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This writer has been a student of the Holocaust since childhood, with my Poem/Plaque " Never Again"  in the Wiesenthal Holocaust museum in Los Angeles. I recently found out, through Ancestry, that I am 12.5% Jewish, but that should not matter at all. Basically, one's...

Being a conspiracy theorist, except for some of the Q-Anon sidetracking, this writer sees clearer than most. For many, the choices around events can be defined as 'Glass being half full' or 'Glass being half empty'. Perhaps the reality may be that there is NO glass...

He was pissed! Really pissed! How could that purchasing agent asshole do this!? What a way to start his week. As it was he hated Mondays, always! The new week brought the same anxieties all the time. You work on straight commission and this is the way it is. He...

He kept looking at his watch as he drove along Coney Island Ave. Why was he so anxious when he had driven this route every Saturday morning since late March? He was just taking his youngest son to the kid's Pony League baseball game, so why nervous now? He knew why,...

"Nothing ever seems to last promises made promises lost and pride is kept at any cost and flowers die and children cry and lonely people carry on." She was tired, but not too tired to go to work. Matter of fact, she was lucky to be able to have a job. So many of her...

You look at what they call  ' The Industrialized world' and you can get a feel for how they run their democracies. Canada, France, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Scotland, to name a few, all have at least FIVE  viable political parties. Germany and Italy have...

The guys and gals at work always called him ' Mr. MAGA' for several reasons. One, he always wore that red hat wherever he went. Two, he was ' In ' with Trump from 2015 when the guy first entered the presidential race. When he had a day off, or decided to take one, he...

Before I go on with my thoughts on the use of persuasion by demagogues like Donald Trump, we need to understand how powerful a system of obedience can be. There are two past studies that this writer recommends which get to the heart of the use of obedience to shape an...

Lovers of real American history should recall the words uttered by the late, great newsman and newscaster Edward R. Murrow about Senator Joe McCarthy. During the height of the political witch hunts orchestrated and influenced by the late Senator (AKA McCarthyism)...

She works hard for her money, as the song relates. She’s the cleaning lady, the one who gets on her knees and scrubs your toilet of all the things that none of us would ever wish to look at, let alone touch. She mops and dusts and vacuums your house for $60 to $90...

Two weeks before Christmas and the darn stove broke. She had the ham butt in the fridge and was really looking forward for her first big dinner in the new place. Having just, six months earlier, relocated to Florida from Flat Broke Mississippi, she wanted to at least...

Bleak was something he could easily relate to, especially now. He didn't know which bothered him more, the bitter Detroit December cold, or his jobless situation. When he was going strong, along with the economy, being a massage therapist was great. He made really...

Please remember that in 1961 when JFK took office the top bracket for federal income tax was at 90%. Now, we all should know that no one in that top bracket actually paid at 90%. That is what a slew of deductions and bright accountants were for. When Reagan took...

Ok, you all should know about blood transfusions. Watch any of the hospital shows on the boob tube and see how, in dire emergencies, they rush to do blood transfusions. Well, guess what? The depression level financial crisis for us working stiffs is here. Now, many of...

Go get Rick Perlstein's great book Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 and see how we got here from 'There', the turn to the right wing in the dawning of Reagan's presidency. Even the slogan that Trump 'borrowed' from the Reagan campaigns: "Let's Make America...

We were all taught in grade school of the story of the 'Trojan Horse'. In its war with Troy the Greeks built a gift of a giant horse. They informed the Trojans that, after 10 years of war, they had had enough. Once inside of Troy, the Greek horse, filled with armed...

The 1980 film Brubaker starring Robert Redford, based on a true story, had one scene that told it all.  Reform warden Henry Brubaker gets fired for seeking to uncover past corruption surrounding the penitentiary. As he is walking away down the hallway, his friend...

I usually agree with most of what columnist Caitlin Johnstone offers. Yet, in her latest Op Ed she says that a vote for Biden was NOT against fascism, which will continue now that he is in office. Sorry Caitlin, I agree with Prof. Cornell West on this election. We...

In Francis Ford Coppola's second Godfather film we see Michael Corleone, head of the most powerful Mafia family in the country, having a ' tete de tete' with Nevada Senator Pat Geary. The Senator, as crooked as the Corleones, is attempting to shake down Don Corleone...