Gaza and the Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on October 13, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 13, 2025

Some people accuse me of despising Donald Trump so much that I can’t even see when he’s accomplished something positive. While there’s probably some truth in that statement, you won’t find it in anything related to the Gaza hostage/prisoner exchange. I watched our pompous President address the Israeli Knesset this morning, at least as long as I could stomach it. How nauseating! How inappropriate! How embarrassing to be an American and know most of the world is laughing at us, any respect they might had for the United States long used up by Donald the Clown.

Someone asked me how I felt about Trump’s expectation of the Nobel Peace Prize, this morning. My answer is the latest cartoon by the political satirist, Danziger:

 

Don’t be fooled by the raucous cheers of those Knesset members who attended. Israel’s legislative body is politically dominated by a right-wing coalition that hates all Arabs and would have been happy to see every last Palestinian driven into the Mediterranean Sea. Listening to them cheer for Trump was no different from MAGA echoing Trump cheering for Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s outrageous demands over the last few months that he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize tell us all we need to know. Does anyone believe that saving lives, especially of Palestinian civilians, was uppermost in the mind of the ultimate narcissist? Does it matter that this cease fire agreement could have been achieved a year ago if Trump hadn’t pandered to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s need to destroy Gaza?

When the prize was finally awarded to Maria Corina Machado, who has worked for years to restore democracy to Venezuela, Trump erupted. Do you think he would have been as offended if Ms Machado had been a man, or white? What else would you expect from a man who has spent his administration attacking and firing every high-ranking nonwhite official he could, especially black women.

No one can dispute that Hamas’s attack on unarmed Israelis and visiting foreigners, including many Americans, two years ago, was a despicable act of barbarism. I have no sympathy for Hamas, whose leaders use their civilian population as human shields, and who would have stopped at nothing to remain in power. Similarly for the Iranian regime that continually funded and encouraged Hamas. Hamas needed to be destroyed or at least defanged, and most Middle-East nations will be only too happy to see them gone. But does that justify a death sentence on every Palestinian living in Gaza, even if they initially supported Hamas’s rise to power?

That would be like saying it’s okay for every blue/red state resident to hate every red/blue state resident, except that this isn’t just about hate or disaffection, it’s about genocidal disregard for more than two million people, most of whom are innocent. The Allies didn’t execute every German who supported the Nazi holocaust and no one tried to enslave the southern slave owners in retaliation for destroying millions of black lives and families after the Civil War. Far from deserving the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump is as guilty as Netanyahu of attempted genocide.

As Trump was explaining to Israel and the world that he is the greatest deal maker of all time, some of us were shaking our heads. Does anyone believe Trump had anything to do with the Cease Fire plan that was signed last week? Is it more likely that our more rational middle eastern allies like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE along with the European Union were the driving forces behind an agreement that could only have been written with one goal: to remove Hamas as a formidable presence in the region? They were already in their death throes, politically, as Iran stopped funding them and re-supplying them with weapons months ago.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but my sense is that most American Jews are disgusted by Netanyahu’s policies, as are a majority of Israelis. It’s worth noting that a year ago, both Trump and Netanyahu were desperate to remain in or return to power to avoid being sentenced to prison for multiple felony convictions. Isn’t it time we stopped being blinded by all the MAGA lies and bullshit? We all, whether we like some of his policies or not, know exactly what Donald Trump is.

The agreement in Gaza was signed, now, because the war simply couldn’t go on any longer. It was killing hundreds every day and consuming scarce resources while accomplishing nothing but creating discord among other interested nations. Our closest allies sent a message to Trump when they recognized a Palestinian state, a mostly symbolic gesture, but one that was a slap in the face to Netanyahu and indirectly, Trump.

There was also a surreal echo to Trump’s outrageous address to the Knesset of George W Bush declaring a premature victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier in 2003. As any historian or political scientist will tell you, destroying something is the easy part. The hard stuff is rebuilding something better than what it replaced, and there’s not even an inkling of what the future of Gaza will look like, except for Trump’s fantasy of eighty miles of waterfront hotels and golf courses, but isn’t that exactly what you’d expect from him?

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An American Gestapo

Posted on October 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 3, 2025

In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo, (the State Secret Police,) was a force that varied in size over time, but averaged about 16,000 officers to police a population of roughly 66 million people. But it relied heavily on a system of snitches. Private citizens were encouraged, rewarded, and often coerced into spying and reporting on their neighbors and co-workers.

The Malicious Practices Act of 1933 made it illegal to criticize either the German government or any of its leaders, Adolf Hitler in particular. The law effectively made opposition political parties illegal and by 1934 both opposition parties and the free press no longer existed. After the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, burned to the ground, the Reichstag Fire Decree authorized the arrest and detention of all political opponents without specifying charges and with no guarantee of due process. The decree silenced all public opposition to Hitler and the Nazis.

I am amazed, daily, that the vast majority of Americans cannot see that the Trump administration is grooming ICE, the Government’s Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement agency, to evolve into a Gestapo-like secret police force that serves at the beck and call of Donald Trump. If this were Germany in 1934 I would likely be arrested and spend the rest of my life in a concentration camp just for writing this.

In 2025 America I would likely lose my livelihood and my ability to support my family. If I happened to look Hispanic, under recent guidance from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there’s a fair possibility that I could be swept up in an ICE raid, regardless of having been an American citizen all my life. As we have all witnessed since Trump’s inauguration, they could label me a drug dealer, a sex trafficker, or a cartel murderer and ship me off to El Salvador, and unless I had a powerful legal network and skilled media influencers behind me, my family might never see me again.

To be honest, if I were still employed by the government or any contracting entity dependent on government funding, and I was still raising children, I might be one of those who caved and stopped writing. Would you? But at my age, the only one I’m placing at risk is myself, and indirectly, my wife. In other words, I would have no excuse besides laziness and cowardice if I quit calling attention to and fighting against the loss of our republic to autocracy. As Trump’s crimes against our republic grow in number and seriousness with no organized, effective opposition and a Supreme Court that as yet has shown no inclination to rein him in, where would we be if everyone like me simply gave up?

There are dozens of examples of how Russell Vought and Project 2025 are pulling out all the stops in Vought’s admitted intention to destroy our federal  government, but let’s get back to ICE. There are currently about 20,000 ICE officers on the job, but with Trump’s Big Ugly Bill authorizing $10 billion to hire and train more agents, that number could approach 100,000 without serious opposition. 16,000 Gestapo officers terrorized and controlled a population of 66 million in Germany. Nearly 100,000 ICE officers to police 350 million American just happens to be about the same ratio of secret police goons to population that controlled Germany until 1945.

But the Gestapo had help from all those snitches, from people who genuinely believed they were reporting national security threats, to those who simply wanted to screw someone they wanted to hurt, like a violent spouse or an employer they disliked. As Sinclair Lewis reminded us in 1935, if you think that can’t happen here, you’d better wake up and smell the roses, that is, unless Trump declares roses verboten.

As part of Trump’s extortion plots against American universities, the coerced agreements encourage exactly the same kind of snitching the Gestapo used. Similarly, whistleblowers who report that their employers or co-workers are insufficiently loyal to King Donald. If you were a military officer who was uncomfortable with Trump’s disregard of laws that lay out how our military can be used, would you have the courage to speak out, today?

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth harangued our senior military officers in Quantico this week, saying clearly, if you can’t support the president’s agenda you should do the honorable thing and resign. Former Defense Secretary William Cohen actually supported that notion, but he was wrong. If you’re a four-star general, you have an equal responsibility to refuse illegal orders. If you spent your entire career defending America and leading thousands of others who put their lives on the line to defend it, isn’t your primary responsibility to the Constitution and our Republic?

In the Spring it was university presidents and law firms. In the Summer it was our free press and media being threatened, and now, it’s our military leaders. Why can Americans not see clearly where this is headed? This is how great nations fail – through indolence, cowardice, and indifference.

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A Letter to Columbia University

Posted on September 25, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 25, 2025

I am a graduate of Columbia College, Class of 1964. We were always an extremely activist class, and at an average age of 82, this elite group of alumni still is. Fifty-six of us recently sent the following letter to the Columbia Board, urging them to declare the coerced agreement with the Trump administration void. The agreement is nothing more than a Mafia-style protection racket using a false pretext based on a bizarre definition of anti-Semitism that declares any University that permits criticism of the Israeli govenment to be anti-Semitic. It also requires Columbia to make an extortion payment of $221 Million.

While most of America wrings their hands in despair, some of us are taking positive action to fight back against Donald Trump’s quest for autocracy.

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Sept. 22, 2025

Dear Members of the Columbia University Board of Trustees, Acting President Shipman and Dean Sorett,  

Following up on our Class of 1964 alumni letter of last June to the University and College, published in the Columbia Spectator, we are  fully aware and sympathetic to the unprecedented and lawless pressures imposed upon the University by the Trump administration.  Yet we must express our concern that Columbia’s capitulation to tyranny has done grave damage to the University’s reputation, to academic freedom, to the cause of human rights, and to democracy in America.  We propose actions to undo as much of the damage as is still possible:  

  1. Disavow the coerced agreement with the Trump administration.  
  2. Sue in federal court to rescind all agreements made with the Trump administration and rescind the coerced payments.  
  3. Adopt an anti-Semitism definition that makes it clear that criticizing Israel for its policies or for committing war crimes is not prejudice against the Jewish people.  

Time is supposed to heal, but in the time that has elapsed since Columbia chose to bend the knee to a dangerous demagogue, the reverse has happened. Now that we have all read the agreement, and we’ve seen how another great university, Harvard, handled the same challenge Columbia faced, many alumni in the Class of 1964 are even more disappointed by the way the University was blackmailed.  

Unlike Harvard’s courageous decision to fight back, Columbia eschewed Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny first principle of opposition: “Do not obey in advance—most of the power of authoritarians is freely given.”  In a United States district court decision finding that Trump’s authoritarian assault aimed at Harvard, as well as Columbia and other universities, violated the First Amendment, amounted to unconstitutional coercion and retaliation, and violated  Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the court found that the Trump administration “used [anti-Semitism] as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities… jeopardize[ing] decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes.” Subsequent reports state that withheld research monies will soon begin to flow to Harvard.,  

The agreement between Columbia and the Government begins with the disclaimer that it implies no guilt on the part of the University, yet it is very clear that Columbia was forced to acquiesce to the “smokescreen” charge of anti-Semitism to retain its medical research funding.     

 Without consulting either its own  faculty specialists, and contrary to the University’s own Task Force on Anti-Semitism,  Columbia adopted a controversial and politicized definition of anti-semitism that  would deem as anti-semitic faculty or student criticism of the policies of the state of Israel. See NPR’s report on its impacts on academic freedom at Columbia.  

The University coughed up extortion payments in the amount of $221,000,000. Having failed to enlist support and form alliances with other elite universities— which we urged in our June letter to you—the University was forced to capitulate with barely a whimper. The $221,000,000 “fine” was clearly agreed to under duress, and we urge the University to challenge that extortion in court. Don’t expect alumni to replace those funds – demand that the unwarranted fine be rescinded.  

We understand the pressure President Shipman faced, and we fully recognize that Trump’s extortionate actions jeopardized critical ongoing medical research. As former provost Jonathan Cole  concluded in his Times op–ed of last spring:   

“We are in a fight for survival, and appeasement never works. Despite platitudes to the contrary, Columbia’s leaders have weakened our community and our leadership among the greatest educational institutions in the world. This is not the way to fight Mr. Trump’s efforts at silencing our great American universities. If we don’t resist collectively by all legal means and by social influence and legislative pressure, we are apt to see the destruction of our most revered institutions and the enormous benefits they accrue to America.”  

An open admission that the University was forced to commit a grievous error is the only way it can move forward from here. Declare, especially in light of the Harvard court decision, that your coerced agreement with the Government is void, sue to rescind and recover any extortion payments, and ally ourselves with Harvard and any other schools that chose to fight. Adopt a depoliticized definition of anti-Semitism such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. 

Do so publicly and with contrition, and you will not only win back the support of your alumni, but should your court actions succeed, your victory could be the fulcrum that begins the process of overturning Trump’s attempt to dictate what educators, attorneys, in fact, every American may teach or say.

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Two Wars and a Cult of Personality

Posted on September 24, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 23, 2025

As Jews begin the ten holiest days of the calendar, we tend to be introspective. It’s more than tradition – it’s what Judaism requires of its followers. Nine days from now is Judaism’s Day of Atonement, a time when most of us, whether we generally observe the rules of our religion or merely subscribe to its humanistic values, honestly look within ourselves. We don’t need a priest to hear our confessions – we’re expected to assess ourselves honestly, learn from what we did wrong in the past year, and do better next year. If only our leaders, especially those who, despite being greedy, corrupt, and otherwise morally bankrupt, claim to be Christians, could be trusted to display such humility.

Nowhere is the lack of such moral clarity more visible than in the two wars raging in Europe and the Middle East. Instead of humility, what the leaders of the countries who are prosecuting these wars display is immense egos and lust for power. Central to both, of course, is Donald Trump, for whom every action is determined by his crippling narcissism. Trump’s desperate need for adulation and respect from people he perceives as genuine strong men – that’s neither chauvinism nor misogyny, it’s simply a reality that the most dangerous people in the world all presently are male – has contributed greatly to drawing both wars out indefinitely.

Trump asserts that his only concern is all the lives being lost, words for which he believes he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, it’s clear that lives of Gazan and Ukrainian civilians, ill-trained Russian troops and their North Korean mercenaries, and Israeli civilians who have lived under constant bombardment and threats for as long as Israel has been an independent nation don’t matter to Trump at all. It’s equally clear that every action he’s taken with respect to these two horrific wars has been driven solely by his need to maintain his own cult of personality.

In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has found a kindred spirit of sorts. They are very different people, but what they have in common is a willingness to put their own self-interest ahead of everything else. I don’t doubt that Netanyahu cares very deeply about Israel, but he cares more about staying in power, which is probably the only thing keeping him out of prison. He also believes that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis justifies anything he wants to do, including genocide, to protect Israel. He’s smarter and far more complex than Trump, but their mutual need to support each other has dominated Trump’s bizarre attitude toward the war.

Gaza is no longer about hostages or the brutal, savage attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas. As much as anything else, it’s about an American President who sees political advantage in allowing Netanyahu to do whatever he wants, when it’s obvious that he is the only person with the power to rein him in. In today’s New York Times, former Israeli Defense Minister and member of Netanyahu’s War Cabinet, Benny Gantz addressed this conundrum. While he opposes many of Netanyahu’s policies, as do a majority of Israelis, Gantz points out that Israeli citizens are united in their distrust of Hamas and Iran and their rejection of a two-state solution. Of course, Trump sides with Netanyahu, while most of our major allies have chosen to recognize a Palestinian state. Do they know something we don’t or is this just an extension of Trump’s personality war, needing to dominate the leaders of our traditional allies?

It’s been eight months since Trump’s self-imposed deadline on ending Russia’s war in Ukkraine expired.  In reality, they have been eight months in which Trump has bent the knee to Vladimir Putin in every possible way to gain his love and admiration. That was never going to happen, although Trump seems to be the only world leader who didn’t recognize that. After being humiliated and severely embarrassed by Putin, Trump did what he always does.

Now that it’s clear even to Trump that Putin has no respect for him, he’s reacting in the only way he knows – by insulting and attacking Putin publicly, appearing to embrace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and claiming Ukraine can defeat Russia with NATO’s support. Even in flipping overnight, however, Trump was still playing power games with our allies, suggesting that when it comes to standing up to Russia, NATO really means Europe. Need I say that we can’t trust Trump’s apparent support for Zelensky? It’s only his feeble attempt at annoying Putin.

If Trump had any sense of humanity or morality, he would use his unique status as President of the strongest country in the world to pressure all sides to end the fighting in Europe and the Middle East. Instead, he continues his failed ego-driven version of diplomacy. In the end, all that matters to Donald Trump is the size of the crowds that worship him.

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A Frightening Dystopian Idea

Posted on September 18, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 18, 2025

For the majority of Americans, and arguably, for most of the world, the history of Doanld Trump’s political career has been characterized by the old cliché, “Just when we thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse…” As I look back on ten years of Trump sucking all the air out of every media event, of his lies and outright distortions, and his shocklingly successful attempts to intimidate his enemies, one thing has become clear. Trump and his supporters have no filters. Any previous notions of basic decency, of the rights and wrongs of conducting political campaigns no longer exist.

We live in a era in which truth can be impossible to discern, and polarization is so severe, well-meaning people on both sides are unable to distinguish facts from political spin and influencing. In that environment, all motives are suspect. The circle of people we trust narrows until we descend into tribalism. If we don’t think the same way, pray the same way, or look the same, we’re defined as enemies.

But you already know all that. What’s worse is that our government of ideologues and MAGA loyalists is also largely incompetent. Diplomacy is a lost art, because, despite his abject diplomatic failures, Trump believes he is the ultimate diplomat who can achieve things the professionals, who actually know what they’re doing, can’t. Military strategizing and preparedness may be going in the same direction, as our Defense (aka War) Department is being led by someone who is more interested in removing anyone who is not a white male loyalist from key positions than understanding the first thing about our military.

What may turn out to be most damaging is the disregard for science and research, most obviously highlighted by RFK, Jr, who is leaving a permanent stain on the already fragile Kennedy legacy. Of all the unforced errors the Trump Administration has made, this is the one that most perplexes people. How, they ask, can Trump possibly benefit by destroying America’s faith in vaccines and medical research, and by canceling America’s war on cancer, simply because it was a Biden initiative? I’ve always responded by saying that although Trump understands the risks, cognitively, his psychotic narcissistic personality disorder blinds him to long-term consequences of his short-term power grabs and wealth acquisitions.

But yesterday, someone very close to me came up with a incredible insight. It was not only brilliant, but it represents the kind of thinking we all need to start engaging in if we are to survive Trump’s onslaught against America. We were talking about all the recent things HHS Secretary Kennedy has done, that are terrifying the medical establishment in our country: destroying our confidence in the CDC, replacing vaccine advisory committees with loyalist hacks, encouraging states like Florida to end requirements for vaccinating children against things like polio, measles, even small pox, not to mention childhood diseases we haven’t thought about in decades. When our conversation veered into my recent post about Margaret Atwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale, she said, “I just realized what they’re trying to do.”

What she said makes far too much sense to disregard no matter how much we might want to. Her epiphany was that Trump’s long-term strategy to replace our democracy with his own version of a fascist oligarchy is to create another deadly pandemic. It really is brilliant.

Atwood’s novel started from the premise that an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases combined with ever-worsening pollution resulted in the loss of fertility for all but a tiny fraction of women, which resulted in a religious-based civil war that destroyed most of America and turned the rest into a twisted Christian dictatorship in which the remaining fertile women became the property of the ruling class of white men.

We already have the makings for an equally dystopian outcome in place. Trump and his MAGA people, especially those like the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, have been spreading the idea that the left is out to destroy everything hard-working Americans have built. They blame every failure, whether real or fantasy on some monolithic, evil Left, and a frighteningly large minority of Americans believe them.

Here’s the scenario. First they destroy Americans’ confidence in all the things that might protect them  from a medical emergency. Then, they make their own fantasy of how COVID started a reality. Whether or not COVID really came from a release of the deadly virus by a Chinese laboratory, such a thing is clearly possible, even likely if unscrupulous people intent on undermining our Constitution prevail.

The rest is so simple it’s almost obvious. This time, there’s no vaccine, because the government doesn’t want a cure. This time, they let the economy crash and burn, because there’s no better pretext for martial law and declaring a national emergency, than blaming the radial Left for the pandemic. And what might have erupted into a real civil war, looks more like a coup. No more elections, no more representative government, no more rights, unless you’re a white, Christian male. And no more wealth or power unless you’re a member of the loyal, ruling elite.

What truly frightens me is that this wild idea is absolutely credible, and it conforms perfectly with everything Trump is doing.

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The Aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s Murder

Posted on September 14, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 13, 2025

I wish I could speak to Matt Robinson, the father of the alleged assassin who killed Charlie Kirk. I suggested to a friend, yesterday, that having to turn his son in to law enforcement must have been a hellish decision. My friend responded that not turning him in would be immoral and un-American. I imagine that Matt Robinson was desperately trying to save his son’s life, knowing that if Tyler Robinson didn’t turn himself in, he would almost certainly be killed by law enforcement, or worse, by some revenge-seeking vigilante.

Statements from the accused assassin suggest that he designed and customized his own sniper weapon. By all accounts, Matt Robinson created a family culture that celebrated gun ownership. I wonder if dad knew what his son was doing. Given his son’s proclivity for political rhetoric on social media, how could he not have known his son had gone off the rails? I’m sure that’s what his lawyer will claim. Only a seriously disturbed individual would go to all the trouble Tyler Robinson is alleged to have done to kill Kirk.

If the public and the media allow this event to go down the way President Trump and his hate-mongering Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller are spinning it, we might as well throw in the towel if we care about the future of the United States. Someone has to draw a line  in sand about the lies and the Fascist narrative they’re putting out, daily. Before anyone had any idea who the shooter was, both Trump and Miller were posting on social media that the radical left was responsible, and Elon Musk tweeted on X that the left supports murder.

The truth, we now know, is that Tyler Robinson was even more right-wing and White Supremacist than Charlie Kirk. Robinson had written that Kirk’s platform was not “pro-White enough.” But that didn’t stop Miller from posting a new diatribe claiming that the left, whoever they are, despised everything good, beautiful and righteous, including everyone of faith. Historian Heather Richardson correctly identified Miller’s hate-filled rants as pure totalitarian tactics that right-wing extremists have been using since the days of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his chief strategist and consigliere, Roy Cohn, who taught Trump everything he knows about skirting the law and the Constitution.

It’s what authoritarian leaders do when they want to overthrow the established order. They lie and distort, hitting us with so many false narratives on every front, they hope the public will either buy into their spin or simply burn out and bury their heads in the sand. Americans have been sitting idly for nearly eight months, as Trump and his lackeys have routinely and consistently violated the rights of Americans, mistreated immigrants and refugees seeking asylum, and fired political rivals from key government positions.

We’ve watched as Trump daily acted to usurp power from Congress and so badly managed the two wars he pledged to end on Day One of his presidency, that Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions have left it without allies, other than the United States, and Trump’s constantly being outplayed by Vladimir Putin has severely weakened NATO. Trump’s latest post on his own social media platform declared that he would only place harsh sanctions on Russia after every other NATO nation took the same action. But there was nothing reasonable in that post. Trump understands perfectly well, that two of his heroes, Hungarian President Viktor Orban and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, both NATO members, will never take such an adversarial position against Russia. The only thing Trump intends to accomplish is splitting NATO and challenging the mutual defense clause in Article 5 of its charter.

The one place we can all make a stand is here at home. Trump will attempt to make Charlie Kirk a martyr in his quest to turn America into a Christian, white male-dominated nation in which women and nonwhites have no rights, in other words, dragging America back to the eighteenth century. The idea that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a tool of the Radical Left is thoroughly debunked by the accused’s own writings, but the extremists driving Trump would rather focus on the fact that Tyler Robinson lived with a trans-gender individual, as if that were proof of the Left’s complicity in destroying America.

What may be worse is the response of huge entities like the National Football League and the New York Yankees, who have decided to hold moments of silence in honor of Kirk’s memory. Did any of them feel it necessary to declare silence to honor the school children who were also shot on the day Kirk was, or to honor the victims of the Minnesota legislative murders? Or when Congresswoman Gabi Giffords took a bullet in the head addressing a crowd in Tucson?

Charlie Kirk has been elevated in death to a position he doesn’t deserve. It’s a travesty of justice and common sense, and it’s extremely dangerous to our national identity.

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Two High School Kids and a Right-Wing Extremist

Posted on September 12, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 11, 2025

What do two high school students in Evergreen Colorado and right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk have in common? They were all shot on Wednesday, September 9, 2025. Kirk was killed, one of the students is still on the critical list, and the other is recovering. The first thing that struck me about these incidents was the level of attention they received – from every source.

Kirk’s assassination has knocked Gaza, Ukraine, Russia’s incursions into Poland’s airspace, and Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein out of out the public’s eye for three days. The attempted murder of two innocent high school kids was barely mentioned. Our divisive President, who thrives on chaos and discord declared Kirk’s murder to be an act of war, unsubtly encouraging his own supporters to fight back, as he is always prone to doing. Of the two kids lying in hospitals in Colorado, Trump said not a word.

I cannot and will not approach this with politically correct euphemisms and pep talks about American values. Governor Spencer Cox of Utah, where Kirk was assassinated, gave one of those beautifully uplifting speeches politicians always resort to when they have nothing constructive to say. But words like love and unity, in that context, are utterly meaningless.

We’re not supposed to say things like this in the face of insane gun violence, but Charlie Kirk did not stand for love, unity, or inclusion. He was dedicated to the hateful, divisive, exclusionary, rhetoric of Project 2025, which Donald Trump is allowing to drive his presidency. Kirk, who advised his cult-like followers to accept gun violence in schools as a necessary consquence of our “God-given Second Amendment,” succumbed to his own false logic.

Kirk blamed the America’s problem with race relations on Martin Luther King. He decried the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as destructive to our White Christian nation, worried, publicly about flying on airplanes with black pilots, and referred to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an incompetent affirmative action hire. He advocated public execution for transgender Americans. His views on anti-Semitism were simply weird. While on one hand, he believed there was a cabal of Jews engaged in a conspiracy to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants, he was an Islamophobe who praised Israel’s genocidal treatment of Gaza.

I would put a question to everyone who reads this. Who would you rather stand in support of, an extremist with the same despicable views as Stephen Miller whose entire career has been about espousing views that two-thirds of America disavowed or two kids whose only crimes were showing up for school on Wednesday? Would you prefer Charlie Kirk’s view that the best form of gun control is to arm every American, or the view that sensible gun control laws are essential to our survival?

As much as I despise everything Charlie Kirk stood for, and I believe the cult-like Turning Point he founded is toxic for our national discourse, I despise wanton gun violence more. And if it’s not yet clear, I despise all the attention Kirk’s assassination continues to receive, while no one is lowering their flags to honor the children who were shot.

Let us not get caught up in typical MAGA nonsense over this. I’m guessing that the suspect in custody in Utah, who King Donald has already pronounced guilty of Kirk’s murder, will turn out to be a nut case, like the mentally challenged individual who took a shot at Trump last year. I find it fascinating that when some lunatic shoots up a school, every MAGA politician is quick to blame mental illness – after all, guns aren’t inherently evil, the problem is all the crazy people who own them. But when equally crazy people shoot at Trump and Kirk, they represent sinister forces of the radical left and the deep state.

Like everything else about the MAGA movement, the issues of guns and political violence have been distorted beyond recognition to suit the ideologues who are only in it for the power and wealth it brings them. I support the Second Amendment and its original purpose: to be able to raise a popular militia for defense and to enable individuals to defend their families against tyranny. Is it beyond ironic, that the very president who craves autocratic power and those who support him unconditionally also agree with Charlie Kirk that every American should be armed, when both the assassination attempt on Trump and the successful murder of Kirk could only have been accomplished with high end sniper rifles?

I will mourn and sympathize with the families of every child who has been shot in school and all those lost in mass shootings like the one that took nearly sixty lives in Las Vegas, but I refuse to mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk and the hateful things he preached.

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A New World Order?

Posted on August 31, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 31, 2025

Recent polls show that a vast majority of Americans, much larger than the landslide victory Trump claims to have won, do not like the way the second Trump administration is attempting to remake America. The level of fear and uncertainty he has created now exceeds the angst we felt over Vietnam and Watergate. It is as high today as it was on December 7, 1941, when our Pacific fleet lay in ruins in Honolulu. At the time, the most beloved, trusted president we’ve ever had, Franklin Roosevelt, assured us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

It was a great pep talk, but it was wrong, and it’s even more wrong, today. What we have to fear from Trump is the loss of everything our country has stood for, and everything that implies. Serious economists, both in America and other countries, deplore the idea of a world economy driven by tariffs. The only people who like them are the billionaires and corporate CEO’s who profit from them. The people driving this, notably Trump’s EOMB Director, Russell Vought, a primary architect of Project 2025, care only about their own wealth and power.

While Trump continued to lie and spin, taking advantage of the reality that it would take months for the real negative impact of his tariff war to be obvious, things got worse every day. Anyone who wasn’t a rabid MAGA follower knew from the start that prices would skyrocket, and everyone except the billionaires who were enriched by tariffs would be footing the bill. That’s already showing up on our grocery shelves and our Amazon accounts, and it terrifies Trump so much, he fired the person in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics that is charged with monitoring and measuring inflation.

It’s a typical authoritarian tactic. If the facts contradict the lies of the administration, change the facts. If you don’t like the result of a highly sophisticated statistical analysis, rig the numbers to conform to your lies. It’s one of the principle ways dictators stay in power.

Regardless of the constant lies streaming from the White House, anyone with eyes and ears understands what’s happening. The power grabs, the attacks on science, on medical research, on public health policy, and our most prominent universities. The dismantling of public broadcasting, the disdain for attempts to protect our planet, the willingness to invade any state or city that voted against Trump and control it with active duty military, and yesterday, killing the development of wind farms that would have provided stable, non-polluting energy for two New England states that had the temerity to vote for Trump’s opponent.

We could talk about Trump’s obvious desire for Russia to destroy and occupy all of Ukraine. We could mention his willingness to destroy Gaza instead of supporting a sustainable solution that would not be condemned by our allies and adversaries alike. We could point to the continual breakdown and weakening of our alliances, but you’ve heard that for months, and most of us continue to cower in the shadows hoping all this will go away.

If all of the above hasn’t moved Democrats, Independents, and what remains of principled Republicans to united opposition, or to inspire someone other than Gavin Newsom to grab the reins of leadership, today’s horrific events might. Open any news website today, and you’ll see a perfect example of how a leader who bases decisions on strength rather than the weakness of an insecure narcissist behaves.

Trump’s imitation of a world-dominating strong man looks pathetic compared to the way Chinese President Xi Jinping seized the moment. Rather than be intimidated by Trump’s threats, Xi simply ignored him and played for time as he laid plans for his own version of a new world order run by real strong men who care more about strengthening their countries than gratifying their egos. Xi is hosting a summit in Tianjin, China whose intent is to nullify Trump and create a mutually beneficial economic bloc that excludes and greatly weakens the United States.

The summit is Xi and Vladimir Putin’s push to enlist like-minded autocrats throughout Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East to unite in opposition against Trump, and by implication, us. Look at who will be there: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, and Slovakia’s Robert Fico. The biggest prize is Indian Prime Minister Modi, who has been courted by every administration since George W. Bush’s, and whom Trump hurt with a punishing tariff that appears to be the result of Trump’s chaos.

Why would he signal to the world that he supports Putin’s war against Ukraine, and then alienate the world’s largest democracy by punishing them for buying Russian oil? Add to the mix Iran, Pakistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and what could emerge this week is a formidable anti-American bloc of nations united against us.

Since Trump has also gone out of his way to alienate Europe, Canada, and Mexico, where does that leave America’s role in international trade? Look at how much of what you purchase every day comes from a country that Trump has alienated and what those things will cost a year from now.

If that’s not horrifying enough, don’t forget that Trump publicly and transparently made it clear that he intends to rig the 2026 midterm elections, and if he can’t assure a MAGA victory, he’ll find a pretext to cancel them. The Supreme Court has shown no inclination to stop him.

If not now, America, when? It may already be too late, but every day without serious, organized, opposition leadership  pushes us closer to the tipping point.

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The Right and Responsibility to Vote

Posted on August 28, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 28, 2025

Every American has known for weeks (and many of us for much longer) that Donald Trump is openly attempting to rig the 2026 mid-term elections by demanding that red states engage in the most extreme gerrymandering. Even more disturbing, however, is the revelation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose only qualification for the job is being an extremist right-wing sycophant, is now the point man on attempting to reverse the Nineteenth Amendment – the one that guaranteed women the right to vote.

When Trump told evangelists in 2024 that he would “fix things so good” they wouldn’t ever have to vote again, it was his typical incoherent wording designed to be taken as either a threat, a reassurance, or just rambling nonsense. But it would be dangerously naïve after what we’ve seen in Trump 2.0 to believe anything other than that it implied the coup-like power grab, as described in Project 2025 which is driving this administration. What Trump, and the Heritage Society that drafted the Plan meant, was that we should return to the eighteenth century in which only white males who owned land could be trusted to vote.

Wake up, America. That is the reality we face. Trump and his fascist extremist followers are attempting to undermine the basic principles on which our country was founded. Nothing is more fundamental to the survival and health of a democratic nation than the right to vote. If we, the citizens of the United States, no matter our gender, our age, or our social values allow MAGA extremists to rig elections and the Supreme Court doesn’t stop them, we’re done as the nation we thought we were. You think that’s not possible? That’s what the leaders of the Soviet Union thought right up until the day it ceased to exist.

If you’re as old as I am, there’s a great temptation to say, the hell with it. It’s our children’s problem now. My father’s generation fought World War 2; my generation fought in and against the Vietnam war, and my kids’ generation allowed itself to be misled into devastating wars in the Middle East, both of which diminished our country. We spent a decade in Vietnam and two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, thirty years of humiliation and defeat because of misguided leadership. If we cede responsibility for our future to our children and grandchildren, we must do it in the context of a cautionary tale.

For me, that caution is really a conflict between what I absolutely believe and a growing realization that I might be wrong. I absolutely believe that every American citizen older then eighteen has the right and expectation that their vote be counted with the same weight as everyone else’s.  If you don’t agree with that basic principle, you ought to be the ones ICE is deporting. I would never make such a radical statement if I didn’t believe it, but I also recognize that it’s overly simplistic.

For decades, we’ve debated voting rights, swinging in every possible direction. As a nation, we appeared to decry restricting votes of women, people of color, virtually anyone who wasn’t male and white. We fought against literacy tests and rules that made millions of votes less important than others – that’s the express purpose of gerrymandering. When they can’t stop you from voting, they rig the vote count so your vote is wasted if you’re on the wrong team. But having declared all that, I’m beginning to wonder if that highly progressive view isn’t seriously flawed.

What it leaves out is that voting is not only a right, but a responsibility. And part of that responsibility is assuring that we understand what we’re voting for. Far too many Americans live in the fantasy world of social media, or are too lazy to look beyond what the influencers running our media want them to think. And that makes them nothing but fodder for the Trump chaos machine. I am shocked at the ignorant nonsense I hear many people spout these days. It demonstrates, clearly, that the destruction of truth and facts this administration is so good at is working. So, all you Americans who are still working for a living and raising families, or all of you younger people not yet sure where the future will take you, make damn sure you know what you’re voting for if you expect to live in a country that respects your rights as defined in our Declaration of Independence and our Consitution.

If you don’t take this seriously, maybe we’ll have to introduce some real qualifications to be eligible to vote. The issue isn’t literacy or citizenship, it’s responsibility. If the spectacle of a three-hour long televised Cabinet meeting scripted to allow everyone not named Donald Trump to kiss Trump’s ass before the entire world doesn’t nauseate you, I suggest that you self-deport from the voting booth next year. You’re not qualified to determine the future of our country.

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It’s Happening. Does Anyone Care?

Posted on August 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 23, 2025

As a lifelong reader and writer of science fiction and other futurist genres, I’ve always been fascinated by the interplay between predictive fiction and reality. Sometimes the futurists get it right, sometimes they don’t. Sinclair Lewis warned America in 1935 that the country was not immune to Fascism and authoritarianism in his classic novel, It Can’t Happen Here. Thus, on February 20 1939, six months before the German Blitzkrieg of Poland, 20,000 American Nazis calling themselves the German American Bund staged a “pro-Americanism” rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The good news about the rally was the 100,000 real pro-Americans who protested the rally.

I’m certain the ratio of five Americans who prefer our Constitution and democracy to each one who supports Trump’s right-wing power grab still applies today, except that no one is fighting back in an effective way. More and more, people who might be in a posiiton to save our democracy are instead looking out for their own self-interest, hoping the MAGA wave will pass them by.

Futurists in the 1990s began warning of the dangers of an unregulated Internet and the rise of “news” organizations outside the aegis of the Federal Communications Commission. The consistent predictions made by dozens of outstanding writers was that the first casualty would be truth. When anyone can purchase a web domain or create a podcast and say anything they please regardless of facts or truth, and there’s no fair witness fact-checking, they predicted chaos will reign and the forces of darkness will inevitably win.

In 1985, novelist Margaret Atwood published A Handmaid’s Tale, which warned of the possibility of a successful, extremist, white male dominated “Christian” revolution. When I read it, my first reaction was that Ms. Atwood should have stuck to subjects she understood. Her novel suggested America could go from what it was in 1985 to a police state that controlled every American institution, in which women had the same rights blacks had prior to the first Civil War (that is, they were the property of men,) in less than a decade. How could she have expected her readers to believe something so absurd?

Ms. Atwood had the advantage of a fictional pretext, that somehow, except for a very few, women had become incapable of having children. As portrayed in both the book and the television adaptation of it, the second Civil War that followed left most of the country in ruins except New England, which became a Christian, Fascist oligarchy, with the United States in exile residing in Toronto. (Oh, Canada!) Until Trump’s second term began, no one could have convinced me that it could happen here, but I probably would have said the same about Sinclair Lewis’ warning, had I been alive in 1935.

I must apologize to Ms. Atwood. Her prediction looks less absurd every day as Trump continues to attack everything most Americans hold dear, and there is no indication that the right-wing dominated Supreme Court will do anything to stop him. To all Americans who have allowed themselves to become numb to Trump and MAGA, despite the obvious lies and incompetence that define this administration, I say, WAKE UP NOW. Do you want your grandchildren, especially those sweet little girls you bounce on your knee living in a world designed by Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, and horror stories penned by George Orwell and Margaret Atwood?

I didn’t believe it, even after Trump won and selected the authors of Project 2025 and sycophants who would do anything for a taste of power to run our government. I didn’t believe it when Elon Musk took his chain saw to government agencies that violated the precepts of Project 2025 under the false guise of attacking fraud and abuse. But when ICE started looking like Hitler’s Gestapo, and the best the loyal opposition could do were marathon sit-ins in the House and Senate, when Trump sanctioned Benjamin Netanyahu’s complete destruction of Gaza and continued his public one-sided romance with Vladimir Putin, causing the EU and NATO to break with America, I got scared. For the first time in my life, (I was born during World War 2,) I am pessimistic about the future of our country.

I applaud California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker for standing up to Trump’s attempt to steal the mid-term elections, but those two, alone, cannot defeat MAGA. Where the hell are the leaders sworn to uphold the Constitution?

If you’ve ever visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and seen the photos on the walls of Nazi troops marching through the Dutch capital, hold on to the horror you felt at that moment. It will be happening in DC within weeks, and if we believe our sociopathic president, in Chicago and Los Angeles soon after. If that’s not enough to make you scream, I give up!

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