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Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural speech, Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. What followed was a concerted effort over many years by the Republican Party to limit government regulation around the environment, business, agriculture, worker safety, manufacturing practices, health care, police practices, transportation safety standards, you name it. Now they want to ban all abortion. In other words, they, and an extremist right wing-infused Supreme Court, want to fully regulate what a woman chooses to do with her own body. Is that not the height of hypocrisy?

In addition, Trump Republicans want to fully regulate what teachers teach in public schools and colleges. They want to fully limit subjects like gender studies, Black studies, systemic racism, the history of slavery and indigenous forms of genocide, enforcing these with laws banning certain offending books of their choosing and penalties against teachers who defy such attempts to stifle the truth and whose curriculum offers a full and honest accounting of American history. Full government regulation of education. Is that not the height of hypocrisy?

In addition, Trump Republicans want the elimination of the separation of church and state, mandating that we are a nation built on Christian principles and values, beholden to a Christian God who favors the white race, claiming this was the intent of our white, male, wealthy Christian founders. At the head of this government, Trump Republicans want an authoritarian leader, who makes the final decisions like infamous Fascist leaders of history, a so-called illiberal democracy, ala Orban of Hungary, the darling of CPAC, Tucker Carlson, and Trump himself. An oligarchy of full government regulation of the media, the police, and surveillance of citizens. Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

In addition, 19 Red states have changed their voting laws to clamp down on who can vote and how to cast ballots in efforts to fully regulate our sacred system of one person/one vote. They’ve also gerrymandering districts to insure the outcome of elections would favor Republicans up down ballot, in an concerted and coordinated effort to fully regulate the election process. And alarmingly have put Trump endorsed candidates up for election to posts that, if elected, can themselves decide if they agree with the vote of the people, and reverse the vote if they so decide: the ultimate goal of a fascist form of total regulation of elections to insure their candidates win. Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

Trump Republicans are supposed big on law and order and support for the police. How do they explain then calling rioters at the Capitol patriots after they pummeled police officers with all sorts of weapons on 1/6? And how do they explain blocking all regulation of military-style semi automatic weapons that have killed hundreds in mass shooting through out the country, regulations that police departments themselves have called for. Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

Republicans seem to have no concern for the regulation of the fossil fuel industry, denying that the warming of our planet is human caused. They never pass on an opportunity to restrict the development of alternative forms of energy and production, while giving subsidies to oil and gas companies to expand their operations into wilderness and open ocean regions. Again regulations and obstacles for alternative sources: no regulations for fossil fuel. Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

The Trump/MAGA Republican Party wants it both ways: no regulations when it comes to business they can profit from and regulation of that which they don’t agree with. Do we reward them for this obvious hypocrisy? I think not. In November, oppose these charlatans up and down the ballot!

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler
U.S. House of Representatives
WA 3rd District

September 11, 2022

Dear Rep. Herrera Beutler,

To get right to the point, I would like you to present a bill to Congress that on the grounds stated in the 14th Amendment, Donald J. Trump, because of his incitement of a mob on January 6, 2021 prior to their attack on the Capitol, is hereby and forever prohibited from running for public office of any kind. As a recent article from the Washington Post/online shows (9/11/22), there is precedent for such an action of Congress, an action that is entirely separate from any current court action, investigation by the DOJ, or any action taken by the House Commission Investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Congress apparently has the power to enforce the 14th Amendment, and so can block any individual who participates in an insurrection directed towards the United States Government.

Since we are a representative democracy, I come to you, my representative in Congress, to file such a bill. I cannot do this on my own. My mission, as a citizen, is to express my views, and petition my representative to hopefully advance my views in the way our Constitution provides. You voted to impeach Donald Trump when he was president, and I greatly admire you for your courage to do so. Unfortunately, you have paid for that courage and wisdom with a primary challenge and defeat by a Trump Republican, whom I dearly hope loses in the general election.

But for now, you are still my representative and will remain so until a new Congress is seated. So I beseech you, Rep. Herrera Beutler, to advance a bill as I am suggesting. It would be, for you, an opportunity to do a great service for our country to stop Donald Trump from further harming our country through his attaining any public office.

Please confirm your receipt of this letter, along with your reactions to it. I, of course, hope you agree with me and will move ahead and do what is required to file such a bill. I’d be happy to meet with you in person to discuss my proposal in more detail, if you’d like.

Thank you very much, and good wishes to you in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Stephen Altschuler

I hate to say it–I really do–but we are an insane society. Trump, yes, certainly. Bannon, Rudy, McConnell, Trump Jr., McCarthy, DeSantis, Greene, Gaetz–all the Trump sycophants, sure, all of them. The Trump MAGA crowd, yep. The NRA, Oh yes. But many of the liberal Dems too: the ones sitting on their bums numbingly scrolling through FB or Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or YouTube or worse, mesmerized, drugged, burned out, unaware of the passage of time, bypassing posts calling their attention to a country in need of political and social surgery, instead spending inordinate amounts of time “liking” whatever titillates their momentary interest. What’s not to like, my mother used to say, but she was referring to some food I didn’t like.

For years, I counseled clients who were deeply sick with schizophrenia, bipolar, major depression, paranoia, addiction, and criminal behavior. The course of their lives was often stuck in neutral and at times reverse. Our country is now in reverse around political violence, gun control, voter restrictions, election denial, and off-the-wall conspiracy theories. My clients, though, at least with proper medication, could often function without hospitalization. In fact they were, for the most part, non-violent, with their psychosis turned inward only. Mostly, they hurt no one.

That is not true of the politicians who block all forms of common sense gun control, however. Their insanity does hurt millions of others. Trump’s insanity led to the death of thousands of Covid sufferers, along with violence directed at people or institutions he chronically denigrates. McConnell’s insanity led to a Supreme Court that broke precedent denying the right of women to control their own bodies and backtracking on the 1965 Civil Rights bill which has contributed to the continued suffering of millions of Black Americans.

Our insanity around our unwillingness to deal with climate change and global warming from fossil fuels–and this crosses party lines–has led to a planet that is sweating and melting and burning and flooding at a pace never before seen by scientists and laypeople alike.

Our unwillingness to deal forcefully with white supremacists and fascist nationalists–and this too crosses party lines–has led to a dramatic increase in violent acts of anti-semitism, mysogeny, xenophobia, and racial slurs against migrants, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and LGBTQ people.

Republican unwillingness to deal with gun violence is criminal and has led to the death of thousands of men, women, and, most tragically, children. Even the horrendous massacre at Uvalde could not produce the kind of reform needed to take military-style guns off the streets. That is a national disgrace and further evidence of the psychosis that is systemic in our country today. The number of suicides in our country from the incidental presence of guns in homes is greater than any other country. That too is a national disgrace and opposes a basic principle of American democracy set forth by our Founding Fathers: that every citizen is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or to paraphrase, health, justice, and prosperity. Not to mention, open carry–one of the most abominable examples of national insanity the world has ever seen.

What I did to help those people with psychosis, addiction, and criminality during my career was to listen to their stories and be of service when they were willing to meet me halfway. I could not help them alone. It was a joint effort only that made a difference. Yes, a key was that they admitted they had a problem and needed help. It was those who joined me in finding solutions to their suffering that made the changes and the efforts that led to breaking the chains that led to their suffering and aberrant behavior. Not an easy task, but possible if the will to change was there.

And that is what our country now needs: an acknowledgement that we do and have had problems, to identify those problems, and come together to find common sense solutions to solve our problems. It does no good to ban books we don’t like. It does no good to allow more mass killings of kids. It does no good to curse our president. It does no good to continue to alienate and discriminate against our minority citizens. It does no good to allow the neo-Nazis among us to intimidate and spread fear and hatred without officially labeling them as the terrorists they are. It does no good to ignore our past transgressions and injustices of slavery and genocide and attempt to sweep them under the rug by politically controlling what teachers teach. That’s what China does. That’s what Russia does. That’s what North Korea does. That’s what Cuba does. That’s not what the United States of America does!

It took courage for my clients with psychosis to acknowledge the need to change and accept their own responsibility in the need to participate in making that change happen. Part of that courage involved breaking away from dependency on a system that often failed to encourage that independence. Same with our country. The government, alone, can’t solve our problems without the participation and cooperation of a unified public.

Joe Biden said it well: Americans can accomplish anything we set our minds to as long as we do it with a unifying spirit and determination. But to do that we need to come to our senses and stop fighting with one another. No state is completely Red or Blue. Every state consists of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, all with common needs, desires, and dreams for wellbeing and happiness.

We’re in this rescue boat together, folks. To survive, we have to cooperate and find a way to safety, security, and mental health. As Rodney King, a Black American victim of police brutality, asked sincerely in 1991: “Can’t we all just get along?”

***

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The beginning of the end of U.S. Democracy happened in the year 2000, with a Republican-weighted Supreme Court voting down a case that would have allowed Florida to recount the disputed results in one particular county that would have surely swung the entire election to Al Gore instead of George W. Bush. I remember at the time saying to my wife just that: This is the beginning of the end of Democracy and this country as we know it.

It has taken twenty two years, but here we are at the precipice of the end. With Trump and his blood-thirsty minions clawing at the gates of our political infrastructures, our tried and true institutions are teetering. Voting rights, civil rights, the Bill of Rights, along with liberty and justice for all, and applied equally to all.

Al Gore, though he disagreed strongly with the decision, graciously conceded defeat to spare the country from a constitutional crisis that might have hurt any possibility of unifying the country and moving on with the new president. On the other hand, Donald Trump just issued a statement two years after he lost the 2020 election decisively, saying he was the “rightful winner” and at a minimum, someone should “declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!” And just as in 2000, a radical right wing Supreme Court licks its chops for a red-meat case to be thrown their way to enable Trump to complete the job of the destruction of Democracy that was started by their comrades in judicial arms.

Far from gracious, far from unifying, far from sane, what his demonic intransigence has done is given a green light to 19 Red-controlled states to enact legislation limiting the voting rights of minorities and, increasingly the right of women–and the men who stand with them–to choose the management of their own bodies. And take heed: contraception and marriage equality are next on the chopping block. What’s more, after the last primary elections, Trump-endorsed directors of elections in key battleground states are chomping at the bit to defeat their Democratic opponents and ready the palace for Trump’s coronation in 2024. This is the American political version of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The American violent version was January 6, and the coming “riots in the streets,” as Lindsey Graham blurted on Fox “News.”

All this has woken the fighting spirit of our president Joe Biden. Without a glitch or a gaffe, he has delivered strong and clear speeches, not from a “Sleepy Joe” as Trump so derisively calls him, but from a G.I. Joe, slamming MAGA, and yes, Fascist-like, Republicans against the ropes. Thank you. Joe. I knew you had it in you.

Now it’s up to you and I to deliver the knock out punch and send the MAGA Republicans in both Houses to the back-benches where they belong and the Trump-endorsed election officials back to obscurity where they belong. That translates as a landslide Democratic victory in 2022, up and down the ballot!

If we can make that happen, we will send a message to the white supremacist/nationalists here and abroad that American democracy is fully intact and is standing by the principles for which we originally declared.

It’s looking much bigger than Watergate, bigger than McCarthyism, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen in this country. It’s a developing conspiracy that is worldwide in scope, and it involves money, sex, and political power. In fact it’s so big and may so baffle prosecutors, the perps, Donald Trump being the leader, may get away with it without even being charged. I am not an investigative reporter but have been able to see connecting threads which tie the whole diabolical embroidery together, from Trump’s initial rumblings about running for president in 1988 to his toxic connections with Jeffrey Epstein in the 90s to his questionable business dealings in the late 90s to his connections with Russia and Saudi Arabia in the early 2000s to his birtherism rantings in the slightly later 2000s to his winning the Republican nomination for his presidential run in 2015 to his stealing the election via Russian collusion in 2016 to his appointment of three radical conservatives to the Supreme Court during his first term in office with the traitorous assistance of Mitch McConnell to his Big Lies after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden to his Stop the Steal rallies to his instigation of the insurrection against the government on January 6th, 2021 to his threats to run again in ’24, Trump has woven a toxic tapestry of deception, dereliction of duty, and even sedition in his attempt to pad his pockets with unheard of amounts of money and political power that dismantles democracy, installing him and his family as a dynasty that equals or exceeds that of Kim Jong Un and Xi Xinping or his friend Vladimir Putin.

Trump has operated like a mafia boss, carefully laying the groundwork and setting the keystone to an arch that has helped him avoid prosecution, essentially setting himself up as above the law, a titular monarch in a puppet democracy, much on the model of Viktor Orban in Hungary, the difference being the United States is much more powerful than Hungary or even Russia. He has nurtured what is basically a state-controlled media in Fox “News”, has rested control of the Supreme Court which he knows will absolve him after any appeal from a conviction of a lesser court, and has carefully planned his reemergence, as Hitler did after his imprisonment, and has engineered primary challenges against candidates of his own party of questionable fealty to him to remount the throne of “his” presidency by hook or by crook in 2024.

Donald Trump is not a particularly smart hombre, but he has a finely tuned criminal mind. I’ve seen such minds when I worked as a mental health counselor in Massachusetts state prisons early in my career. Men who were prone to a life of crime were successful up to a point when a flaw in the workings of their brains finally caught up with them and they landed in prison after tripping on their own shortcomings. Surprisingly, only about 5 percent of those convicted of a crime ever wind up in prison. Most “cop a plea” and, with good lawyers, negotiate lesser charges, leading to probation or, at worst, short county jail time. O.J. Simpson is perhaps the poster boy for what a top lawyer can do for someone obviously guilty of a serious crime. For many years, Trump has employed such lawyers and accountants who have manipulated the law to keep their boss out of jail.

However, like I said, there often comes a time when crime catches up with an inveterate criminal. He begins to make mistakes and get sloppy with his cover-ups. He begins to be arrogant, making careless public statements. He begins to act with impunity, thinking he has avoided capture for so long that he is essentially above the law. It is the plight of the clinically chronic narcissist, or worse a sociopath, both of which I believe Trump to be.

He grovels in the pit of greed, hatred, and delusion–a pit filled with figurative quicksand, and you know what happens if you fall into quicksand: the more you struggle and whine, the faster you sink. He’s even got his grubby, greedy hands into the world of professional golf through his support of LIV Golf, that sportswashing league financed by the totally corrupt and murderous Saudi regime. Trump is making a mint off the Saudis while actively encouraging PGA pros to ruin their careers by defecting to this upstart tour which is handing out signing bonuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars…per player!

In return, the Saudis have financed Jared Kushner’s business to the tune of two billion dollars and are using Trump golf courses for their phony tournaments. The last one at his New Jersey club attracted a mere 3000 fans, two of whom included Margorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson! I strongly suspect that most of the pros who’ve jumped ship are avid Trump supporters, as evidenced by the extremist right wing lawyers they hire to shamelessly sue the PGA and the Golf Channel.

So these are the threads that point to a coordinated Trumpian conspiracy towards a constant flow of money from his cult members and evangelical Christians who incredibly liken this charlatan to Jesus Christ, and authoritarian, indeed fascist, power. I can only point out the threads as I see them. It will take experienced and seasoned journalists and prosecutors to further unravel his diabolical schemes and bring Donald Trump to justice.

And now, what I think may be his supreme faux pas, the misstep, that could well bring the gavel of justice down upon his head, he has taken classified and top secret documents with him to his Florida home and resort, a cardinal sin as determined by the chief archivists of the government. As historian Heather Cox Richardson writes, “You don’t want to ever mess with government archivists.” There may well be information in those documents pertaining to our nuclear weapons stockpile; and there are reports that the Russians have some of that information and are studying it. If Trump gave or sold that information to the Russians or the Saudis, he could be charged with espionage, a crime punishable by death. And the more Trump rants and raves about the investigation being “a hoax” or “a witch hunt” (the guys in prison used to shout “bum beef”, blaming any and all for the crimes they committed), the more I think this criminal has made his one fatal mistake that will lead to his downfall, simply because,”you don’t want to ever mess with government archivists.”

***
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What the white supremacist/nationalist, Trump Republican, evangelical Christian, aBannonist, fascist Fox “news” commentators would have America become is a bunch of white, “Christian”, males. What makes this country great is what we are are black, brown, yellow, red, white, Jewish, Moslem, Catholic, Christian, Buddhist, Unitarian, Atheist, Pagan, male, female, trans, bi, gay, homosexual, they, them, us, you, me, I, whatever, lesbian, queer, old, young, middle age, homeless, home owners, renters, traditional Republicans, Democrats, Independents, do-not-care-to-state folks, gun owners, non-gun owners, prisoners, parolees, ex-prisoners, cancer survivors, vaccine proponents, vaccine deniers, conspiracy theorists, anti-conspiracy theorists, anti-semites, Gaia-ists, liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists, democracy proponents, abortion rights advocates, anti-abortion people, pro assault weapons, anti-assault weapon ownership, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro Putin, anti Putin, pro Trump Supreme Court, anti-Trump Supreme Court.

The whole Kit and Kaboodle. The whole Nine Yards. A Hot Dog with the Works. The Melting Pot. Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor. A Shining City on the Hill. One Nation, with Liberty and Justice for All.

If only…if only…we could really, truly live and let live. If only…if only we could treat others as we would want to be treated. If only…if only Greed, Hatred,, and Delusion could give way to Love and Compassion.

Then this Great Experiment of Democracy could truly be an example for the rest of the world to learn from. May it eventually be so.

What puzzles me is why anyone would follow a creep like Donald Trump. What’s the attraction? We’re now seeing everything that makes and made him a creep and people–ordinary citizens and state and federal legislators–continuing to like him and give him power over the Republican Party. And there is every indication that many of his endorsed candidates will win in ’22 and that he may even regain the presidency in ’24.

Upon reflection, a few things come to mind. For one, his followers care little about the concept of democracy. It’s far from the reality of their lives which are essentially self and possibly family centered. As long as their pocketbooks are intact and in order they barely know what democracy is or how it relates to their lives. Leaders haven’t done a particularly good job in selling democracy and showing people why its maintenance is important to their lives. The crowd most representative of this are the white supremacist rioters who breached the walls of the Capitol on Jan. 6. And many of Trump’s supporters, including legislators, still consider those traitors as patriots, essentially defenders of Donald Trump’s lies and manipulations to put more money in his pocket. Simply put they are cult members who would support Trump regardless of anything he says or does. Anything.

Like Trump,they are self serving, caring little for the poor, the disabled, immigrants, the homeless, minorities, those of different religions, and those of more liberal politics. Trump plays on these differences expertly at his rallies and on his tweets and statements. He knows the pulse of his people well, tests it often, and knows how to quicken that pulse at will. He would have made a great traveling snake oil salesman in the 19th century. I could see him as a wealthy Southern plantation owner convincing poor Southern white boys to fight to the death for the slavery that kept that wealth intact. His followers, whether Proud Boys or Good Ole Boys also have something of that slaveowner in their psyche.

There is too the use of a tactic that is particularly scurrilous associated with Trump lovers: the death threat against anyone who opposes their leader in any way. In any way. Trump encouraged harm come to Mike Pence if he didn’t do as he commanded, and the Proud Boys conceded that they would have murdered Pence on Jan. 6 if they’d been able to capture him–a planned act that was inspired by Trump, according to his loyal legions. But usually Trump just needs to stay silent about death threats to condone them via omission and not commission. I’ve never heard or read him, or any of his immediate family, discouraging his followers issuing death threats against his opponents and/or their families. It’s a tactic the Mafia, the KKK, Hitler, Stalin, and Vladimir Putin have used quite effectively over the years.

Is that the kind of country we want: run by a Mafia boss like Donald Trump? Can we not stop this creep from ruining our country? I ask that question of Trump’s followers, his Republican Party allies, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. And I write this post to sound the alarm so Democrats will awaken to the continued ever-growing threat of Trump-infused influence on every aspect of our government from election officials who have the power to change the results of a democratically held election to a president who can and will inject fascism into our government previously “of the people, for the people, and by the people.”