In 2017 we have had 30 mass shootings by assassins with automatic assault weapons which killed 175 people.

In 2017 we have been exposed in the media to daily politically motivated acoustic toxic pollution of nationalist racist supremacy speech rants,  of hate and fear inciting misogynist speech, of homophobic speech, of Islamophobic speech, and now we have had the most horrific massacre of people of he Jewish faith in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, right after bombing packages were sent to some 15 addresses by a fanatic sociopathic Trump supporter.

Tolerance for both, the assassinations and the inflammatory speech custom-made to incite ignorant fear and hate must and can be ended if “we the people” start immediately by using our voting prerogative to conduct a house-cleaning in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of those arsonistic agent provocateurs who act as “politicians” never were intended to act.   Politics is the art and science of achieving and consolidating certain power to do good.  It is not a free for all in a civilized society.

First of all we need to make America free again of automatic assault weapons and ban their existence by ilegalizing these killing machines via a “stick and carrot” approach calling for all who own them to turn them in for a major tax break if they do, and if they do not apply heavy penalties for their possession.   Sporadic searches without racial profiling and without search warrants must be legalized to facilitate their gradual disappearance.

Guns for protection against residence invasions, particularly in outlying areas, can remain available but must be registered with background checks and all must be duly registered.

Secondly we must remember that the free-speech amendment does have a Constitutional limitation which must be implemented more actively by law enforcement.

In “Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire“,  315 U.S. 568(1942) in a United States Supreme Court ruling articulated the “fighting words doctrine“, which constitutes a limitation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.  Period.

This last most recent execrable example of mass killing of innocent people in a Synagogue should become the cornerstone for the urgent intervention of the Federal authorities to radically decrease this savagery which most particularly in 2017 has been incited not only by demagogue politicians, but by, as incredibly as it may sound, the so-called “President” of the United States.  It is a veritable tragedy for our country that this last statement cannot be dismissed as being hyperbolical, since it has been too amply documented as a reality.

It does not take a son of parents who survived the Nazi genocidal crimes, such as the writer of this ARGENTUM POST  is, to be moved and to angrily and most emphatically condemn the slaughter of innocent people at the Tree of Life synagogue, since all such killings of anyone, anywhere, of any religion, or no religion, of any political persuasion or sexual preference or any other status classification, must feel protected in a civilized society from such an unforgivable criminal activity.

It also must be noted that the majority of the people grieving over this terrible tragedy requested that Trump not come to Pittsburgh for obvious reasons,  but he defiantly ignored that request.

Additionally, to add insult to injury, right after this horrible tragedy occurred, Trump’s response was the typically scripted one sentence, and then he had the audacity to criticize the Rabbi of said synagogue by saying that he should have had armed guards on site.  It is the height of insensibility to suggest such nonsense, since not among the 11 death and 18 injured victims, there were 4 policemen one of who is in serious condition.

Trump is a man who in is DNA has replaced principles (in-toto) for interests which satisfy his insatiable lust for money and for political power.

He has proven that in the microcosm and in the macrocosm.

His interest is to (a) placate his mostly right-wing extremist base made up of even Neo-Nazis some which he considers “good Neo Nazis” as he clearly let it be known  in the case of the Charlotteville criminal violence which they caused and which resulted in the killing of a young woman, and (b) to engage in profitable sales of arms to criminal terrorists no matter what the consequences are, as he demonstrates to this day, after the decadent dictator Bin Salman had an American based, democracy advocate, journalist Khashoggi,  brutally assassinated by that top member of that Wahabi violent extremist and brutal House of Saud family power structure (aka Saudi Arabia)  which was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and which,  since 2015,  has killed by aerial bombardments some 56 thousand unarmed innocent poorest of the poor civilians in the genocidal attacks on Yemen where millions now are dying of cholera, polio, and starvation, while the U.S. and Britain continue to sell weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

No more needs to be said, other than “enough already” of this form of a gradual, depraved, erosion by our power structure of our constitutional democracy, an erosion of our reputation abroad worldwide, and an erosion of our national security, and an erosion of our peace of mind which should characterize our life in our supposedly civilized society which has so much to offer us if it were not the resources we obascenely are forced to squander by being forced to support the odious hegemony which robs us of our treasury reserved for universal health care, affordable higher education, infrastructure repair and more, so that the equally odious industrial-military complex in tandem with artificially created provocative foreign entanglements abroad devours it all, something which President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell speech.

To come back to the tragedy of Pittsburgh though, the ARGENTUM POST provides its readers with a Democracy Now clip of an interview by its eminent and indefatigable host, Amy Goodman, of Dr. David Glosser and of Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, of Kol Tzedek.  Both are noble, humanist, brilliant members of the Jewish community of Philadelphia.

The former is a retired physician and is the uncle of Trump’s adviser Steven Miller who Dr. Glosser characterized as an “immigration hypocrite” in a scathing op-ed Politico Magazine of August 13, 2018.

The latter is a fascinating, brilliant, outspoken Rabbi at Kol Tzedeck, a progressive Synagogue.  In his self description he states that he is most inspired at the intersection of community, activism, and healing, and he is committed to Kol Tzedeck’s deep sense of inclusion, and strives to live a Judaism that is accessible, relevant, and meaningful to all of us.

Both are included in this article as they talk about the Tree of Life tragedy.