Stephen Altschuler

thoughts on environment, politics, health, life issues

Human nature

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.

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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.

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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?

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?

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

The Hi-Line: A Suggestion

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I wrote an essay called the Hi-Line for my first book back in 1990, Hidden Walks in the Bay Area, a walking guide to the San Francisco Bay Area (no worries, this is not a plug for the book since it went out of print after becoming out of date due to many of its walks being changed by fire, flood, and shifting earthquake fault lines!). I had noticed the propensity of people saying hello to each other on the upper trails that surrounded Berkeley, the town where I lived at the time. That impressed me because down on the flats in town almost no one said hi to each other in passing. Up and away from cars and city noise, they were more comfortable greeting each other as they hiked closer to the natural world.

So now, during this Great Pandemic where social isolation has been the needed norm, now that things are easing somewhat, I’m proposing that we create Hi-Lines all over the country, and start to greet people we pass on the streets with “Hi” or Hi, how ya doin’ or Howdy or Hi there or How’s it going? or just lift your hand or index finger in a Hi gesture like they do on back roads in the South in cars and pickups when people lift their index fingers off the steering wheel to greet other drivers coming in the opposite direction.

It’s just a simple gesture but it could brighten someone’s day after a rough start, or it could make an immigrant feel more welcome, or it could make an African American or a Moslem or a Jew or an Asian American woman feel more accepted and less isolated and less threatened. It’s what I meant in a previous post around making amends to people that society has slighted or abused, past or present. Making amends doesn’t have to mean giving money to people, although the fine folks of Asheville, North Carolina are contributing taxpayer money to develop community programs and facilities to assist African Americans living in their town. Making amends can also mean making people feel more welcome, respected, and seen for who they are regardless of skin color, or head covering, or the clothing they wear. I go out of my way to greet even a Buddhist monk in robes and try to engage him or her in respectful conversation. Or the other day on my way to my oncologist’s appointment I asked directions of a woman who turned out to be a cancer survivor herself and wound up having an uplifting conversation about how we were dealing with this illness. We both walked away enriched by the contact.

People love to be noticed in positive ways, and we’re a bit starved the world over from the fulfillment of that need by this challenging Covid pandemic and these polarizing political differences that most of us are experiencing. Red/Blue States. Republican/Democrat. Trump/Biden. Conservative/Liberal. Sure, we can have differences but essentially we are all Americans, or even all Earthlings, or, yes, even all Milky Way-ites.

So, the next time you pass someone in your neighborhood or your downtown center or holding the door for someone at your post office, say Hi, how’s it going. Or the next time you pass a cop walking his or her beat, say Hi, officer, thanks for what you do. Or the next time you notice a Black man next to you at the produce section in the market, turn and smile and maybe say, you know, this apple variety here is really delicious. Are you getting the drift of my meaning? Doesn’t have to be a big conversation, just an acknowledgment that this person is really the same as you: the same needs and wants and likes and dislikes and struggles and successes and fears and the same things that make him or her happy.

In this distrustful, sometimes hateful, sometimes isolated, sometimes contentious world, that greeting, that smile, that simple acknowledgement, can go a long way in brightening your day and the day of the person you’re making contact with.

How about it? Give it a try. Let’s get a Hi-Line Movement started. Membership: Free! Benefit: Win/Win/Win!

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One book of mine on hiking that is still in print is The Mindful Hiker: On the Trail to Find the Path (DeVorss Publishing, Camarillo CA, 2004). You can find it via Amazon. It’s a memoir about my inner and outer experiences in Point Reyes National Seashore just north of San Francisco. I think you might enjoy it. It won a book of the year award when it first appeared, and I consider it the best book I’ve ever written! But it’s been languishing on the publisher’s backlist for a long time now and needs some love. Thanks.

It’s Time to Stop Putin, Cold!

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I’ve just seen the bodies of four members of a Ukrainian family, a father, a mother, and their two children, who were bombed into eternity as they attempted to flee their city which is under siege by Russian forces directed by their president Vladimir Putin. This was a deliberate attack by barbarians who target civilians indiscriminately and without cause as they were evacuating. This entire operation against a country that did not provoke such an invasion is an abomination against all decent, peace-loving people in this fragile world of ours. Barbarians in earlier centuries waged such war, ravaging and razing cities while murdering people just to acquire more territory and wealth and, yes, slaves. I thought we were done with such warring nations. But we obviously are not.

Putin must be stopped and stopped cold as he attempts to destroy a country, its people, and its culture. Ukraine’s President Zalensky calls on the West to establish a no-fly zone to challenge Russian war planes from bombing civilian targets. That is a good first step. But it is not enough. This is the time to directly challenge Putin and put an end to his warmongering. We failed to do this with Hitler, and we all know what followed: one of the worst genocides in history and a World War that destroyed the lives and cities of millions. I know the threat and even the possiblity of nuclear confrontation is real, making this different from war in the 1940s.

But, I’m sorry to say, it must be done. Nuclear bombs and missiles have been a deterence to world war up to now, and, I believe, will continue to deter competing nations from using them. Putin is mentally off the rails, but I don’t think he is that insane. His talk of putting his nuclear forces on high alert is a strategic ruse, and only that. I wrote a post a short while ago advocating for a Democracy Doctrine, and this seems to be an ideal time to put that doctrine into action. Why not! Russia is in the process of decimating the Democratic country of Ukraine. To see innocents being slaughtered is intolerable.

The West has the will and the way and the means to stop it, and stop it cold. Yes, it will widen the war, not into a world war, I believe, for there is not enough support from other countries to come to Russia’s aid as allies. Tactical nuclear weapons may or may not be employed by Russia in an act of desperation. And that will be met with a reciprocal response from the West. But the advantages of such a confrontation far outweigh the dangers. For if we do not stop Putin now, we will have a much harder time stopping him in the future when he regains economic stability and gathers military allies.

I am just one small voice, without expert credentials or experience in foreign affairs or a university professorship or chairmanship of an influential government committee. But I know, as I’m sure you do, wanton barbarianism when I see it. And I know, though I am a pacifist by nature, that the only thing that will stop such atrocities is brute force and the courage of a Lincoln, or an FDR, or a Churchill, and, yes, a Zelensky, a fellow Jewish landsman of the country of my grandparents.

Long live Ukraine! Long live Democracy! Let’s do what needs to be done to rid the world of another Attila the Hun, of another Osama bin Laden, of another Stalin, of another Hitler. It’s as if we’re back in the year 800 when the invading hordes from the north ravaged a peaceful world. What now do we do? What now do we do? Sanctions alone? Or damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

I say, Onward! Stop this son of a bitch!

Righting Wrongs

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Most of us learned how to read via simple books of Dick, Jane, and Spot. We take it for granted that our society values education right from the start and provides us with free public school. But there was a time in our history, which a majority of Republicans now want to hide, deny, and ignore, when Black slaves were shot, whipped, raped, even lynched if they were caught trying to learn to read. A basic education we now take for granted of reading, writing, and arithmetic was forbidden for a Black slave for generations while they labored for rich slaveholders in the South, North, East, and the West of the United States (that’s right: though on a spectrum of cruelty, the entire country).

Yes, things have changed for the better, but even though Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, and gave them the same rights bestowed upon any citizen of this nation, he wondered and even doubted whether freed Black folk would ever be able to live in harmony with Whites. I’m afraid he has been proven correct, for today, despite all the gains in civil rights, a majority of Whites remain distrustful and suspicious of Blacks, which still results in discrimination in housing, employment, health care, police protection, the legal system, and many other aspects of our society that Whites needn’t worry about or consider. White privilege is the rule not the exception. When a Black man enters a 7/11 throughout this country he is regarded with suspicion, as George Floyd was in Minneapolis that fateful day he was murdered by police.

Out of this embarrassing history of ours, has grown the cancer of white supremacy. The Donald Trumps, the Steve Bannons, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the Ron DeSantis’s, the Ron Johnsons, the Paul Gosarts, the McCarthys, the Bouberts, the Hawleys, the Manaforts, the Flynns, the McConnells, the Roger Stones, the Neo-Nazi Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Patriot Prayers, the QAnons and a host of others are the tumors that have grown relatively unchecked and unrestrained by a public that has largely ignored these dark entities, extended them a visa into the mainstream, and even continually votes them in and back into office time after time. Trump brought the venom to the surface and the puss has leaked into other countries where authoritarians are challenging liberal democracies. I’m afraid the average American is so beaten down and burnt out by the pandemic, yes, but also by Trumpian lies and disinformation, he, she, or they are numb and apathetic, and simply just don’t care anymore. It saddens me greatly. It angers me even more–anger to the point of distress.

My father was an optimist who was always confident his ship was about to come into port. Some of that rubbed off on me so, in spite of our largely catatonic populace, I believe there is a glimmer of hope that we as a society will see the light and right the wrongs. People can be kind and helpful. I see that almost everyday. People can be friendly. I see that almost everyday. People can be trustworthy. I see that almost everyday. And people can be loving. I see that almost everyday, personally, and in the media. The reaction almost equally by Democrats and Republicans against the war crimes of Putin in Ukraine has been mostly unified (except for Trump and a few other radicals from the alt right) and in favor of more support for the brave democratic Ukrainian president Zelensky and more harsh sanctions against the dictator Putin and his cronies. Well Putin and Trump are practically blood brothers, so the cult followers of their “dear Leader” Trump, if they ever stop to think about it, may abandon their love of their crazed leader and his racist Republican Party and vote for Democrats in the next election. How’s that for optimism? Problem is Trump’s cult followers don’t think. Cult followers rarely do. They just keep drinking the proverbial Kool Aid until their brains are fully addled.

So now what? Last night during my evening walk, I was greeted cheerfully by others in my apartment complex. What if I was Black? Would their faces have been so welcoming and friendly? No, of course not. Their first thought would have been, Oh, no, trouble! Where can I retreat to before he robs or rapes me? He must be up to no good, this Black man. Or what if they knew I was Jewish? A Jew. What’s he doing here in our complex? Is he the one who owns the place and ups our rent every year? Damn Jews! Or a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf? What is she doing in this neighborhood? There’s nothing to blow up here. I wish she would just go away. Or Hispanic? How could he afford to live here? And that broken down car? Probably his. What’s he doing here? There’s no agriculture in this area.

We live in a country of stereotypes where just the color of one’s skin, or the slant of her eyes, or the head covering, or the crook of one’s nose triggers a hate-filled response from a racist. And then white Republican politicians use that to scare other Whites even more, hoping that fear steers another vote their way. And demagogue leaders like Trump take that fear to another level, drawing out the poison that has collected under the White veneer for decades, eras, even centuries, until they intoxicate a national cult of followers to their own private Guyana.

Last night in Biden’s state of the union speech, much was made of fascist Russia’s attack on democracy, and rightly so. But nothing was said of the fascists in our country, the white supremacists, the Trump cultists and enablers in the Republican Party, and Trump himself, and their internal attack on our democracy. Biden doesn’t see it because he doesn’t want to see and acknowledge such a domestic attack. Nor does he see the necessity of stopping Trump cold before he rises again. Biden is enamored in a politics of the past, unable to fathom the changes and responses needed now to face and put down an insurrection designed to transform this country into a right wing dictatorship in the style of Trump ally Putin. It’s probably too fantastic a notion for Joe Biden, and perhaps his closest advisors, to comprehend. It’s probably too fantastic for you, my readers, to accept and comprehend. This is America, afterall, “land of the free, home of the brave.” But as conservative commentator David Brooks so astutely pointed out a few days ago in his column, democracy cannot operate without the full cooperation and effort of its people. It takes hard work, he wrote, and he questioned whether we were up to the task. I too pose that question.

If our president neglects to bring up white supremacy, systemic racism, violence against Asian American women who have experienced an alarming increase in hate crimes and harassment, Pacific Island Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, Moslem Americans, Native Americans, Any People of Color Americans, or the burning of books or the mere mentioning of Critical Race Theory in schools or the suicide incidents among children who are bullied via social media and in person in schools, and, and, and, and, ad infinitum. If he neglects to mention any of these and other denigrations in our society, then his bully pulpit will be for naught and these stains on our culture will continue and spread like the cancer they are. Republicans don’t give a damn about any of the above and are determined to drag this country, kicking and screaming, back to a time when racism and injustice were the norm, sanctioned by top leaders and courts and cops on the beat and the apathy of the general public.

Blacks, of course, take the brunt of this abuse because since we dragged them over here in chains, with guns and bullwhips, and then subjected them to one of the worse genocides in history, we continue to isolate and dehumanize them as no others, labeling them not as victims but as the perpetrators of their lot. Is lynching next if Trump Republicans retake power? Lynchings and cross burnings and swastikas on synagogues and attacks on all the minorities mentioned above? Is that where we’re headed? Back to a country where racist whites can intimidate minorities with impunity and without restraint as was the case when Trump was president and the DOJ his lackey?

Sometime when the stain is too deep, you’ve got to throw away the garment and replace it with new threads. Perhaps we need to surrender like the alcoholic at his first AA meeting. Perhaps we need to admit that we have a serious problem and can’t solve it on our own. Perhaps we need to give up our will to a higher, and wiser, power. Perhaps, like the alcoholic or drug addict, we need to take a serious and sincere inventory and make amends where amends are warranted. Perhaps we need to stop fooling ourselves and understand how others are suffering due to our ignorance and self aggrandizement.

Where do we go from here, dear readers? Where do we go from here?