birther Archives - Stephen Altschuler

Continuing my unrequited letter writing campaign to Donald Trump (caution: my language here can get a bit coarse at times):

Hello Donald (or, if I might, in your own vein, call you Dunkin Donut Don, mocking your ample girth), I hear you’re hunkering down in the White House basement/bunker, feeling safe as a bug in a rug, comfy as a rat in a dumpster, and frisky as one of your cult members who hasn’t been laid in a month of Sundays. I know, it’s tough being el presidente’, or as your followers call you, Our Dear Leader, after your bud in North Korea. All those pesky decisions, meetings, keeping your hair in order and well-sprayed, making sure enough donuts have been ordered for the day, along with all the whoppers, Big Macs, fries, and shakes that need to be sorted and delivered…on time. I know how you’ve loved those fries ever since you were a kid, assuming you ever were a kid.

Anywhomwhatsoever, as if you didn’t have enough on your plate (no, not your actual plate, big guy), now these riots over the death of an unarmed black man—good guy, I hear—by one of your other “good people” on the other side—the cop who pinned George Floyd down with his knee until he was dead. Right. I’m thinking—I don’t have direct evidence— but I’m really pretty sure the cop was one of your white supremacist [Read more…] about Another Unrequited Letter to Donald Trump

Briefly stated, get involved. The keyword for a strong, active democracy is involvement. When the citizenry becomes lazy and complacent, when it becomes politically silent, when it takes its freedoms and liberties for granted, assuming they are written in stone, that citizenry becomes vulnerable to any strongman/autocrat who comes along spewing lies about how the democracy is working. That strongman first creates fear through false facts and fake news and then purports to fix the false facts that aren’t really facts. It was the stock and trade of snake oil salesmen who roamed the American countryside in previous centuries, bilking people of their hard earned cash while lining their own pockets with the spoils of a gullible public.

So a crucial element of involvement, is to tear open the envelope of fear and false facts, and determine, truly, which are true. This is no easy task. There are numerable purveyors of news out there, all vying for attention with sometime questionable headlines and content. There is the Internet, unfettered and unregulated, with a scant few checking on its so-called facts and assertions and accusations. It’s like entering a casino and trying to figure out which slot machine will deliver the next jackpot. The machines are often rigged to deliver an occasional winner, just to keep the player in his or her seat plugging in quarters and dollars as the casino owners sit smugly in their high lairs smiling the smiles of contented greed and satisfaction at their cleverness.

Of course slot machine analysis is a futile exercise. You will ultimately lose because only luck will determine when that next jackpot will come up. Objective research is futile. But with the lies of politicians, which are paraded unabashedly as truths, you may be able to determine which are valid and which are bloviated bull. Performing that analysis is the challenge of every [Read more…] about Saving Our Democracy