Author: Tom H.

Satire in the Time of Trump is becoming really tricky. Just when a satirist believes that he or she has the kernel of a silly or outrageous extrapolative idea, this administration jumps in front of it and even outdoes it. From Saturday Night Live to stand-up comics to the Onion to Andy Borowitz, it’s getting more dicey by the day.

For instance, I was chuckling grimly to myself as Thanksgiving approached, creating an SNL bit in my mind where Trump overturns the pardons of last year’s turkeys by Obama. Hahaha, I thought, that would spoof Trump’s outrageous assaults on all that is decent in health care and environmental protection that Obama did via Presidential Findings.

Then Trump actually said that he tried to overturn Obama’s pardons for last year’s turkeys. Trump thought that was darn funny. My blood ran cold. This man’s sense of humor must have been surgically implanted by a really stupid robot improperly programmed in a middle school, shop class. This is a fellow who believes his wit is the height of caps when he calls a foreign head of state short and fat or yuks it up with cops about brutality.

I’m American, approximately Trump’s age and I’m a white guy so I’m feeling embarrassed and apologetic when I’m not feeling apoplectic at the snake pit into which we’ve cast ourselves.

The Deadbeat Prez! It’s so rampant the makers of Embarrassmints cannot keep them in stock.

Hurry, Mueller, please. Bring charges, snip the Putin Puppet strings, and strip this sorry excuse for a public figure of all title, wealth, power and comfort. Can you manage? Will my $5 donation help? I could do $10 if you could jam on the gas. I know my annual donations to worthy causes aren’t enough but on a percent basis I am confident they overtop Trump’s. You can have some of my zip ties; they make great handcuffs.

We’ve seen this country sink faster than a granite block in water and there is no bottom in sight. I have a friend who is one of the world’s top climate scientists and he is trying to convince us all to get busy. I have another friend— two friends actually, who are heading to prisons for nonviolent resistance to climate chaos greatly exacerbated by the astonishingly poor decisions and inept presidential orders we have seen launching off the Oval Office desk.

Trump fails to understand rudimentary science, basic morals, honesty, simple ethics, decent planning for the future of our nation, and all-around civility.

Who raised this cringe-worthy one? Does he have a daily quota of groups and individuals he intends to offend?

It’s all I want for Christmas. Make us all grateful. Bring down this failed and dangerous administration— quickly. His fingers may be tiny but they have been in all the wrong places and cannot get near the nuclear football.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is a scholar of civil resistance and PeaceVoice Director.

What does BLM stand for?

If you are involved in the land use/land ownership/treaty rights/fed v state Sagebrush Rebellion dust-ups over the years you know that it refers to the Bureau of Land Management, but we are going to leave that hornets’ nest aside for today.

If you are African American or watching the horrific shootings of unarmed black people in U.S. cities, you know that it means the Black Lives Matter movement.

If you are a police officer or otherwise deeply disturbed by the recent spate of cop killings, you argue that it is Blue Lives Matter.

The numbers are terrible. So far, in 2016, a tragic 33 police officers have been shot dead on duty. An ungodly 551 people have been shot dead by cops as of July 31, this year.

Last year, young black males were nine times more likely to be killed by police than any other sector of the U.S. population—1,134 people killed by police in 2015 and although black males between the ages of 15-34 are two percent of the U.S. population, they are 15 percent of those killed by police. While 17 percent of white victims of police killings were unarmed, the rate was 25 percent for young black males.

This is unacceptable to everyone. Dead Americans—cops or citizens—are a profound tragedy.

Most black people who shoot at cops don’t live to be tried and when they are, they are almost invariably convicted. Most cops who kill black people, armed or unarmed, have utter confidence that they will never be charged, or if they are, they will never be convicted, even when video evidence shows a crystal clear case of an officer shooting a compliant, hands-empty and raised victim or an unarmed, fleeing suspect who committed no violent crime and was no threat to anyone. This should be unacceptable to everyone.

Police boast frequently about their own bravery. Where is that vaunted courage when they witness one of their own obviously murder an unarmed civilian? We see virtually no bold selflessness in those cases. Instead, our “good” cops act more like good Germans, silent in the face of blatant lawbreaking by their brothers in blue.

It is long past time for us to fix all this. At the root are three problems. One, the idea that violence solves conflict, that we must have guns, and that the Second Amendment should continue to allow mass proliferation of these instruments of death. Two, racism. Three, the addition of the return of so many veterans of war only adds to the likelihood that both cops who are war veterans and African Americans who are war veteran— and who are angry about all the black victims of police killings— will ratchet up the violence. The intersection produces what we see.

When we authentically begin to dismantle all three of these massive problems we will see a reversal of the ghastly trends toward state violence and violent insurrection. In Wichita, both BLM movements veered away from violence and toward reconciliation, starting with a picnic. In Dallas, Black Lives Matter activists vigiled in mourning for slain police. Each of us can do our own small but important best to help with one or more of these problems and collectively, we can begin repair and healing. Our attitudes, our actions, our intelligent voting this fall, will all make a difference. Let’s fix this!

Tom H. Hastings is Founding Director of PeaceVoice.

We often hear politicians call their opponents an “interest group.” What does that mean? It can be misleading.

When the citizens of a town try to fix a bad ordinance so that their lives are safer, more productive, more prosperous and more equally just for all, should they have that right? Of course, they are acting in the public interest.

When a profit-seeking corporation tries to fix a state law so that business lowers costs at the expense of their workers, taxpayers and the healthy cleanliness of drinking water, should they have that right? Of course not, they are acting as a special interest group, that is, a narrow elite will profit and all else will pay the costs, meaning that special interest groups are usually acting against the public interest.

Of course, there are cases that are mixtures of the two and in a democracy, those deserve the most public discourse so that everyone can be heard and a wise decision can be made.

Is a group dedicated to equal justice for all a special interest group? According to a judge in Scotland Neck, North Carolina, yes. When a 61-year-old African American man, Roger Anthony, refused to stop riding his bicycle in November 2011, a 27-year-old white cop driving alongside him shot him with a taser. Anthony was knocked from his moving bike and his head received a fatal blow on the pavement.

There were no complaints of any criminal or suspicious activity by Anthony except for “Biking While Black.” This was so egregious that the District Attorney filed misdemeanor assault charges and then allowed the police officer to take advantage of a plea bargain that put him on probation. The judge agreed.

The spokesperson for the local NAACP told the media it was unjust that any man should attack another, kill him, and never serve a day in jail. The judge waved aside those comments, telling the inquiring journalist that the NAACP is a “special interest” group.

What an interesting use of that term. If people of color want equal rights, that, to a North Carolina judge, is a special interest group. Really? What’s next? Those who want clean air are part of a special interest group? The Association of Air Breathers would probably include most humans. Justice for all seems to be a fairly universal, public interest, goal.

What of the case of a corporation that services the military? Do they get to claim public interest status or are they special interest? The Pentagon burns through approximately $2 billion daily, every day, seven days a week and watching the massive bleed off to war profiteers is instructive. On June 29, 2015, it was announced by the DoD that, amongst many other contracts to many profiteers, Lockheed would get another $119 million to spruce up Balad Air Base in Iraq.

“This contract is 100-percent foreign military sales. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition,” noted the Air Force. In other words, your tax money that you worked for going to fix a base in Iraq and no bids were taken. Does this smack of a Good Old War Profiteers Club special interest grab to anyone else?

What if that $119 million were used to create jobs for every young person willing to work in our national forests, pulling out downed wood to be used for a variety of purposes? Or perhaps it could provide some educational opportunities for STEM education for our public schoolchildren. There are so many life-affirming, infrastructural, palliative projects that need funding to give all of us a better life— all in the public interest.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Founding Director of PeaceVoice