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For all of us who were alive in the mid 70s, we witnessed first hand a President of the United States who actively encouraged a crime and its cover up. That of course was Richard Nixon who ordered the break in of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and then tried to cover up the whole affair after the break in was perpetrated. Fortunately the Republican Party acknowledged his part in the crime and cover up and convinced him to resign. Unfortunately he was never indicted nor convicted of this felony and was eventually pardoned of all such prosecution by his Constitutional successor Gerald Ford. That pardon, a deeply political action, denied us seeing Nixon’s day in court facing the full scale of American justice. President Biden has not issued such a pardon for Trump and his surrogates.

Today, we have a different story. Ex-president Trump has just been indicted for a crime by a Grand Jury in NY for paying off a prostitute to keep her quiet about the affair just before the 2016 election. The last part of that sentence was the actual crime, i.e. tampering with the outcome of the election via fraud, deceit, and payoffs. There are also other cases pending against Trump for election fraud in Georgia just after the election and inciting a riot and insurrection on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol in Washington D.C.

The present-day Republican Party is no longer your father’s GOP. Almost to a person, it is attempting to tear our judicial system down, screaming witch hunt, fraud, outrage, weaponized, political–whatever slander they can muster to feed their base the red, raw meat they crave. What’s missing is anyone acknowledging Trump is innocent. That doesn’t seem to be the point, which is that a former president is immune from indictment or prosecution of a crime. A cursory reading of the Declaration of Independence and the the Constitution, of course, will prove otherwise. In a monarchy or dictatorship that might be true. But in a representative democracy, all people are treated equally. No exceptions. All people are treated equally before the law.

Nuff said. A trial of Trump’s peers, which involve regular citizens like him, will follow. The American system of equal justice for all, and not Republican sycophants, will have the last word.

***

My voice is an admittedly small one in the din of larger platformed voices in our multi-cultural, and, I’m afraid, highly polarized society. But, like all of us, I do what I can in my little niche of the universe to battle the encroaching forces of fascism. The following Native American story, which I share from my FB feed, says it better than I:

“According to an old Native American legend, one day there was a big fire in the forest. All the animals fled in terror in all directions, because it was a very violent fire. Suddenly, the jaguar saw a hummingbird pass over his head, but in the opposite direction. The hummingbird flew towards the fire!
Whatever happened, he wouldn’t stop. Moments later, the jaguar saw him pass again, this time in the same direction as the jaguar was walking. He could observe this coming and going, until he decided to ask the bird about it, because it seemed very bizarre behavior.
“What are you doing, hummingbird?” he asked.
“I am going to the lake,” he answered, “I drink water with my beak and throw it on the fire to extinguish it.” The jaguar laughed. ‘Are you crazy? Do you really think that you can put out that big fire on your own with your very small beak?’
‘No,’ said the hummingbird, ‘I know I can’t. But the forest is my home. It feeds me, it shelters me and my family. I am very grateful for that. And I help the forest grow by pollinating its flowers. I am part of her and the forest is part of me. I know I can’t put out the fire, but I must do my part.’
At that moment, the forest spirits, who listened to the hummingbird, were moved by the birdie and its devotion to the forest. And miraculously they sent a torrential downpour, which put an end to the great fire.
The Native American grandmothers would occasionally tell this story to their grandchildren, then conclude with, “Do you want to attract miracles into your life? Do your part.”
“You have no responsibility to save the world or find the solutions to all problems—but to attend to your particular personal corner of the universe. As each person does that, the world saves itself.’”
Written by: The Lemurian Unicorns~ Luisa Morando

***

I hope you exercise your own small voice, adding truth, wisdom, and a bit of love and care to the symbiosis, as put forth by Drs. James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, that has created and continues to create this beautiful world of ours. As an adjunct to this process, I offer my own wee small voice to help guide and inspire you. It is To Live a Life: 200 Ways to be the Best Person You can be.” Thank you.

While we await indictments and anticipated perp walks and prosecutions of you-know-who, I’ve been reflecting on homelessness and how we, as a society, can better approach it. As far as I can tell, our Native American brethren, before the advent of land-greedy Europeans, had nothing like homelessness for the 21,000 years they inhabited this land. Tribal members took care of one another around basic needs, and everyone had a time tested function to fulfill to insure the survival of all. Today’s Republicans would probably have screamed socialism, but it wasn’t that at all. It was an emphasis and priority on the health and well being of the commonwealth. Individual accomplishments were certainly rewarded but caring for the commonwealth, for the community, was primary. And it wasn’t just survival they attained. On all levels, they thrived.

Today, we European immigrants–and yes, MAGA Republicans, the only ones among us who are not immigrants are the remaining Native Americans–have placed the individual over the community, which has led to homelessness, an increasingly chronic problem which plagues us all, regardless of political party. And have no doubt: We must solve this problem as urgently as we must solve our global climate crisis. Why? Because it is eating at the heart of our basic principle, namely that there is a vital connection between the health of our individual citizens and the health of our communities, collectively called The United States of America. This involves something very difficult, it seems, for our culture: A fundamental shift in our priorities.

For the most part, most of us citizens have divorced ourselves from taking any responsibility for homelessness, foisting it onto local governments, as if those governments were not extensions of ourselves. In fact, that is the core of other problems in our society: It’s not a separation of church and state, but a separation between each citizen and his or her representatives in local, state, and federal legislatures. Due to apathy spawned by anger, antipathy, or frustration, we’ve grown too distant from the workings of government, leading to blaming politicians instead of ourselves where the true blame belongs. That’s right: We have no one to blame but our ourselves. The system toxified over the years primarily because of citizen apathy and a chronic laissez faire attitude.

So any solution to homelessness (or any other societal problem) must involve an acknowledgement that the responsibility for solving the problem is ours not out there somewhere in the halls of government. Without that sine qua non, the problem of homelessness only worsens. But once we accept that responsibility, we can then put our collective heads together and find a viable solution. We have the brain power to do so. We have sufficient compassion as a people, especially when we often see children and pets among the homeless. We have the motivation, spurred every time we see a squalid homeless encampment, stirring the thought, “Human beings just shouldn’t have to live like this.” And yes, when you consider what else we spend it on, or how much taxes big corporations or billionaires avoid paying, we have the money to solve the problem. Yes! We do have the money!

That’s essentially all I have to say right now. Unlike Trump always claims, I do not have all the answers. But the answers are there. President Biden is right when he asserts that we are a great country in that regard: When we set our minds to solving problems, we have solved them, while retaining our hallowed democracy.

Yes, I do have ideas how homelessness can be ameliorated. I think about it a lot, since I am reminded a lot every time I see a homeless person begging on the street or a tent on a downtown sidewalk or a line of broken down RVs with junk strewn about or an older man or woman pushing a shopping cart around filled with rotting possessions and think, “There but for the grace of God go I,” or an immigrant family with several young kids in tow asking for a handout. Such sights are constant reminders that these people are not separate from ourselves. They are our tribal members who need the tribe to lift them to the dignity they deserve as human beings.

Thank you for your attention. Enjoy life. Help others.

***

I was a recent guest on Joey Chmiko’s The Authentic Only video podcast. You can see it wherever podcasts are shown, such as Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. We covered a lot of ground. I think you might enjoy it (or not, as Leonard the Shaman used to add on Northern Exposure years ago!).

It’s coming: the next presidential campaign, I mean. Biden vs Trump, and yes, whether Trump is indicted or not, even if he is convicted or not, it looks like Donald Trump, according to Lincoln Project’s George Conway, will still be permitted to run again for President. What does that say about our country? Not much, really. Shouldn’t there be certain reasonable standards for running for the top elected position in the land? Well, we have practically none. We do have Sec. 3 of our 14th Amendment which says if someone plots to overthrown our government, that person can not run for elected office ever again. That is the case with Trump but will he be banned? Well, seems as if our 14th Amendment has no teeth since no one in power has yet the guts to impose that punishment on him. Not congresspeople. Not the DOJ Attorney General. Not the special prosecutor. Not a Grand Jury. Not a federal judge. Not even you nor I who probably would not have “standing” to take the case before the Supreme Court or any court, as you would think we could.

So Trump–a scoundrel to the core–will seemingly run, after likely decimating similar scoundrel DeSantis in the primaries, and we, as a people, will be traumatized as a result, during the primaries in particular, but also during the general election. He will rant and rave and bluster and blame and lie and divert and distort and deflect and defame and nickname and blaspheme and misrepresent and misinform and disinform and impugn and denigrate and disrupt all and everything in his wake–or is that woke–that he perceives can be disrupted.

For that is Donald Trump’s sole purpose in his political life: to disrupt. He is not a unifier. He is not a connector. He is not a consensus builder. He is not a compromiser. He is not an emancipator. He is not a centrist. He is an autocrat who thinks he, alone, has the answer to everything. That is what a dictator thinks, and a dictator has no interest in, or need for, democracy. Abraham Lincoln, ironically a Republican, is our time-tested and trusted model for the attributes an American president should have, and Trump is no Lincoln. Indeed, he is the polar opposite.

Now you might be thinking, “We’ve had bad Presidents before and we’ve survived them.” And that might well be true. But Trump is in a class by himself. He’s already shown how far he can set back this country, and the next time around will be much worse. He will strip our democracy down to its bare bones. He will mercilessly attack anyone who opposed him. He will unleash his brigade of white supremacy gangs to wreak havoc on the land. He will defund Ukraine and hand it over to his pal Putin who will consequently rape and pillage other neighbors. With another Trump presidency, our American political landscape will be forever transformed into something more approaching China, Russia, Hungary, or even Iran. Anti-immigrant. Anti-truth. Anti-multicultural. Anti-non white Christian religions. Anti-minorities. Anti-gay. Pro-Putin. Pro-Make America White and Christian Again. America was built on and grew on diversity. Without it, we will fall as hard and as fast as the Roman Empire did.

I don’t know what I can say to make the coming firestorm–a fire that creates its own wind–any less intense. And my platform is neither large nor powerful enough to effect any significant change. But as that wee small voice within the thundering herd, I still must speak out, if not for you all, then for me alone–speak out until my final breath leaves me or until a modern-day Brown Shirt knocks on my door and takes me away.

What’s to be done about all this? Just brace yourself, vote accordingly, and encourage your friends, relatives, neighbors, and associates to do the same. If you stumble upon a Trump MAGA cultist, or one of blowhard Tucker Carlson’s faithful three million per night viewers, don’t waste your breath. They’ve got their ironclad answers, all ready for a fight, within a brain that stopped thinking long ago.

***

I’ve written a book that I think could make a difference. And I’ve started to appear on podcasts that might increase my influence. The book is To Live a Life: 200 Ways to be the Best Person you can be. The podcasts include Joey Chmiko’s The Authentic Only Show, found on Spotify, Apple, and others; and Daniel Erichsen M.D.’s weekly show on sleep disorders on YouTube. I’ll be a guest on both soon. Please check them out. Thanks.

I’m not sure what Speaker McCarthy had in mind when he released 44,000 hours of January 6 insurrection tapes, exclusively to…

The remainder of this post can be read at breakablenews.substack.com. Thank you.

Another good source of distinguishing between what is and is not reasonable is my recent book, To Live a Life; 200 Ways of Being the Best Person You Can Be. Check it out.

Every day that passes without a criminal indictment for Donald Trump is a day closer to his nomination as the GOP choice for the ’24 Presidential election and serious disaster for the well-being of our country regardless of the outcome. Why that indictment has not been forthcoming is a bit of a mystery, but I suspect it stems from a lack of courage on the part of the prosecutors who are pursuing various investigations of Trump and members of his immediate enablers. Perhaps fear of political repercussions. Perhaps fear of physical violence or death threats against one’s self and family. Perhaps fear of losing the case making Trump more of a pariah than he already is. And perhaps just overly cautious and somewhat passive personalities as is the case with Merrick Garland. We don’t really know why the delays against a man–an ex-President, yes, but still just a citizen–who has obviously committed major crimes over the last few years. In the meantime, Trump continues to campaign and obtain money from his cult following, cults that by nature, stick with their leader to the bitter end. Remember Jim Jones?

So it’s very possible Trump will be the GOP nominee. Best case scenario is that someone else is the nominee and Trump runs as a third party. That will insure victory for the Democratic nominee. But that is unlikely since Trump knows that’s a path to failure in this society. Trump of course is haunted by his father’s caustic voice in his head about never failing.

So the election will probably again be Biden vs. Trump. Know that it’s very difficult to defeat an incumbent President. And Biden has done well in the face of extreme right wing opposition. So it’s likely Biden will win again. However…it’s also likely Trump is planning for this and is already strategizing for a coup by his cult followers, which include current congressmen and women, violent white supremacist groups, and even sympathetic police and military. Some pickle this country is in.

So is there anything we, as individuals, can do about this pickle? For one, we can increase our level of awareness to a sense of urgency. The stresses of modern life tend to benumb us to intense situations such as the war in Ukraine, tensions with China, and lies thrown at us by Fox “news”, Trump, extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and election meddler Vladimir Putin. It’s just too much and we tend to close down and block out the toxic input to our systems. These are self-preservation mechanisms developed since the end of World War II when the world got very complicated politically, economically, and socially.

So it’s to acknowledge this dynamic within us, and begin to face the denial that comes with it. For denial and apathy are our real enemies. There have always been the Trumps, Greenes, DeSantis’s, Hitlers, Stalins, and Putins in the world–people who need to be opposed at every step along their destructive ways. Once we face those inner enemies, we can better face the external ones and begin to change our denial and apathy into enlightened action.

Take occasional breaks, but stay aware of the current news, making sure your sources are reliable, true, and not self-serving or profit driven. Fox “news”, Newsmax, much of social media, extreme right wing radio talk shows/podcasts, and the like are not good news sources, so eliminate them from your routines. CNN, the Washington Post, the Guardian are much better sources, with excellent non-biased reporters often working from the front lines of war zones and the battlegrounds of Washington D.C.

Conscious consumption, as podcaster and restauranteur Joey Chmiko has coined it, involves being careful of what energy, information, and, of course, food, you allow into your mind and body. That keeps us healthier in mind, body, and spirit. From there, we are in better positions to be proactive in opposing the forces around us who try to wear us down with their misinformation, hoping we swallow their stinking bait hook, line, and sinker.

This sends a powerful message of opposition to those intent on feeding their opioids to the complacent masses, rendering them passive, vulnerable, and easily manipulated. They will stop only when enough of us demand that they stop. That may take protesting, which fortunately we are still allowed to do unlike in Russia, Iran, or Afghanistan, letter writing to state and federal representatives, or speaking truth whenever you hear obvious lies.

It will not be an easy fight. The forces of greed, hatred, and delusion have been with us for centuries and have developed mechanisms of persistence, evasion, and delay. Trump should already be in prison. Greene and Gaetz and Jordan should already be thrown out of Congress, along with Santos. Steve Bannon and Roger Stone should be doing time. White supremacists should be labeled terrorists as they are in Canada. And the purveyors of White Christian Nationalism should be exposed for advancing ideas that drove the Pilgrims out of Europe–essentially ideas that endorse a state-only religion. As for the war criminal Putin, he already needs to very much face the same fate as the Nazis at Nuremberg and join his countryman Stalin as one of the most infamous rulers in history.

They, and many others like them, are stains on democracy, but somehow use the freedoms of democracy to continue their rants, their racism, and their crimes…with impunity. It’s time that we, along with our Democratic representatives in Congress, demand, in very clear and forceful language, that they stop.

***

Need something positive and healing? Consider my latest book, To Live a Life: 200 Ways to Be the Best Person You Can Be. You can find it, in paperback or ebook, at Amazon. Proceeds go to my own Sacajawea Press where I’ve written and published five books during the pandemic. More at stephenaltschuler.com. Thank you.

Woke. What does it mean? To the Trump GOP? To the sane world? Well, the Buddha was woke, since Buddha in Sanskrit means the awakened one. That’s right, woke signifies one who has woken up to reality. One who is awareness of the truth. One who is sensitive and aware of the needs of others. One who is compassionate and empathetic. One who is kind, generous, and considerate towards others in need. Woke is a positive human trait. But the Republicans have twisted it to mean something negative, something connected with liberals, with democrats, even with Joe Biden (hence the wacko Newsmax reporter who asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a news conference if Biden was woke). Republicans have added “woke” to their culture wars strategy to mask the fact that they have absolutely no other policy proposals besides their very un-woke idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare.

What’s sad is that their distortions are catching on with voters who mainly watch Fox “news” for their daily dose of “information.” What’s sad too is that the propaganda network Fox is the most watched “news network” in America, indicating how far we’ve sunk below the lofty standard of wokeness, a standard which defines a democracy at its core.

That’s right. Democracy requires a level of wokeness, of awareness, of sanity, of openness to obvious truth, of tolerance of others who don’t seemingly fit into the mold of a melting pot nation. For that is what we are and have been right from day one. A place where all men, all people, are created equal. Worldwide, it was a unique concept in 1776. It was a world of kings and queens and their monarchies. It was a world of haves and have nots, of plantation owners and slaves, of landholders and peasants, of men and women/children, of self-righteous missionaries and pagans. Hardly a world where every human being was considered equal, legally and actually.

But Jefferson and the Founders changed that. Even though many of them were also slaveholders, they put forth a document, The Declaration of Independence, that announced a higher, more conscious standard for countries to follow. Obviously, it was not well received by England,the staunchly conservative monarchy that controlled the American colonies at the time. But the Revolutionary War settled that score. The colonists prevailed and formalized Jefferson’s ideas in their Constitution, only adding to that concept over the years with its 26 Amendments.

Lincoln, arguably our greatest President–the President who kept this union of states together–also helped solidify Jefferson’s ideals of “of the people, for the people, and by the people” in his Gettysburg Address. He then freed the slaves and changed the world forever. By doing so, Lincoln was our most woke president.

Personally, I am proud to be woke. I am in favor of acknowledging systemic racism in our present-day society, making amends for it, and reversing it through appropriate reperations and accommodations for Blacks and Native Americans who were cruelly abused and denigrated and demeaned. Imagine plantation owners who for several hundred years greedily rubbed their hands together thinking of how much money they could make with the free labor of slavery. Imagine pioneers who salivated over the free land they could take from the “savage” Indians who had lived on, cared for, and held sacred that land for 21,000 years before the invasion of white Europeans.

Yes, as a woke citizen of the United States, I acknowledge that we owe these oppressed people one hell of a lot of “affirmative actions” to help get them back on their feet towards the equality our Constitution affords them.

Trump Conservatives assuage their guilty consciences with denial and rationalizations that they are not racists, that we are making progress, that we must not live in the past, that we must not teach our young the truths of our history, lest they bear the scars of those realities. They don’t understand that denial and lies only deepen those scars in the long run. Transparency and honesty may be tough to hear, but only facing the truth will heal the wounds of the past. I know this from 40 years of counseling the severely mentally ill. I know this from even more years of my own tendencies to lapse into denial, rationalization, and projection, eventually seeing first hand the advantages of wokeness and the higher level of consciousness that personal honesty, awareness, and truth bring.

Yes, wokeness is a virtue and very much not the demon Trump Republicans are trying to paint it. Don’t fall for their lies and deceptions and misinformation. They have far more regard for power over people.

At the State of the Union we saw a Joe Biden we really hadn’t seen before. His speech had great energy, was challenging, and was “right on target, so direct” to quote a Bob Dylan lyric. Republican extremists on the other hand acted pretty much as expected. “Lier!” shouted Marjorie Taylor Greene, with cupped hands while draped in a rather obnoxious fur coat or cape that looked like something out of a 1955 newsreel. She proved to be the idiot I always pegged her to be, a representative from a Georgia district that also must be rife with idiots…and probable white supremacists, as is she.

The highlight of the speech was when Joe turned the mirror back on the over the top House hecklers. These MAGA Trumpsters have for the past year, issued veiled, and not so veiled, threats to dismantle both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. When Biden pointed this out, the hooting and hollering began from the peanut gallery. Liar? Hardly. Sen. Tim Scott of Florida was quite explicit in proposing exactly this in the only Republican economic platform declared to date. And others, like Greene and Boebert, chimed and chirped in behind him in agreement.

Nonplussed, President Biden deftly kept his cool, figuratively wearing his signature Aviators, and somehow–I’m still not sure how–got the extremists to agree, with the rest of this political cult, with a commitment not to cut these programs one penny. And once he had them cornered and committed, he dug and twisted his political knife even deeper to finish the job. Not a hoot or a holler was heard as he concluded, “Folks — so folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They’re not to be — all right. We’ve got unanimity.

“Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of seniors. Americans have to pay into them from the very first paycheck they started.

“So tonight, let’s all agree — and we apparently are — let’s stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare.

Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it.”

Masterful. Don’t mess with Joe on his turf. He’s been there longer than before some of these extremists clowns were born. He caught them with their pants…and fur coats…down.

This speech, I believe, was the start of Joe Biden’s bid for a second term in ’24. And he needed such a bang to counteract the 62% of the American public who don’t believe he’s accomplished much in these last two years. Apparently, these folks are so burnt out they’ve put their political heads in the sand and haven’t seen the bills this man has gotten through despite almost total opposition from the Republican side along with two naysayers from the Democrat side in the Senate. Infrastructure, deficit reduction, jobs growth, unemployment decline, drug price decline, Affordable Care Act increase in enrollment, women safety, inflation reduction, wage increases, union participation, gun safety, crime reduction, vaccinations and Covid death reduction. There’s more, but that 62% is apparently either not listening or is listening but is so distrustful of what they hear or are hopelessly enamored by the lies and distortions of Fox “News.” I suspect it’s the latter.

As the ’24 campaign gets underway, Biden and his supporters must do better to overcome the misinformation campaign the Republicans are so good at. Whether it’s Trump, DeSantis, Halley, Pompeo–whoever they run–they will depend not on policy, for they really have none, but on culture wars and vitriol to accomplish their goal of not “finishing the job” as Biden pleaded several times in his speech, but finishing off Biden and the progress the Democrats have brought since Trump made America Hate Again.

Brace yourselves: This ’24 campaign will be ugly, for sure. Our country is deeply polarized and ripe for continued Russian and Chinese intervention in our political process. People are numb with conspiracy theories and still liable to being swayed and misled into believing even the most bizarre among them.

We are at a point of inflection where Democracy hangs in the balance. Yes, we’ve been there before and have survived. Ultimately we do rise to the occasion and remember the principles on which we started and fought for.

Will we survive this time? I sure as hell hope so. Keep up that energy and vitality you displayed last night, Joe! Keep it going.

* A Chinese weather/maybe-spy balloon over America! Mobilize the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, screamed the right wing extremists! We’re under attack! Why doesn’t Biden do something? Our borders have been breached. Trump would’ve already acted, sayth MAGA spokeswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Well the fact is Trump had three such incidents and he failed to act on any of them. And the fact is to shoot down such a contraption over land would endanger civilians on the ground with shrapnel falling about randomly. And the fact is we need to talk to these people before we drift further to a Hot War that could turn into a World War. Yes, it finally was shot down over the ocean where the military has safely retrieved some of it and is studying the device. The operation was done safely and effectively under Joe Biden’s administration. Supposed strongman Trump, again, did nothing when he was confronted with three similar incidents.

* The classified documents cases against Biden and Trump are very different and cannot be compared. Trump lied, deceived, and covered up, choosing not to cooperate with the authorities. Biden fully cooperated, instructing his attorneys to act with complete transparency. Biden: Case closed. Trump: Indictment now.

* DeSantis and his Florida Fascist state legislators are requiring menstrual data from pubescent girls, in minute detail. I assume this is a stealth attack on transgender kids, as DeSantis is a stealth version of Donald Trump, but even Donald wouldn’t venture that far right.

* Representative Omar has been kicked off the House foreign affairs committee by Speaker McCarthy for her anti-semitic remarks which she has apologized for. Meanwhile avowed anti-semite and racist Marjorie Taylor Greene has been rewarded with key committee assignments after Democrats removed her from such assignments in the last session for irresponsible public statements she has not apologized for. The House is now essentially an institution of retribution and revenge instead of the People’s House, assigned to work for the benefit of all via productive legislation.

* Putin continues his war crimes by targeting apartment buildings and other civilian structures in the Ukraine, killing and maiming innocents in his insane war of genocide and cultural destruction. His propaganda machine has the majority of the Russian population duped into either supporting the war or remaining silent for fear of imprisonment. Russia, have you no shame? Have you no decency? Have you no brains?

* The Scorpion Police Unit in Memphis was designed to terrorize and intimidate the community supposedly to dissuade criminals from committing crime. The unit ultimately beat an innocent man to death after stopping him on a routine traffic violation. When police are trained to treat the community as the enemy and then assume they have the power of life and death over its citizens, something is terribly wrong. Most police are honest, hard-working people, but it only takes a few rotten apples to spoil the barrel. Police reform is needed throughout this country. The Scorpion Unit has been disbanded in Memphis and the violent officers have been dismissed and are now under indictment for murder. Good riddance.

* If our great country is to evolve and move forward to the goals professed in our original documents, we must own our history and face not only our successes and accomplishments but our failures and transgressions. For hundreds of years we deceived and mistreated the original inhabitants of our country, breaking treaties, stealing their land without compensation, and practicing a form of genocide against the American Native population. For 400 years we supported the transportation and enslavement of Africans, and when that was banned, we bred more slaves and sold them “down the river” to willing plantation owners in the South. It took the bloodiest and most destructive war in our history, and one courageous President, to stop this horrid crime against humanity. Now Republican politicians rant and rave against “wokeness” and reparations and Black history in classrooms and the 1619 Project and prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory in schools, which includes a specific prohibition, in Florida, on use of materials from the 1619 Project. Hiding our heads in the history’s sands will lead to the destruction of democracy itself. The lessons enumerated in novel 1984 loom even today in the first quarter of the 21st century.

* And finally, after all the crimes, all the fraud, all the lies, all commissions by omission, all the deaths threats he encourages, all the attacks on our democratic form of governing, Donald Trump still walks freely. When will we either put this criminal behind bars where he belongs or at least ban him from ever running for public office again? When?

***

I’ve a new book out that offers some positivity, some order, some hope to the discourse. It is To Live a Life: 200 Ways to be the best person you can be. Each chapter is a lesson to be learned, to be reflected upon, to be used as grist for the evolutional mill. It can be found at Amazon in ebook or paperback format. Please check it out and if you like it, spread the word. Thanks.