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The War Against Democracy is On!

January 23, 2022 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

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.

Requiem for Ashling Murphy

January 18, 2022 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

For my Irish brothers and sisters who are in deep grief over the murder of their beautiful native daughter Ashling Murphy:

Requiem for Ashling Murphy
by Stephen Altschuler

I hope to see Ashling in heaven
to hear her play and to sing
I hope to see Ashling in heaven and be
Soothed as the bells of the angels do ring.

My soul it does grieve for Ashling
And my eyes they do sadden and cry
But I know she’ll be back with her smile intact
In the wake of an Irish lullaby.

Oh play us a tune Aoife Ashling
As you taught us to live our lives full
You will live in our dreams as a bird on the wing
As a shawl made with soft winter wool.

The angels all sing Hallelujah
As you play your fiddle and dance
They radiate love from around and above
Putting me in a transcendent trance.

Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

January 15, 2022 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

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 “All About Me” Years

January 9, 2022 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

The 1920s were the Roaring 20s. The 30s were the We’re all in this together years. The 40s were the Uncle Sam Needs You Years. The 50s were the I Like Ike Years. The 60s, after JFK’s murder, were the Ask What Your Country Did to You Years. The 70s were the Me Decade. And now, jumping to the 2020s, it’s the “All About Me” Years, on steroids via social media and Donald Trumpoids. As the rollicking and over the top vodka commercial says, “Sometimes you just gotta give the people what they want!” And what about half the population wants is no masks, no vaccines, no shutdowns, no facts, no science, no reality, and well, apparently, no democracy, which includes very little government intervention even when faced with a worldwide pandemic. What’s next? No traffic lights, smoking allowed everywhere, cell phones and video games allowed when driving, relieving oneself anywhere and anytime, resisting police guarding our government buildings like our U.S Capitol, and, yelling fire in a movie theater even when there is no fire, and many other examples of a no holds barred freedom of speech that some 1/6 rioters are using as their absurd defense. No restrictions. Total freedom to do anything an individual wants and chooses to do. No mandates and…well, no laws because aren’t laws just more mandates? Guns? Sure, anytime, anywhere. Even kids can bring them into schools because well, to forbid it would be a mandate that would restrict a kid’s freedom. Kids could also curse out their teachers, bully other kids, and spout out lies and falsehoods when answering questions, just as they hear their country’s leader, Donald Trump, do on Truth, his social media platform, where anything but Truth will be presented. And rampant death threats on anyone and anytime? Sure. Why not. There are no consequences. Politicians rarely speak out against them. So good people resign from important job to save them themselves and their family against this tyranny. It’s all despicable and unconscionable.

Democracy? “We don’t need no stinkin’ democracy!” Trump and the All About Me-rs, scream. That’s just something the Democrats invented to steal elections and keep Trump out of power. Voting? Just more government bullshit! We don’t need no stinkin’ voting. And one party, the Republican one, will do just fine. In the All About Me years, people do what they damn well want to do, fuc*k the consequences because there are no consequences. White power? Sounds good, like in the old days, say the Trumpsters on the street, in the bars, in the stadiums, in the diners, and on the roads.

That’s the America we saw on January 6, 2021 at our nation’s Capitol building, with its writing continuing to be on the wall, as the saying goes. Trump, Carlson, Hannity, McConnell, Cruz, Taylor Greene, and the cult followers have continued to lay the groundwork of their own fascist infrastructure since the reign of Donald the Small. Battleground states have established new voting procedures where traditional Democrat voters–Blacks, urban poor, students, youth–will have a harder time casting their ballots; voting districts have been gerrymandered to rig elections in favor of Republican candidates; and those tallying and approving vote counts will be partisans loyal to Donald Trump and company. All signed, sealed, collected and delivered, to the governors of 19 states controlled by their Republican legislatures. Merrick Garland says there’s really nothing much he can do about it until the Congress enacts the two voting rights bills. But Congress is stymied because no Republican senators will have the courage and wisdom to vote for the bills, including Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, and two Democratic senators, Manchin from West Virginia and Sinema from Arizona refuse to back a carving out of the filibuster to get those bills to the floor (as McConnell did to push through three ultra-conservative Trump nominees to the Supreme Court).

So there you have it, America. The GOP, after years of searching, has finally found its Viking leader who will figuratively rape and pillage the U.S. Constitution to drop this pesky Democracy and opt for a Trumpian strongman government where White Christian super rich men rule, where lies are labeled truths, profit is holy, and the climate crisis is a hoax fading into the fog of memory. The American experiment with “all men are created equal” will be over, along with one person, one vote, due process, and “give me your tired, your poor.”

If you want a model for how it will all pan out, that’s easy: Just look at Xi Jinping and China today; and Putin’s Russia; and Belarus, Hungry, Syria, Turkey, and other authoritarian one-party regimes. Is this what we want for our country?

So you choose, America. In 1861, a war was fought to save our Union. Lincoln and many Americans stood up to Southern slaveholding secessionists and the duped country boys who fought for them. Democracy won that time, at great cost to human life and limb. What now? Will we stand up to Trump and his “All About Me” Viking hordes as we did in the 1860s and 1960s for civil rights and the principles of equality this country stood, and still stands, for?

I hope so. I truly hope so.

***

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

January 4, 2022 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

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

December 26, 2021 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

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.

Guns II/ The Despicable Reality

December 6, 2021 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

I’m sorry to say it, but this society has a sickness around guns. Three days after an horrendous mass killing at a Michigan high school by a 15 year old with a semi automatic pistol, given to him for Christmas by his father, a Kentucky Republican congressman displays him and his smiling family in front of a Christmas tree holding an assortment of weapons that even a police department or a military unit would not have with the cheeky caption of “Dear Santa, please send ammo”. It was despicable and an insult to the students who were just shot dead or seriously wounded. Then, to top it off, Republican senators promptly buried a bill that would expand current background checks that would more insure that the wrong people wouldn’t get their hands on guns. Just when does all this insane nonsense end?

The Michigan school had the opportunity to order this deranged student to be taken home by his parents who were all present for a conference several hours before the massacre. They backed down when the parents refused to take him home. Nor did anyone have the gumption to check this kid’s backpack during the meeting–a backpack that contained the gun he used to murder his classmates.

So who’s protecting our young people in schools? Not the Republicans in congress. Not the school officials. Not gun manufacturers. Not gun shop owners. Not the parents in this case. Kids now have to return to this school, and every school across this nation, essentially confronting a Russian Roulette scenario. There’s always a possible bullet in the chamber of a possible gun in the backpack or under the overcoat of a potential classmate murderer. How’s that for our Constitution’s guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? As far as I know, we’re the only country in the world that puts our kids into such daily danger. And that too is despicable, along with the reality that we keep voting Republicans into office.

Despicable is the word, for sure. For you know what it means by the very sound of it. It conveys the words spit upon, which is perhaps the most degrading insult one human being can do to another human being without actually killing him or her.

To spit on someone is what we are doing to our young students in schools at all levels across this country. Consequently, we’ve again politicized something that should never have been politicized: A student should never have to worry about his or her or they’s personal safety while in school. Their safety is not debatable. Our founders anticipated the danger of guns. The Second Amendment clearly states guns are permissible but must be “well-regulated.” There’s no room for politicking here. Lethal guns need to be well regulated. Cars are well regulated. Planes are well regulated. Food is well regulated. Work is well regulated. Prescription drugs are well regulated. Copyright of creative material is well regulated. Patents are well regulated. Legal procedures are well regulated. Why not guns? The NRA is why not. Politicians are why not. Ignorant voters are why not.

Come on people. With unregulated guns, kids can’t attend school with a mind clear for learning. Workers can’t go to work confident they will be returning home that night. Cops can’t even make a simple traffic stop without worrying if they’ll be shot point blank by some crazy with a gun.

Come on people. You can still have your guns. This liberal, me, doesn’t want to take them away from you. I just want them sanely “well-regulated,” so this society can fulfill its promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

Guns

December 2, 2021 by Stephen Altschuler Leave a Comment

Now don’t get me wrong and start throwing death threats at this 76 year old cancer/heart disease survivor, I’m not dead set against guns. Cops should have them. So should soldiers in war zones. And hunters and/or recreational shooters, fine. Even your average citizen, sure, for protection as long as they’ve been run through a background check for any reasons they should not own one. Once owned, of course, they should be required to keep them locked up so their five or 15 year old son can’t get at them to bring to show and tell or for a mass killing the next day in school. So guns are OK. They’re part of our culture, our heritage, bloody as it may be. But like cars and boats and planes, they should be tightly regulated and licensed. A car needs to be inspected every year. Drivers need to renew their licenses and registrations and get smog tests periodically and given tests to prove they can still tell a stop sign from a yield sign. Boat owners need to be licensed. And airplane pilots needed to be extensively tested before issued a license for each level of expertise. Planes need to be inspected rigorously to make sure they are flight worthy. Makes sense. And guns, being the potentially lethal machines they are, should also be highly regulated– not banned, but regulated. The NRA used to believe this, and I suspect most gun owners would also agree with this, as long as they knew it was not a ploy to take their guns away from them.

So today we hear a 15 year old grabbed an automatic handgun that his father just bought, brought it to school in Michigan in his backpack, and killed three classmates and wounded 8 before being arrested and locked up. He is not cooperating with police as his parents told him not to talk to police. Perhaps his parents should be arrested and locked up as well as accessories before and after the act of murder. That might send a clear message to other parents around the country that they’d better lock up their guns securely, lest their kids steal them and fulfill fantasies that they, the parents, knew nothing of since they knew nothing of the thoughts of their children since they never thought to ask or keep track of them. “How were we to know?” indeed.

So in the absence of parental gun controls or private industry voluntary controls or NRA or Republican congressional gun safety or control initiatives, the present Democratic-controlled congress and executive branch need to step up and enact sane gun controls so at least kids can’t easily get to unlocked up guns lying around the house to satisfy their psychotic thoughts and urges–as kids are often won’t to have–that might otherwise pass by like clouds if guns were hard to come by.

Or do we just continue like the Wild West country that we are–the richest and most uncivilized in the developed world. We can’t even enact legislation that would mandate safety latches on guns so kids couldn’t so easily shoot these lethal weapons. Nor can we bring back a ban on assault weapons, enacted in the 90s. Nor ban multi-bullet magazines that allow mass assassins, yes, even children, to kill many people, yes, often children, in seconds. Sane, simple, effective measures that still allow law abiding citizens the right to own guns and ammunition.

Many cite the Second Amendment but we are in violation of the “life, liberty, and happiness” promise clause of the Constitution. Guns are not toys. Guns allow human beings to kill other human beings, thus denying them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Why are the federal courts or the Department of Justice not prosecuting mass murderers and their accomplices under those common law statutes?

Why are we one of the only developed countries to lack adequate gun control and regulation. The Second Amendment even calls for “a well-regulated militia.” Is that not a clear enough instruction for the “originalists” on the Supreme Court or the Republicans in Congress or the NRA? Are we still of a Wild West, vigilante mentality? More and more, it seems we are. And that is not among the moral blocks this country was built upon.

I considered buying a gun during the depths of the white supremacist-infused Trump regime, something I’d never considered before. My wife shamed me out of it and thankfully she did. Having a weapon around that can kill instantly is harmful on all levels of existence. It opens the deep karmic doors for retribution for past misdeeds. It opens up doors of regret, of impulse, of synaptic conditioning. A gun in the home is always, always, on one’s mind. It is like the sound of a rat in the walls. It is like a bad ad jingle that you can’t stop thinking about. It’s like a dry heaving when all the vomit is gone. It’s best not to have a gun at home. My wife was right…as usual, as we often joke.

Anyway, let’s get some control over these loose cannons, as a number of other countries have done after mass shootings, including Norway, New Zealand, and Australia. It will redefine us as a rational, reasonable, reflective society that acts on its original mission statements and actually cares about the life, liberty, and happiness of its people.

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Two books of mine worthy of your attention during this season of mirth, merriment, reflection and gift giving: Into the Woods…and Beyond, my memoir of a time I spent four years living alone in the northern woods, healing from past wounds and wrapping my arms around nature; and The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life, an inspirational guidebook for living mindfully, living in tune with nature, living lovingly. They are both available at Amazon.