then why is the Department of Justice (DOJ), formed in 1870 to fight voter suppression and the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, not actively pursuing injunctions against these states to stop enactment of these scurrilous laws until their legality can be more thoroughly questioned in court? Why indeed! This would perhaps delay the implementation of these laws until after the 2022 election thus making that election more fair and free to all instead of it now seriously more favoring a GOP strategy resulting in a return to GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.

But Attorney General Merrick Garland, to date, has taken action only against Texas, and no other state. President Joe Biden has also been lax in more actively pushing for the passage of two federal voting rights bills that will help the DOJ to make its case against these GOP state legislatures that are trying to bring back a time that existed before the Civil War when Black folks were denied the same rights as White folks. Mr. Biden, who I think has done a great job otherwise, needs to borrow a page from Lyndon Johnson’s play book when a President could get what he wanted by making quid pro quo deals and twisting arms when appropriate. Even Sen. Mitch McConnell changed the filibuster to get his ultra-conservative Trump Supreme Court in place. Certainly President Biden can do the same to save our democracy from a Republican avalanche of illegal Trump Big Lie-inspired voter suppression laws.

If both he and Garland don’t do what needs to be done, then they are helping the GOP take several giant steps backwards (and certainly not bothering to say, “May I?”) in the fight to make equal all citizens of this country, regardless of race, creed, religion, or political persuasion. It takes us back to when Reconstruction, which did bring equality to all, was abandoned by another President who, after Lincoln’s murder by a Southern white supremacist, paved the way for racists and their allies to rise again, and continue rising again for another 150 years.

That lands us right here in 2022, believe it or not, still fighting for a basic right of democracy: one citizen–regardless of race or creed–one vote, allowing that this nation “shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” as our beloved President Lincoln so eloquently put it.

The Republican Party, which once was the party of Lincoln, is now steeped in the lies of Donald Trump and his cronies. They are saturated with the idea that an endorsement from Trump will gain them election. But that endorsement may well be a figurative deal with the devil, and we all know where those deals often lead. So the answer to all this is that a coalition of voters needs to see the danger and rise up as Lincoln arose during a time of great risk to himself and country. That coalition needs to lean on their current legislators and push to end the filibuster and get those voting rights bills passed so Garland and Biden can do their work to save this democracy. That coalition needs to vote for Democrats at every level in 2022 and show the Trump GOP they cannot bully this country into submission and authoritarianism.

It would also seem to me that the 14th Amendment would effectively block Donald Trump from ever again running for any public office in America. He instigated an insurrection against our government, as the House Commission will soon show with undeniable evidence (and which I saw, along with many of us on TV, as vividly as some of us saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in a Texas police basement in 1963 on national TV!). This probably won’t lock Teflon Don up, but, according to this Amendment to our Constitution, should conclusively prevent him from ever seeking public office again. I realize the amendment was aimed at Southern secessionists at the time, but it does not limit it to them, opening it up to any future insurrectionists like Trump.

That, dear readers, is all I have to say on these matters…at least for now. Thanks for your attention.

Death Threats

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Death threats have no place in a representative democracy, which, despite the right wing attacks, we still have in America. Death threats are a tool of the mafia, of totalitarian regimes, of street gangs, of impulsive crimes of passion, of white supremacists, of Trump Republicans, and, because Trump has never spoken out directly against it and instigated the January 6 insurrection, Trump himself. There is a deep hatred, a deep anger, that permeates this country, that soaks to its bones, that floods its mental and moral basements and alleyways. There’s a rot when anger and hatred smolder for too long, causing a festering like an infected finger from too much nail bitting (of which I experienced as an anxious child).

In America, that rot has festered since 1619 when the first slaves were brought here from Africa. We as a country have made impressive physical progress since then but we have been woefully bereft of spiritual, moral, and emotional progress, as evidenced by the way we’ve treated those freed from slavery, Native Americans whose land we stole from and whose treaties we’ve habitually broken, and many other minorities who we’ve discriminated against and disempowered over the decades. We have sunk to a new low with the foul smell of a slur an Oregon father stained on a TV broadcast the Bidens were holding for children during Christmas. You’ve all read about it. I needn’t repeat the curse words disguised as a well known internet code for a despicable curse phrase against our legally and honorably elected President near the end of an otherwise sweet event.

Yes, we are a country capable of great philanthropy, of great charity, of great perseverance, of great perspicacity, indeed, of great love for our families, our neighbors, and our communities. If only we could concentrate and expand on those virtues and not be mired in uncontrolled gun ownership, drug dealing, gang warfare, white supremacy, conspiracy theories, right wing fantasies and mythologies, and…death threats against good, public servants, lately including, yes, doctors in hospitals who stand up to patients and their families who demand being given unproven, unapproved anti-virals for their Covid-infected relatives, governors who put into place mandatory mask and vaccine requirement to try to preserve public health, judges who rule against challenges to those mandates, nurses who support those mandates and common sense measures–front line nurses and health care workers who were once cheered publicly and openly by an adoring public–congresspeople who care deeply about this country and the welfare of its citizens.

Now we’re even hearing that Steve Bannon, advisor to Donald Trump, has a podcast called The War Room, and is advocating for civil war. Right. Civil war. He want to go back to a so called golden age where all people are not created equal, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No, that’s just for rich, whites who own property, just like the original constitution said. According to Bannon, Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Muslims, etc, are all of an inferior race and are meant to serve people like him, like the slaveholders in the South used to say while perpetuating and rationalizing the practice of slavery for 250 years, and then Jim Crow-slavery for another 150 years. Steve Bannon is hater extraordinaire, trying to reinstall his boss and Godfather Don Donald, the hater supreme who runs the whole nasty enterprise. Cult leader Trump has not uttered a single word to discourage the death threats surely lodged mostly by his followers, some of those 89 million who once followed him on his now-banned Twitter feed.

To his credit, Trump has now endorsed Covid vaccines after his extended silence has killed thousands (of mostly his followers). Of course, he has political motives as well as he tries to take full credit for the vaccines. But that’s Trump being Trump so we’ll allow him that indulgence. In addition, Trump has said nothing to deter his buddy Bannon from essentially calling for a civil war. Trump would embrace the Devil himself if the Devil expressed a liking for Trump.

So America is in the grips of the likes of Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and Donald Trump and all his Republican minions who bow before him and kiss his ring. And the hatred, lies, and vitriol continue to project verbal vomit from his mouth. And many of his 89 million continue to believe his lies and emulate his angry and coarse ways and means.

But there is a solution to all this, you know. There is a way out, and a way back to a strong democracy the world honors, appreciates, and cooperates with. It’s to open the curtain and expose all these jokers as the weak incompetents that they are. Trump and Bannon are 12-year old bullies in older, adult bodies. And what’s the best way to deal with a bully? Anyone have an answer to that? Who among you has ever been bullied? I’ll bet quite a few. I have, and I’ll tell you it did no good to try to avoid them, to try to wish them away. The boy had a group of his cult members with him as he ordered me to hold the Junior High School door open for him every morning. One day, I didn’t and he hit me hard in the stomach with the others laughing behind him. It doubled me over as I struggled by my locker. At that point, another boy, a Black fellow I didn’t know came over and asked if I was OK, and told me he had my back. The next day I again did not hold the door open for the bully. And you know what? He never bothered me again. Bulliess are essentially weak and insecure.

That’s what we need to do with the likes of Trump and Bannon. Continue not to hold the figurative door open for them. Continue to do our jobs in the face of death threats and vicious fascist attacks on our Capitol. Continue to speak out against the voices of right wing extremism. Continue to oppose the hatred and anger and lies and false prophets.

We are a country founded on the principles of equality of all, of governance of the people, for the people, by the people, of a government that cares about its people. One person, one vote, encouraged, allowed, by law, by history, by destiny. Never forget who we are as Americans. Never cease to oppose those who want to redefine who we are to fit their distorted, self-serving, and, yes, evil minds.

Thank you for your attention, and if you have the inclination, please pass this post on to others.

***

In my ongoing efforts to spread some good news and perhaps lay out a blueprint for how society can live in more harmony each other and with our Earth, please check out my book, The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life, available at Amazon. Thanks.

The Truth

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I understand Trump’s new social media network will be called Truth. This guy’s operating manual is the novel 1984. If you haven’t read it, please do. This is our future if Trump takes over again. In the novel, the authoritarian government develops a new language called Newspeak where everything gets twisted and skewed according the government’s interpretation of what is true. And if you don’t speak it, you’re labeled a subsersive and taken in, without due process, for violation of the norm. People are routinely spied upon by their neighbors and cameras are everywhere to monitor people’s movements and intentions. Privacy is gone. Conformity is the rule and the ruler. You must be careful what you do or say every waking minute. And fealty to the leader is essential. Totally essential.

Sound familiar? It’s Trump’s modus operandi. “Fuck him!” Trump said to former Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for committing the cardinal sin of congratulating Joe Biden just a day after his victory. Disloyalty is the worst crime anyone can commit according to Trump. He acts like a cult leader. He acts like a mafia boss. He acts like a totalitarian dictator. And he could very well be reelected President of the United States again in 2024.

If this happens, contrary to making America great again, he will send this country down a rabbit hole of chaos, disharmony, despair, and violent white supremacists. He will send this planet down a final road to perdition, deriding climate change as fake news. Through his Supreme Court, he will elide our Constitution into a mockery, and throw our Bill of Rights into the rubbish with it. America, as we have known it, will go the way of the Holy Roman Empire, gutted from inside out even more than outside in.

How to stop him? Ironically, watch Liz Cheney, an arch-conservative, and daughter of once equally conservative de facto President Dick Cheney. She’s a U.S. Representative who votes against Biden and formerly for Trump policies every step of the way, who I submit should supplant Elon Musk as Time’s Person of the Year. Liz Cheney may be a Republican ultra-conservative but she knows how to speak truth to abusive power. She is the only Congressperson, Republican or Democrat, who has the courage to stand up to Donald Trump and say it like it is, as we used to put it.

“For multiple hours,” she said publicly, “President Trump chose not to take the specific and immediate action many urged – as the violent mob besieged & invaded the Capitol, attacked & injured scores of Capitol Police, & obstructed Congress’s count of electoral votes,” she reiterated. “This was a supreme dereliction of the President’s duty.” And later, under her co-leadership of the House Committee to Investigate the Jan.6 insurrection, she continued her powerful scrutiny of the ex-President, asking a question no other congressperson, to my knowledge, has dared to ask: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s proceedings?”

Such a charge, if proven, could land Trump in jail for many years and, importantly, prevent him from ever again holding public office of any kind in the United States.

Republican Liz Cheney leads the assault on Trump, but it will take the Department of Justice under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, to arrest, charge, try, and convict him. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he must do this now, but my dear astute wife intervened, reminding me that, more than likely, AG Garland is waiting for the House Committee to finish amassing all its evidence so he can then use that evidence in an open-and-shut court case against Trump. I hope she’s right.

For if the case against Trump is swept under the rug, or unreasonably delayed, by the DOJ, our country is in dire trouble. We’re facing a political monster who will not cease his destructive ways if not stopped by definitive legal action.

And that’s… The Truth.

***

DINO Joe Manchin announced on Fox News (that’s right, Fox–so called–News) that he will not be voting for Biden’s signature Build Back Better bill that will cover social and domestic programs. I’m beginning to see that when the Senate became a 50-50 deal, Manchin saw that as a golden opportunity to become a power broker–a very rich power broker. I expect fossil “fool” magnates, as well as Trump Repubs, saw him as a viable cog in Biden’s agenda to set this country on the right track. Money began to pour into Manchin’s coffers from Republican sources as they increasingly saw him as an ally in their obstructionist schemes.

So between the fascist Trump and the DINO Manchin, we are in quite a pickle for I would also surmise that the voting rights bills are also off the table. Without Manchin’s support for modification, the filibuster continues to give the Republicans a powerful arrow in their quiver of treasonous hypocrisy.

The only solution I can see is a colossal Democratic victory in the 2022 midterm election in both the House and the Senate that would politically vaporize Trump, Manchin, and Sinema. How about it, y’all? Let’s shock, and essentially save, the world and get out there and make such a surprise landslide happen. Otherwise, it’s curtains, my friends.

All Countries Reap What They Sow

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A farm reaps what it sows. So does a country.  So does Afghanistan. And so does the United States. The direction a country takes comes from past roots, and, as with a plant, if those roots have not been nourished and tended properly, a country can grow sick, weak, and often die. We’ve seen it happen with many countries and cultures throughout history. Greece, Rome, Nazi Germany, Czarist and Communist Russia, Vietnam, China, Fascist Spain, Italy, Portugal, and, Trump America.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have finally pulled out of Afghanistan. The Taliban have reconquered the country and are once again in charge. It is not the fault of any country except Afghanistan for that happening. President Obama poured 300,000 troops into that country in an attempt to bolster its military and its government in a monumental effort to strengthen and stabilize Afghanistan. Ultimately that effort failed, but Barack gets an A for trying. Even Trump gets a high mark for attempting to negotiate with the Taliban to bring some semblance of order to this chaotic country. And no one can blame Biden for wanting to exit this “forever war.” It was none of these presidents’ fault for the Taliban taking back control. The root causes lie in the history of this war-torn nation, which goes back to 1880 as a nation, but marks its origins to the Bronze Age some 5000 years ago. It was once known as central Asia’s roundabout, for its diverse trade routes leading in various directions. For that reason it was strategically important, and, so, fought over by many cultural groups for thousands of years. In the modern age, the Russians were the first foreign power to try and muscle its way into control of the many cultural groups that made up this country. They failed and were followed by the Brits who also failed, followed by the Americans in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an attempt to root out Osama bin Laden and his al Queda terrorists who were responsible for 9/11. That invasion failed when bin Laden escaped, but for some reasons, the Americans stayed. But rather than concentrate on building a strong Afghanistan, President Bush took his eyes off the prize by shifting most of his efforts to his ill fated war on Iraq in 2003.

Are you still with me? It is complicated, isn’t it? But you can see how the radical-Islamic Taliban filled numerous vacuums over the years, and with financing from foreign interests like Iran were able to build a formidable military force and recruit thousands. And remember, the Taliban are Afghans, mostly from rural areas, and not some foreign power so they have much support within the country. Despite their brutal reputation for fundamentalist extremism, their consistent argument about driving foreigners out of their country is a powerful one.

Now, we and the rest of the “civilized” world look at that war weary country, lament its fate, and hold our collective heads in our collective hands, fearing the worst. The Taliban, with its harsh, medieval Sharia Law, has proven to be quite cruel after taking power in the past. But given its history, and the history of central Asia, that should be no surprise. What I can fault is the lack of planning for a calm transition/evacuation after allied troops were pulled out. Both Trump and Biden received poor advice and intelligence around the strength and intent of the Taliban once U.S. troops were removed. It took them all of nine days to conquer the entire country, throwing the populace into a panic. This showed a lack of competence and empathy on both presidents’ part–much expected of Trump but certainty not of Joe Biden. He should have known better and planned for a more orderly and timely evacuation.

Afghanistan now is sowing what it has reaped, and there isn’t much, other than weak words and ineffective economic sanctions the West can do about it. Its fate is in the hands of its people alone, as history has shown. And history has certainly shown how people can and do rise up and overthrow a government that is not acting in the country’s best interest.