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chauvinism

What If Trump Makes Sense?

October 3, 2026
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, elections, politics, strategy
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Progressives as well as everyday “neutral” reporters can’t make sense out of what Donald Trump says and does. They write it off as stupidity or chronic character deformation. I wish it were true.

A good example came when Trump had his entire Dallas audience pledge to “cheat like hell” in the election. His polling numbers were already in a deep dive and dropped further.

The pundits, and even the progressives, can’t reconcile his statements and behavior with any intention to win the coming election. Even some of the Republicans, including Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, have said that Trump is dragging them backward.

What If Trump Were Making Sense?

When someone throws away their chance of winning an election, and if you assume they are rational, what conclusion would you draw? It has to be obvious: the Trumpsters aren’t prioritizing getting the most votes on November 3! They must have something else in mind to keep and increase their power.

Look at other news. Last week, Trump’s clone who runs the military announced further firings of top generals and admirals. They have been removing military leaders and replacing them with loyalists all through this administration.

Also, the most loyal of the domestic coercive forces – specifically ICE – are getting gross amounts of funding at the expense of programs for the general population, especially children.

Lastly, the administration has pushed every possible form of chauvinistic division onto us. Racism is at its core, but it includes transphobia, islamophobia, homophobia, fanatic religious discrimination and anything else that might serve to disunite us.

The Trumpsters intend to get what they want from us by force. What other conclusion can you draw?

Their Scenario

If you assume that the Trumpsters are acting rationally, and you cannot afford to assume otherwise, then they must be intending to maintain and extend their power by force. In the international arena, they have fully exposed their plan. They intend the same in domestic policy.

Certainly they will participate in the November 3 elections. But to establish credibility for what they do afterward. When they lose, they will claim “fraud,” as they have before, and then use extralegal methods to overthrow the elections, just as they did in 2020. Only this time, they intend to use their control over all the coercive forces that they can command.

What Do You Do About It?

Ultimately, the American people hold the power. If we are informed and organized, no one can force us into slavery. Informing and organizing, then, are the key. But only action will make a difference.

We need the biggest possible mobilization at the polls. If critical elections are close, then the cry of “fraud” may make more sense to some. Landslide elections are harder to contest. But if the Trumpsters use force, then November 4 and afterward will be more important than November 3.

Join the organizations capable of mobilizing. Progressive political organizations and the union movement are priorities. Civil rights and civil liberties organizations will also be important. Those who tell us to rely completely on the legal system are incorrect. We are going to need the full power of mass mobilization in strikes and boycotts to win.

The organizations that can win are seeking new members. Strikes and boycotts are already underway. Don’t wait.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. I post all around the internet and have a personal site at https://lilleskole.us

ADHD And Me

October 1, 2026
chauvinism, civil rights, education, history, Uncategorized
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KNON radio posted my 8 minute podcast on Attention Deficit disorder. https://on.soundcloud.com/FeMl5V5wPqtjLp1MQO

I had already put on Spotify and posted it here and there. It was extremely personal for me.

You wouldn’t know it to look at this old man now, but at one time I had a daughter that I treasured more than I thought I could treasure anything. Her name was Laura.

At the same time, I was in the upper levels of graduate school for a Doctorate of Education. In the theoretical part of education, I was as well versed as just about anybody, and I was sure I knew as much or more.

The main arguments I was involved in had to do with the nature of schooling. My heroes were the reformers. Schools, we had decided, had a lot more in common with prisons than they did with any honest effort to help children learn what they would need to lead happy and fulfilled lives.

Our ideas weren’t new, I discovered. They were older than the entire idea of public education. More recently, there had been a significant progressive movement among teachers in the 1920s, but everything that they said and did was hidden from us.

At the root of the argument was coercion. Should school children be coerced into learning? More importantly, should they be coerced into behaving as society demanded? Certainly, they were being coerced. School whipping was standard procedure in the 1960s. Children were whipped in their classrooms, in the hallways, in wood shop spaces, and, above all, in the principal’s office.

I was against whipping children to make them behave. I was also against drugging them.

Among school reformers, there was a raging argument about ADHD. Thousands, millions of children were being forced to take Ritalin or other stimulants after their teachers demanded “do something about your unruly child” to the parents. The parents sought medical help, and the prescription was Ritalin. Doctors told the parents that drugs that stimulated adults had the opposite effect on children. Stimulants calmed them.

Stimulants, we argued, do not really calm children. They confuse them. In an addled state, they are more open to the demands of their teachers. They may not be thinking clearly or learning much of anything, but they sat quietly in the classrooms, and that was all the teachers required.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, some young people were analyzing their situations and trying to figure out how to make a better world. Others found it safer to cling to convention. I was one of the former, Laura’s mother chose the latter. A split was almost inevitable.

She took legally my little girl. That was horrible enough for me, but I played the part of weekend parent as well as I could. But one day, when I picked up Laura, her mother handed me a pill along with instructions as to when I was to have Laura take it.

It was Ritalin. Laura, I learned, was not quiet enough in her first grade classes. The psychiatrist who saw her had the easy prescription. I argued, but lost. The psychiatrist and the ex-wife explained to me that they were doing the best thing for Laura and that my wild ideas of liberation were destructive to the child. Their sanctimony was impervious.

That was long ago. Laura lives in another state and is old enough to be thinking about retiring soon. We haven’t discussed it in all these years because I didn’t want to create an unnecessary rift between her and her mother.

The arguments about ADHD continue. I read a long article in the New York Times this week. It also mentioned a BBC documentary against doping children. I sent the URL to Laura along with my hopes that the troubles of her childhood weren’t troubles today. I told her that I hoped she could forgive the people who, in the name of fitting in with society, had drugged her through her early youth.

But I also told her that I never will.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in North Texas every Saturday at 9. I publish and post everywhere I can, but some of my more personal stuff is on https://lilleskole.us

We Have a Chance for a United Front

July 14, 2026
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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Three alternatives are possible when we wake up on November 4, the day after the election:

  • No substantial transfer of power
  • Trumpsters substantially win
  • Anti-Trumpsters substantially win

In the first scenario, we go on with the day-by-day fight to keep from sliding completely into autocracy. In the second, we’ll do the same thing, but with a tremendous handicap. In the third scenario, we can expect the electoral fight to spill over into the streets.

In other words, the Trumpsters will do everything they can to overturn elections — even to the point of overturning the system itself. As they did in 2020, they will use everything at hand — but this time they will have at hand a lot more than a bunch of lawyers and a gang of violent loonies.

In Any Scenario, We Have to Unify

We have less than four months to pull the anti-autocracy forces together. It is not just a good way to win, it is the only way.

Against our unity effort is the mighty obstacle of sectarianism. While opposing the Trumpsters is common to many organizations and ideologies, each of them exists within its silo of isolation. Hardly any of us is open to working with everybody.

The Democrats, or course, have the simplest solution: vote Democrat. But they may be the most sectarian of all. For example, look at the way they gang up against their more progressive (and amazingly successful) candidates for office!

Today’s (7/14/26) Dallas Morning News has a strong lead editorial warning against “extremists” from the Democratic Socialist camp. I wrote them a letter asking if they were comfortable in the “middle of the road” along with yellow stripes and dead armadillos. I’ve seen dozens of articles imploring the Democrats to denounce their progressives because, they say, the American people are so reactionary that denouncing progressives is the only way for Democrats to win.

Cut off your nose to spite your face!

Who’s a Sectarian?

Almost everybody in almost every organization. We were fragmented deliberately by those who rule us, whether Democrat or Republican. We remain fragmented and have never in our history overcome sectarianism completely.

Now, we must. We can because we have to. It’s the only way to win.

How Do We Overcome Our Sectarianism?

Patiently explain.

We find ways to put aside our differences for the common goal of not becoming an authoritarian state in 2026. Texans, especially Dallasites, have a tremendous opportunity for unity because the Trumpsters are planning a gigantic fund raising extravaganza at the American Airlines Center September 9-10.

As usual, of course, every organization in town is working on separate events, but I may have thought of a way to get everybody out of our silos and working together. It has to do with the President (I’m the VP) of the North Texas Area Labor Federation, Tevita Uhatafe.

Unions may not be perfectly aligned, even with one another, but they have a better understanding of winning through solidarity than anybody. Tevita, whose nickname is “Brother Solidarity,” is the most powerful, and the least sectarian, labor leader around.

Tevita has agreed to work with me on an all-encompassing, totally non-sectarian and open, approach to opposing the Trumpsters on September 9-10.

How?

We’re going to do it on-line.

With a lot of technical help from Travis Cantwell, who joined me to put on a successful “Labor Day Breakfast” during the pandemic, we’re planning to stream anti-autocracy speakers and Q&A sessions all the way through the Trumpster extravaganza. They are charging $5,000-$20,000 for a ticket. We’re charging nothing. Talk about democracy!

We will also post every speech on YouTube so people can watch them later.

Newspersons will be the first people invited. Next, we’ll invite spokespersons from every anti-Trumpster organization that has a following.

Who?

Why not get the most outstanding anti-Trumpster speakers? Since it’s on-line and free, we should be able to get Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York. We should be able to get dynamic labor leaders like Randi Weingarten of the AFT or Shawn Fain of the UAW.

We should be able to get the most critical candidates, but we shouldn’t stop at electoral politics. Let’s also invite the Palestinians, the peace movement, the communists, the retirees, the feminists, the gays, the church leaders — any single spokesperson for any single organization with a following against the Trumpsters.

That’s the way to unity! That’s the way to win!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org radio 89.3FM at 9AM every Saturday. I post all over the internet. My personal web site is https://lilleskole.us.

Fear: Autocracy’s Tool

June 7, 2026
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy
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The Nazis did not control Germany because they coerced every resident. They did it with fear. The Trumpsters today do not have the capacity to coerce the American population. They are hoping to do it with fear.

The gigantic turnouts at national demonstrations proves that fear isn’t working for the Trumpsters. Nevertheless, they will keep trying because it’s all they have.

Progressives must stand up to the fear campaign. Our defense is the American people. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in fair play for all, including protesters and activists.

The Ku Klux Klan did not stop African Americans from voting in the South by coercing them individually. They did it with fear. The courageous leaders of 1954 were successful in overcoming the Klan because they were able to reach the American majority. The key, for them, was television. It worked.

Television continues to work for those seeking justice, but the internet is a close second. The more our ideas and activities are presented to the American people, whether through mainstream media or through the internet, the safer we are. In other words, the more effective we are in outreach the safer we are.

An unfortunate incident in Alvarado, Texas, last year derailed the thinking of some activists. When the Trumpsters took advantage of the errors of some well-meaning activists, some learned the wrong lessons. I have personally heard otherwise-rational North Texans say that we should start going underground or stockpile weapons. I can almost hear the Trumpsters laughing, because they think their fear campaign is succeeding.

Another terrible example is the one-or-two deluded people who dress up in military-looking outfits and carry weapons to demonstrations. I plead with them to get rid of their weapons or leave, but they don’t. They are risking everyone around them. They are either seriously deluded egotists or they are outright provocateurs working directly for the Trumpster cause! They should be treated as provocateurs because, effectively, that is what they are.

There is no doubt that the Trumpsters will threaten some individuals because that is how they spread fear. In those cases, the best defense is not a weapon. The best defense is one’s phone. If I were threatened, I’d rather have a cell phone with Facebook Live than a dozen machine guns!

–Genelantz19@gmail.com

Fear: Autocracy’s Tool

June 4, 2026
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy
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Fear: Autocracy’s Tool

The Nazis did not control Germany because they coerced every resident. They did it with fear. The Trumpsters today do not have the capacity to coerce the American population. They are hoping to do it with fear.

The gigantic turnouts at national demonstrations proves that fear isn’t working for the Trumpsters. Nevertheless, they will keep trying because it’s all they have.

Communists and other progressives must stand up to the fear campaign. Our defense is the American people. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in fair play for all, including protesters and activists.

The Ku Klux Klan did not stop African Americans from voting in the South by coercing them individually. They did it with fear. The courageous leaders of 1954 were successful in overcoming the Klan because they were able to reach the American majority. The key, for them, was television. It worked.

Television continues to work for those seeking justice, but the internet is a close second. The more our ideas and activities are presented to the American people, whether through mainstream media or through the internet, the safer we are. In other words, the more effective we are in outreach the safer we are.

An unfortunate incident in Alvarado last year derailed the thinking of some activists. When the Trumpsters took advantage of the errors of some well-meaning activists, some learned the wrong lessons. I have personally heard otherwise-rational North Texans say that we should start going underground or stockpile weapons. I can almost hear the Trumpsters laughing because they think their fear campaign is succeeding.

Another terrible example is the one-or-two deluded people who dress up in military-looking outfits and carry weapons to North Texas demonstrations. I plead with them to get rid of their weapons or leave, but they don’t. They are risking everyone around them. They are either seriously deluded egotists or they are outright provocateurs working directly for the Trumpster cause! They should be treated as provocateurs because, effectively, that is what they are.

There is no doubt that the Trumpsters will threaten some individuals because that is how they spread fear. In those cases, the best defense is not a weapon. The best defense is one’s phone. If I were threatened, I’d rather have a cell phone with Facebook Live than a dozen machine guns!

Road to Contentment

March 10, 2026
art, chauvinism, democracy
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I want to tell you why you are discontent. I want to tell you how to overcome your discontent every day.

The reason for your unhappiness is that you aren’t being yourself. If you were being yourself as you were created by millions of years of evolution, you would settle into a life of caring for others.

As evolution shaped us, we are herd animals. We care for one another the way a herd animal protects its members. When they are aware of an attack, for example, bison form a circle with the calves and weaker members at the center. It is natural for them, and it is natural for us to take care of one another.

Left to themselves, children are the same way. They strive for fairness among themselves. I know this because I had a private school where children were largely left to their natural inclinations rather than being pitted against one another for grades and encouragement as they are in other schools.

But the children in most schools and the adults in capitalist society are pitted against one another. The only way for anybody to advance under capitalism is to climb over others. Alienation is forced on us, and alienation is the source of our discontent.

We know about this alienation. We usually experience it as guilt. Every day in every city, we walk by or drive by the suffering victims at the bottom of our capitalist fight among ourselves. Sometimes we give them a dime or a dollar, but it doesn’t seem enough.

What About Your Exes?

Alienation makes us desperate, and that is why we cling to the one person that capitalist society allows us to have – our spouse or significant other. It’s also the reason that so many of our relationships fail. We cling too hard, or maybe the other person clings too hard.

We cling desperately to that one person because we are alienated from virtually everybody else, and we doom the relationship because no one person can fill our void of alienation.

Some people try to fill the void with their children. These are the stage mothers and helicopter parents who, again, are often undone in their ambitions because they tried too desperately.

We Need to Do More

Recognizing your true need to care for other humans is the way to overcome your alienation and your discontent. We aren’t bisons, of course, so we are called upon to do considerably more than form circles around our calves.

Knee-jerk charity is also insufficient. Should you stop every time you see a homeless person and try to meet their true needs? Should you buy them new clothes, find them a job, or rent an apartment for them? How many could you help? Should you aspire to religious poverty and try to become the next Buddha? A few people try that, but more of them try it for only a while.

Strive to Care Effectively

We are herd animals like bison, but we are also thinking animals. If we seriously and honestly want to stop human suffering, then we have to think about the reasons for it. After that, we have to apply ourselves to resolving those reasons. That is the road to contentment and the way to stop being simply a victim of alienation.

It may be simple, but it’s not easy.  It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that the people at the bottom of this alienated heap have counterparts at the top. Elon Musk, for example, has more wealth than 53% of American households! They are the ones benefiting from this awful system and the ones who will fight you to continue it.

Follow the Good Examples

Look among your friends and acquaintances for those who are older and have maintained their sense of humanity. I don’t mean the churlish and cruel older people who make up stereotypes of discontent. I mean the older people who are still smiling at life.

You will find them among the activist population. The happiest old people I ever met were those who were still in the struggle. I never met an unhappy old communist.

It’s a Fight, but It’s Worth It

You can’t be content while you’re being oppressed.

It was really hard for me to accept a life of struggle. I think I tried everything that looked easier before I gave in to the obvious.

During the “Pop Psychology” days of the 1960s and 1970s, the key word for everybody was “adjust.” “I’ve adjusted” generally meant the same thing as “I’m happy” or “I’m content.” A “well-adjusted” person was someone who had it made. If someone (me) wasn’t happy, he/she wasn’t fully “in sync with his/herself” and needed to “adjust.” There were all kinds of elaborate ways to help people get adjusted, and most of them involved long expensive therapy sessions. Some involved massage, some involved heavy sedation, some involved electric shock, some involved brain surgery.

I never met a therapist who didn’t subscribe to this “adjustment” business. To that extent, they are agents of the status quo. Maybe all of them aren’t, but then I’ve not met them all.

Why Adjust?

But why should we adjust to an unfair world? Why should we adjust when we ourselves are being oppressed, and we can see a lot more oppression on other people? Why should we adjust when we could make things better?

There is precious little peace for anyone in our society. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our lives,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Actually, most of the world’s population doesn’t have enough for the bare necessities and spend their days searching for subsistence. Half the world’s children don’t have enough to eat. People are currently being incinerated by bombs paid for by American taxes.

Most of the people who do have enough can’t stop driving to accumulate more. Their children often become degenerate spendthrifts. Are any of them content?

The Only Possible Peace Comes from Fighting

Countless religions and motivational speakers promise that you can adjust to the present society and find contentment, but you can’t. The only contentment within a contentious society comes from striving to improve it. Figuring out how to do that doesn’t take a lot of brain power. It might take a little courage.

–Gene Lantz

Poor Us!

December 27, 2023
art, chauvinism, women
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Movie Review: “Poor Things,” Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 141 minutes

My movie buddy had to drag me away from the lobby outside the entrance to “Poor Things.” I wanted to stay and warn everybody to stay away. It’s over 2 hours of pretentious nonsense about a baby girl growing within a woman’s body. It’s a misogynist fantasy wasting $35 million worth of the latest technology, technique, and style.

There! Now I know you won’t be able to resist going. I saw a couple of outright rave reviews before I started mine. I found a major reviewer who calls “Poor Things” “best movie of the year.” https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/poor-things-movie-review-2023. Another joins in praising its technical accomplishments, both in film and in storytelling: https://www.vox.com/culture/23992608/poor-things-review. Reviewers, apparently, loved it.

The movie really does have a lot going for it. Everything about it is quirky and over-the-top. Mark Ruffalo, as a Casanova cad, is hilarious, especially in the scene where the child/woman enthusiastically dances jerkily in the middle of a prim ballroom dance and Ruffalo tries to cover for her with impromptu twirls and dips. I could cut that 4 minute scene out and watch it every now and then, but not anything else.

On the way home, my movie buddy analyzed the title. “Poor Things” doesn’t refer to anybody in the movie. It’s the audience, us.

–genelantz

Texas History, Really!

September 13, 2022
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, history, politics
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Book Review: Horne, Gerald, “The Counter Revolution of 816: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism.” International Publishers, 2022. Available through Amazon Books

University of Houston Professor Gerald Horne has created a book that must be read. I wholeheartedly recommend it, but that doesn’t make it an easy read.

I believe there is a long-awaited tendency toward truth in Texas history. Most of us have only seen the bleached and romanticized version. It makes great romantic heroes of all the “revolutionary” “founders” of the state. Everyone who can read knows it isn’t true. If they were really such wonderful people, why did they prominently feature slavery in their first constitution?

As far as I know, though, the new revisionist histories lead up gradually to the truth and don’t actually denounce any of the Texas “heroes” before their conclusions. Gerald Horne starts there. The “founders” of Texas are ratfink landgrabbers devoted to genocide for natives and enslavement for Africans from page one.

“Father of Texas” Austin wasn’t a saint trying to find homes for poor settlers. A slave owner himself, he worked constantly and consistently to overcome his host country’s ban against slavery. He was the slaveocracy’s front man. The ones who followed were no less committed to slavery and even more bloodthirsty in its pursuit.

As for the Natives, there were only two ideological trends in Texas: the few “liberals” wanted to put them all into bantusland reservations as in apartheid South African; the majority, including President Mirabeau Lamar, wanted to kill every last one of them. Mexican Americans received little more consideration. The Texas Rangers were an equestrian version of Murder, Inc.

From the first white settlers until modern times, Texas history is a story of lynching and genocide. For good measure, Horne throws in some little-known truths about Oklahoma and the states that were created after the greatest land grab — usually known as the Mexican War.

Most white Texans supported secession from Mexico. Many of them coveted even more Mexican land and only reluctantly joined the United States when forced by economic circumstances. Nearly all of them supported seceding from the union over the slavery issue in 1860. Their contributions to the Confederacy exceeded every state except, possibly, Virginia. After General Lee surrendered in 1865, many Texans moved to Mexico where they supported the French imperialist forces under “Emperor” Maximillian because they hoped to re-start the Civil War with France on their side.

The total destruction of previous Texas histories is one reason that “The Counter Revolution of 1836” is hard reading. Texas history as we have known it is deservedly turned inside-out! The other reason comes from Horne’s writing style. A few pages into the 575-page opus, the reader starts hoping that Horne will run out of obscure pejoratives to describe early Texans, but he doesn’t. He rarely employs a sentence that wouldn’t diagram as compound/complex. Because he has assembled so many quotes from so many sources, he hop-scotches from one to the other so quickly that it’s not always easy to remember what point he was making.

The book has a tremendous list of resources. Oddly, I did not find Randolph Campbell’s “An Empire for Slavery” among them. Possibly, Campbell may have been too easy on Texas.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON.org with “Workers Beat” every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Learning From Tioga

January 24, 2022
chauvinism, civil rights, democracy, elections, history, politics
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Tioga is 50 miles north of Dallas. Politically, it may be in another world.

When we made our little road trip, the first thing we noticed were the big campaign signs for Don Huffines hanging on barbed wire fences. He seems to think that Governor Abbott is a liberal. HIs main slogan for getting votes in rural areas, based on an outright lie, seems to be “Stop Giving Our Money to Illegals!”

Our second clue came when we arrived at Tioga and stopped for barbecue. By the way, we liked the food, and apparently lots of other people like it, because the crowd was pretty good for a town with population 803. While we were scarfing it down, though, we noticed that we hadn’t seen a mask anywhere on the trip. Pandemic or not, they just don’t wear them up around Tioga!

Tioga is the birthplace of the great singing cowboy

After the restaurant, we tried to fit in by taking off our masks for our walking tour. We went right down Gene Autry street. We thought there might be some kind of statue, plaque, or other tribute to the great singing cowboy who is, among many other things, who I’m probably named after. The tribute is probably there, because being the birthplace of Gene Autry is Tioga’s only claim to fame, but we couldn’t find it. Right next to the street sign where we paused for a photo, a sign hung from a tree: “Trump: Make America Great!”

By then, we city people had begun to get a little uneasy. A couple of blocks further, we saw our first “Trump 2024” yard sign of this political year. By the time we got to Race Street and saw a certain house, we were downright nervous.

Stars and Bars flies in Tioga

When we saw the confederate flag and the posted threat of violence, we decided that it might be good to get back to the car before anybody noticed my “Bernie” bumper sticker. As soon as we got back to City Hall, where we had parked, we checked the car for possible painted swastikas. Then we got out of Tioga.

Does anybody remember when Adolf and Barack made a joint statement?

On the way home, we wondered if there were any dark-skinned people in Tioga. More importantly, we wondered why people in the rural areas of Texas seem committed to the Republican Party despite all facts and information. We think it might be racism.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. KNON posts my weekly blog “Workers Beat Extra” Wednesdays on http://soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.