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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.

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.

There is a point–my red line–where, if crossed by certain elements in this country, I plan to leave the country. I’m really in no physical or medical shape to pack up and leave, but I will not continue to live under a fascist leadership and rubber stamp government. Some of my relatives in Eastern Europe minimized what Hitler was doing in the late 30s, saying he was a flash in the pan, saying he wouldn’t amount to anything, and by the time they were proven wrong, it was too late. They were all eventually murdered by the Third Reich. Trump, his GOP enablers, his henchmen and women who issue death threats to officials who oppose Trump or even who merely vote in favor of Democratic-endorsed bills are an American version of Hitler and his toxic gang.

I have friends who believe that will never happen here, that there are enough checks and balances to prevent Trump from carrying out the dissolution of democracy and the installation of an autocracy in America. I say to them but he already was doing that when he was president, and if he had been reelected, we would now be deeply enmeshed in the quicksand of authoritarianism. Those friends couldn’t imagine that happening in this land of the free and home of the brave, just as my relatives in Eastern Europe in the late 30s couldn’t imagine a madman like Hitler entering their countries and taking away their liberties and lives.

Only a handful of Jews back then had the foresight and courage to follow through on their prognostications. They left their native lands, resettled in safer areas, continued their lives and careers and raised families for generations to come. Some six million stayed and faced the onslaught of Nazi torture and extermination.

Could that be repeated here? I don’t know, but if I examine the happenings of the last five years, I predict that yes, something along those lines could happen here. There are just too many death threats, too many extreme right wing politicians backing Trump to avoid death threats, too many white supremacists ready to take up arms as they did on 1/6, too many radical TV personalities ranting and raving against vaccines and masking guidelines, comparing Dr. Fauci to Nazi doctors of horror, cozying up to authoritarians around the world who have yanked democracy away from their countries under the guise of nationalism and migrants.

There is too much GOP-initiated voter suppression laws enacted by Red state legislatures that have acted as fascist states would act, making sure elections would go their way regardless of the actual count, and that election districts would be rigged in their favor, insuring their victories at local and national levels.

There are too many Trump appointed judges on all levels of the judiciary who think like Trump and will support his distorted agenda.

There is a strong movement toward misogyny, rescinding a woman’s right to choose how to manage her body and mind. Ending abortion rights has little to do with the rights of the fetus and much more to do with controlling women. Republicans have demonstrated time and again they care little about caring for human beings and much more with retaining personal power. Ending abortion rights is mostly red meat that will make it more likely that their base will be inspired to come out and vote for them. The one-issue hot button voter is bread and butter for the GOP.

Systemic racism is rampant in America, and has been since 1619. We’ve made some progress, but it’s been all too slow for Blacks and Native Americans and not enough. The mission statements inherent in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, first written in 1776, have yet to be fulfilled. There’s no excuse for this. It is reprehensible, unconscionable, and irresponsible. People, still living under the umbrella of those documents continue to suffer for lack of the equal protections those documents promise. If I were grading the country it would unquestionably be an F.

Continued poverty. Continued homelessness. Continued gun violence. Continued hate crimes. Continued discrimination. Continued intimidation of political opponents via death threats. Continued denial and hypocrisy. Continued corruption, deception, and outright lies to continue a cult mentality that has people donating their hard earned money to a cult leader that spouts a fascist message.

So if that cult leader is elected again in 2024 that is my red line that will prompt my leaving this country of my birth. For, as I’ve written about before, I am more a citizen of Earth than of any one country. I will fight to change the country I live in, as I have done through this blog, until that red line is crossed. I am too old and infirm to mount a soapbox and march with the masses. I’ve been there in the 60s and did my bit then. Now, it’s the pen I take up, and though my audience is minimal and mostly apathetic, I think history will absolve and thank me for railing against the likes of Donald Trump and his henchmen and women.

I will be watching the election of 2022 very closely, for that will be the harbinger of 2024. I will be watching the present Senate and see if they can find a way to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that will apply a federal remedy to the snake-bite voter suppression bills of 19 state legislatures. That will tell a great deal about the willingness of the Democrats to counter the GOP attack on our democratic government. The results of the House Commission on 1/6 and what the Merrick Garland-led DOJ does with those results will also tell me of the resolve of the government to stop Donald Trump and his cronies in their tracks.

I would prefer to stay in this country. I have family here. I have friends here. I get good health care here to keep my cancer and heart disease at bay. I like it here, especially the Pacific Northwest. But as a man of Jewish background, my DNA and cells have vivid memories of the fascist horrors inflicted on my people before and during WWII.

And, for me, as my people still say, Never Again.

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My latest venture is an imprint called Sacajawea Press, honoring the Native American woman who, with her small child strapped to her back, guided Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery through the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Northwest, where I live today. I’ve been busy during the pandemic and its lockdown, having written and published three books, via my new press, which may be of interest to you for yourself or as gifts. They are The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life; Into the Woods…and Beyond; and Golf 360: For Current Players and Those Considering the Game. Please check them out at Amazon or see reviews at my website at www.stephenaltschuler.com.

Thank you.

What would the United States look like without a democracy? We’ve heard the warnings but I haven’t yet read much of anything about the consequences of deconstructing our democracy as the Republican Party under the auspices of Donald Trump seems intent on doing. Here are my thoughts if this were to actually happen, modeled some after other countries who chose to go this route, either through the ballot box or military coup:

* Elections would be, for all intents and purposes, a sham, as they are in Russia, Cuba, and China, for example. The ruling party would always win, regardless of the vote, which would be counted by…the ruling party. The way Republicans have currently enacted new election laws in 19 states, many voters who they deem against them would essentially be excluded from voting. Results would be tabulated by Republican officials. Results could be changed according to the whims and inclinations of Republican legislatures. There would still be a bicameral Congress but it would essentially be window-dressing, rubber-stamping everything coming from the Executive Branch.
* The Executive Branch would be run by a small group of oligarchs beholden to an authoritarian leader who would arbitrarily make key decisions around domestic and foreign affairs. Legal due process would essentially be suspended, opponents, dissidents, and protesters rounded up and detained without benefit of counsel, and tried in secret courts.
* The press would be censored and controlled by the Executive Branch. Opposition press would be summarily shut down without benefit of appeal.
* Free speech, as we’ve known it, would be suspended, along with the entire Bill of Rights, under the guise of national security, a justification given for all executive orders, all of which would demand absolute fealty from the population.
* Citizens would be encouraged and rewarded for spying on other citizens, as is true in present-day China, Cuba, North Korea, and, of course, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
* The gap between the rich and the poor would widen, with the elite largely immune from income taxes, and the middle class and poor underpaid and overtaxed.
* The general health of the population would tumble, along with life expectancy, as health insurance would revert to large, profit-driven companies and hospitals providing low quality health care. There would be chronic shortages of lower paid doctors and nurses, driving them out of the profession.
* The country’s infrastructure would deteriorate fairly quickly since tax dollars would funnel to the Executive Branch, padding the pockets of the oligarchs, as is in Russia and China.
* Organized crime would proliferate, with authoritarian rule driving legitimate businesses out of business, creating a vacuum for organized crime peddling drugs, sex, and weapons on the street. The Executive Branch would conveniently order its Judicial Branch to look away and keep prosecutions to a minimum.
* And, yes, the Justice Department would now fall under the control of the Executive Branch, marching in lockstep with the leaders.
* Deregulaton would be the order of the day, with corporations permitted to conduct business as they wished. Environmental rules and restrictions would be abandoned by executive order with pollution, global warming, climate change, forest harvesting, wildlife eradication all running helter skelter. The Environmental Protection Agency would be dismantled.
* As for the Covid pandemic, count on enough misinformation to keep pandemics going indefinitely, with the authoritarian government and its cabal of cult anti-vax/anti-mask, and QAnon, followers doing little to stop them.
* The Supreme Court would be filled completely with extreme right wing conservatives, puppets of the Executive Branch. And lower courts, the same.
* Violent white supremacist groups would find renewed favor from the government, facing little control of their intimidating tactics against Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Gays, Moslems, Immigrants, etc. etc. etc.
* And finally (there’s more, but I’ll mercifully end it here), the Executive Branch will establish an Office of Truth and Information, which will funnel any and all information and determine what is true and what is fake or false. The foreign press will call it Censorship Central.

Hold On, sings Adele. We’re headed for a very rough ride unless…we, as a nation, decide to really, actually, and truly Save America.

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My two latest books are The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life with a foreword by Al Huang, author with Alan Watts of Tao: The Watercourse Way, and Into the Woods…and Beyond with a foreword by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul. You might consider these for yourself or as a gift. You can find them at Amazon in either ebook or paperback versions. Thank you.

Some thoughts about God have come to me. First, there is a God and he/she/it was here before the Universe was Big Banged into existence, probably by a basically bored God. That was done as a kind of experiment. A let’s-see-what-happens kind of thing. God, then, was not an invention of human beings. God was always here, and hence our Universe is essentially of spiritual origins and God is endemic to everything in the Universe. God is animal, vegetable, and mineral. The tiniest living virus contains the essence of God. The largest Blue Whale contains God, as do all species. Since the whole of the Universe is equal to the sum of its parts (science tells us that), and God is the Whole, then every part around us has God within it. God is life, and is beyond race, gender, religion, any dichotomy that humans have come up with to separate one person from another, leading to discrimination, segregation, categorization, and judgement of one group against another.

There is just one God, and, as I’ve said, that God was here long before we came down from trees and started walking and talking. Knowing this changes everything. God then joins us to all life around us. God is the common thread that binds us all as brothers and sisters whether heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transexual, asexual or just sexual. Whether black, white, brown, red, yellow, or albino. Whether abled, disabled, employed, unemployed, homeless, having a home. Whether law abiding, criminal, convict, or free. Whether healthy, sick, mentally ill, or sane. Whether kind, evil, sensitive, abrasive, cruel, loving. God is a part of us all.

Jesus was not God. Nor was Moses. Nor was Mohammed. Nor was Buddha. Nor was any king or queen. Nor was ANY human being. God was and is Father and Mother to all of us. I don’t think God anticipated human beings, but when the dinosaurs went extinct God must have known that mammals would evolve…to what? God probably didn’t figure on our troublesome species.

Has God ever talked to us? Given us instructions how to treat one another? Shown any willingness to help us live in peace and harmony with each other and with the Earth upon which we live? Yes, of course. There were and is the Ten Commandments. There was and is the Golden Rule. There was wonderful poetry and song that came from minds of people who took no credit for the words that appeared. They were possessed of the spirit of God. And thank God many of those words and instructions and ideas are still available, in books and the good parts of the internet.

If we humans take inventory of how we’ve done since our species started, and God were listening to our accomplishments, God might say, accomplishments, sure, but you could’ve done better, don’t you think. You war too much. You argue too much. You lie too much. You deceive too much. You pollute too much. You abuse too much. You steal too much. You denigrate too much. You kill too much. You segregate too much. You are choking yourselves and all living species on this planet too much. You talk too much. You waste too much time. You belittle too much. You do too many things too much. You hate too much. You don’t love enough.

Anyway, that’s enough to chew on for now. Have a lovely, thoughtful, and very thankful Thanksgiving.

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My recent book, The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life, it’s a quiet book, written with love, and has some good ideas on healing oneself and the planet. Good reading for the approaching Holidays. You can read reviews of the book by Midwest Review of Books and Reader’s Favorites at my website at stephenaltschuler.com, and you can purchase it at Amazon, along with other books of mine.