Trashing Teslas is political violence and must stop.

 Trashing Teslas is political violence and must stop.

Defacing/destroying Teslas to poke Musk and Trump is occurring nationwide.

It's channeling of the worst impulses of MAGA we witnessed on Jan. 6.

Violence begets violence. What if that Tesla is your your relative's or your friend's. Would you be cool with that?

What if the owner with a gun walks up as you are destroying his/her 80 grand Tesla. Keep this up and someone will eventually get blown away.

Hitler exploited escalating street violence in 32/33 Germany in acquire the Chancellorship. We know what that led to

America may be a long way from 32/33 Germany. But once begun, it's not difficult for the slippery slope of political violence to become irreversible.

Progressives, all people of good will, must channel their despair and angst into organizing and peaceful political action and protest.

The alternative is unthinkable.

Zelensky belongs t negotiating table, not Chicago

 Zelensky belongs t negotiating table, not Chicago

Tim Springer (Tribune letters, March 14) suggests Chicago should invite Ukrainian President Zelensky to Chicago to counter the claimed deplorable treatment he received by Trump in the Oval Office.

Bringing Zelensky to Chi Town will do nothing to promote peace in Ukraine ravaged by 3 years of war with no chance of battlefield success.

Zelensky belongs at the peace table in Saudi Arabia where a possible end to the war is being hammered out.

Trump did not abuse Zelensky at their recent Oval Office confrontation. Zelensky came to it looking for endless weapons to continue a lost war. Trump disabused him of that notion, telling him he has no bargaining position justifying continued war. Zelensky’s retort that Putin cannot be trusted and Russia will eventually threaten America is what prompted Trump’s pointed but necessary criticism.

Guess what? Zelensky got the message is has now signed on to a ceasefire which could begin winding down this calamitous war destroying Ukraine.

Let’s invite Zelensky to visit Chicago to celebrate the eventual peace agreement he will sign that the kerfuffle in the Oval Office is helping make possible.

GOP intervention needed to remove disintegrating Trump from office

GOP intervention needed to remove disintegrating Trump from office

It took nearly 4 years to Democrats to stage an intervention to remove a mentally disintegrating Joe Biden from office.

We cannot wait that long for GOP to do their version with a disintegrating Donald Trump.

That’s because his disintegration is compounded by a malevolent streak of vindictiveness, revenge, lust for dictatorial power, gleeful dismantling of the American safety net maintaining the commons never before experienced in American history.

Annoy him and he’ll call you Asian if you’re black; Palestinian if you’re a Jew. That is sick.

Trying to salvage Musk’s sinking Tesla brand, he morphed into a sleazy car salesman pitching Tesla cars as his bewildered governmental wrecking ball looked on.

His obsession with tariffs has spooked Wall Street, every sensible economist, every trading partner and Joe Sixpack watching his retirement drop while his costs of necessities rise. He appears detached from reality of the economic deluge he’s unleashing.

His congressional speech sounded more like an indoor Nuremburg Rally than a prescription for healing America. His idolatrous congressional Republicans roared their approval. Apparently oblivious they’re standing on the deck of the Titanic along with the Democrats, they jeered them for not saluting America’s first autocratic president.

There is historical precedent for Republicans staging an intervention to remove a morally compromised president. In 1974 a GOP delegation led by Sen. Barry Goldwater visited President Nixon in the White House and convinced him to resign.

Such an intervention by today’s GOP, while virtually inconceivable, is still critically needed to prevent an unprecedented collapse of every vestige of the American promise to its citizenry.

If morally centered Barry Goldwater were in the Senate today, he’d likely volunteer to lead the Trump intervention committee.

US Russophobia hampers efforts to end lost Ukraine war

US Russophobia hampers efforts to end lost Ukraine war

The Trump administration is moving expeditiously to end the 3 year long war destroying Ukraine. Trump promised to end it as candidate and is fulfilling that promise. It cannot be ended soon enough.

But rampant Russophobia, particularly among Democrats and progressives may impede, if not derail Trump’s peace initiative.

Their charges are hyperbolic, even delusional.

He’s ‘switched sides from peaceful, democratic Ukraine to warmongering, autocratic Russia.’

He’s ‘a Russian agent.’

He’s ‘enabling his hero Putin to reestablish the Soviet Union.’

He’s ‘putting Western Europe at risk of Russian invasion.’

Their Russophobia has been unrelenting since the 2016 election loss they largely attributed to Russian election interference. They completely ignore his first term policies that were decidedly anti-Russian. He imposed severe sanctions on Russia. He reversed Obama’s policy of neutrality by arming the ultra-nationalist Kyiv government to destroy the Donbas separatist movement on Russia’s border. He aided delaying implementation of Minsk II Accords which could have ended civil war in Donbas. He did nothing to discourage Ukraine membership in NATO.

When successor Biden provoked the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022, they totally ignored, dismissed, refused to believe any of the 8 year long US provocations which made the Russian invasion inevitable.

Once started they viewed Russia as an existential threat to world peace and US national security. To do that they pretended that America did not sabotage the April, 2022 Russian Ukraine peace agreement that could have ended the war without Ukraine losing a single square mile of territory.

Their view Trump is aligned with Putin is so all consuming they push for continuation of the war which will incur hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian casualties in a lost cause.

They appear oblivious that their Russophobia has put peoplekind at risk of nuclear war for all 1,111 days of needless warfare.

Yet, as critical as defeating evil Russia is to US Russophobes, they dare not offer one drop of US blood in their quixotic quest doomed to failure.

Trump’s return to diplomacy to end a catastrophic war that could go nuclear should be embraced and supported by every American regardless of partisan political considerations. They should heed the lesson of JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis 63 years ago. Kennedy told the Russophobes in his war cabinet who wanted to set off WWIII to go to Hell. He used diplomacy to end the crisis, prevent nuclear war and begin détente with the Russophobes’ ‘Putin’ of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev.

Sixty-three years on Trump is trying to do the same. On this issue he needs our support, not the promotion of endless war.

America’s successful Syrian regime change incurring expected outcome: dead Alawites

America’s successful Syrian regime change incurring expected outcome: dead Alawites

Islamist jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) led by wanted terrorist Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, booted Bashar Assad out of Syria 3 months ago. In spite of their terrorist origins and history, the US supported HTS and other jihadist forces for 13 years in its deranged regime change operation to topple Assad.

Why? Because the US could. Also because Israel and its US Lobby endlessly demanded we remove Assad who represented a decade’s long impediment to expanding their regional hegemony.

When Jolani took power, even President Biden pondered his violent history, but applauded another notch on Uncle Sam’s regime change belt.

So it should be no surprise to America’s national security establishment (war party) that their ghoulish lust to overturn Assad is wreaking havoc on Assad’s fellow Alawites still stuck in Syria after he escaped peacefully to Russia. Reports from Alawite governances in northwest Syria report over 1,300 men, women and kiddies slaughtered. Curfews have been imposed and roads closed to prevent escape from the HTS marauders. According to HTS, all the victims were former enemies aligned with Assad. Right.

America’s 13 year effort fueling the resistance to Assad may have increased the death toll in the Syrian civil war by tens, if not hundreds of thousands. Yet, by successfully keeping the civil war destroying Syria going till victory, America has merely set the table for tens, if not hundreds more thousands of deaths in that sorrowful land.