Unhappy Crowd: Spare Us the "Woe is Me" Lament

Squawking about America has never been shriller.  Gun violence is spiraling out of control.  Racism is seething.  Trade wars are spiking prices.  The nation's political climate is toxic.  Homeless people are camped on streets of cities.  The whole country is a rotten stinking dung heap.

Day after day the piercing chorus is deafening.  For many Baby Boomers, including this writer, it has become nauseating.  The contempt, disgust and loathing from our fellow Americans is too much to stomach.  This country needs perspective, a quality missing in today's warped media reporting.

If you honestly believe America has never been this foul, you just haven't lived long enough. Not too many decades ago, this country was in the throes of race riots, soaring interest rates, double-digit inflation, high unemployment and one of the deadliest wars ever fought by our military.

Americans, especially Millennials, have either forgotten or never been taught American history.  As a timely reminder, here is a refresher on the turmoil that roiled the country from 1962 to 1981, a period that included political assassinations, cities in flames, an oil embargo and economic Armageddon.

During the Cold War with Russia in the 1960's,  President John F. Kennedy advised Americans to build bomb shelters as a precaution.  By 1965, 200,000 underground shelters speckled the American landscape. As school children, we were drilled to hide under a desk in the event of a nuclear attack.

Tensions boiled over in October 1962 when the U.S. discovered Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba.  The military blockaded Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from reaching the island.  Nuclear war appeared imminent. After a nerve-racking 13-day standoff, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles.

Not long after, President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 by a gunmen who had visited Russia.  Less than 20 years later, President Ronald Reagan was shot, the bullet just missing vital organs sparing his life.  If a closely-guarded president could be killed or wounded, none of us felt safe.

During the period after 1963, ugly race riots broke out in major U.S. cities as African-Americans battled police in the streets.  National guard units had to be called up to restore peace.  Historians have called the riots the "most serious and widespread" ever in the U.S.

The social unrest flared in 1968 after civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was struck down by an assassin's bullet.  The news ignited riots in 110 cities across the country in a single night.  That same year Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy was murdered.

His death and the simmering anger over the Vietnam War combusted into the worst incident in American politics. At the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, violent confrontations exploded as police and protesters fought.  Demonstrators were beaten and tear gassed on national television.

The unpopular war in Asia, which lasted almost 20 years, ended with 58,220 American military causalities.  Another 304,000 soldiers returned home with crippling wounds. Many of my generation lost college mates, friends and family members.  Too many died forgotten in a war run by politicians.

For perspective, only the Civil War, World War I and World War II, eclipsed Vietnam as the deadliest conflicts in our history.

On the heels of the war, impeachment proceedings were launched by the House Judiciary Committee against President Richard M. Nixon, who was implicated in the break-in at a Democratic Party facility in the Watergate Hotel in Washington.  Under pressure, Nixon was forced to resign in 1974.

The nation barely exhaled when a Middle-East oil embargo kindled a gasoline shortage in the country.  Prices quadrupled at the pump overnight, shredding family budgets and triggering a nationwide panic.  Stations ran out of gas.  Fuel-starved cars were abandoned on the road.

During the height of the crisis, price gouging was rampant.  We waited in long lines of cars idling on roads leading to stations, snarling traffic and shortening tempers.  Mandatory limits of five-gallons of fuel per car were imposed by gas stations.  Daily commutes were often sidelined by empty gas tanks.

Then galloping inflation and high unemployment detonated.  From 1976 to 1980, car prices zoomed 72%.  The cost of new homes soared 67%.  In a single year 1979, gasoline prices rocketed up 60%.  Inflation spurted to 12.4% in 1980.  The prime interest rate topped 21% that same year.

Unemployment jumped to 9%.  Many firms laid off workers.  A new term was coined, The Misery Index, to quantify Americans' fears and anxieties over the economic morose.  Government wage and price controls, introduced to stem inflation, instead stunted an economic recovery.

During this era in the 1970's, the nation recorded the worst crime rate in its history.  There were 115.2 million crimes reported in that decade.  The highest murder rate in the country's history was in 1980, far outdistancing today's FBI homicide rate-per-population.   Crime became a hot political issue.

Perhaps, this brief history lesson will remind all Americans that our country has undergone more dire economic, political, race and violence-marred eras. That doesn't mean we should be sanguine about these times.  However, today's Americans deserve to have current events put into historical context.

It may not be the best of times but it certainly isn't the worst.  Not even close. Someone has to spread that message to quell the incessant wallowing in self-pity.  The media will not.   We must do it.

Anti-Semitism: The Scourge That Won't Subside

The world cannot seem to shake more than one-thousand years of Anti-Semitism.  Despite determined efforts to stamp out all hate crimes, persecution of Jews continues unabated.  Even in America, Jews are being targeted in larger numbers than ever for their religious beliefs.

Recently, many Americans recoiled in horror after a gunman mowed down 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  They were marked for assassination by their executioner for practicing their Jewish faith.  The victims were innocent people whose "crime" was their Jewishness.

Coincidentally, within days of the slaughter, the FBI released data showing Jewish people and institutions were most frequently targeted, accounting for 58.1 percent of all religious based hate crime.  Muslims ranked a distant second at 18.6 percent.  The FBI data is for the year 2017.

The mainstream media as expected needed a scapegoat for the increase in violence against Jews.  To no one's surprise they blamed the rhetoric of President Trump for the murderous rampage.  That may be the most nonsensical, unsubstantiated charge ever leveled against this president.

The president's son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish.  Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka, who is married to Kushner, converted to Judaism.  The couple's children are being raised in the Jewish faith.  Mr. Trump has been the most pro-Israel president in history.

Name just one anti-Jewish statement uttered by Mr. Trump.  Or a Anti-Semitic tweet.  You can't do it because none exist.  The media and politicians know that too but they are never, ever going to expose the No. 1 Jew Hater in America. 

The truth is that the mainstream media, politicians and black leaders are afraid to point the finger at the prime source of Anti-Semitism in this country.  His name is Minister Louis Farrakhan, an 84-year-old African-American who bills himself as the leader of the Nation of Islam.

Despite his decades-long openly Anti-Semitic crusade, no one dares condemn him.  He has the ear of powerful politicians.  He has been photographed with everyone from Barrack Obama to Democratic senators and representatives  Their silence is tacit endorsement for his poisonous hatred.

When he is not denigrating Jews, this pseudo minister rallies his followers to support his favored politicians.  In 1988, he exhorted his disciples to back Jesse Jackson's bid for the Democratic Party nomination.  He was back in the news in 1995, helping organize the 'Million Man March,"

These activities give him a certain cache among politicians, especially Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus.  But make no mistake about his putrid ideology.  This man is a Jew hating psychopath who at times has all but called for genocide against Jews.

In his latest rant, Farrakhan compared Jews to "termites," borrowing the same description the German Nazis used during their bloodthirsty campaign to exterminate the Jewish race.  Not a single African-American senator or representative had the guts to castigate this vile man. Not one.

The Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Jewish group, cited a recent report that social media harassment of Jewish Americans increased during the latest election.  While social media platforms regularly censor conservative views, Farrakhan is treated with kid gloves.  He is The Untouchable.

Imagine if anyone was preaching this same kind of hatred against Muslims.  The national uproar would be deafening.  Why does this nation and others tolerate blatantly anti-Jewish hate speech? There is only one conclusion to draw.  Anti-Semitism exists because we allow it. 

A few Swastikas spray painted on synagogues is treated as a prank.  A smashed widow at a Jewish shop is just a petty crime.  Even the horrific Pittsburgh murders did not generate the same level of inflamed news coverage as school shootings or the most recent carnage at a California bar and grill.

As long as the Louis Farrakhan's of the world are freely allowed to spew venom about Jews without any retribution, the level of violence against Jews will only increase.  If our politicians won't stand up against this wretched evil man, then the American people must take matters in their own hands.

A nation that condones anti-Semitism is destined to follow the road that leads to Nazism.  That may sound like hyperbole to some of you, but remember the German people refused to raise their voices while Hitler's goon squads rounded up Jews and sent millions to their deaths.  Silence is consent.

Raise your voices.  We are Americans.  We don't condone hatred of any religious group. Those who embrace hatred do not deserve a public platform despite our First Amendment guarantee of Free Speech.  It is time to muffle Farrakhan and banish this religious bigot from the American stage.