Campaign yard sign – iPhone pic: Glynn Wilson
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Spring forward and sleep late.
I know I did. The iPhone clock said 10:30.
The devil who shall not be named is no longer tweet storming an insurrection against American democracy from the White House.
A new sheriff is in town.
People are already reporting that $1,400 coronavirus stimulus payments are showing up in bank accounts.
Millions more COVID vaccine shots are on the way.
The sun is shining again. Flowers are blooming. Birds are singing.
We are emerging from our long winter of discontent and the hellscape year of 2020.
Eat, drink, dance, sing and make merry.
Then when the hangover wears off, and April showers wash the pollen from the air, get ready to fight Trumpism on every front.
It just came to my attention that there is a Republican state legislator in Tennessee named Jason Zachery who is vying to be the next Trump here, and he’s got some friends, including Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, The Bed Store owner Roger Cunningham, and Governor Bill Lee.
A sensational, violent video was recently produced and released threatening members of the Knox County Board of Health for simply putting out local versions of CDC guidelines urging people to wear masks, practice social distancing and stay at home whenever possible. And then like Trump, public officials issued public apologies to try to walk back the controversy.
‘I apologize if that was divisive’ – Mayor Glenn Jacobs defends controversial video
Zachery had already taken a page from Trump’s playbook by grandstanding against transgender students, and managed to get a bill through the Tennessee House that would allow students who want to refuse sharing school bathrooms, locker rooms and dorms with transgender students to sue public schools that do not provide them with “reasonable accommodations.”
An idiotic story had already been done showing that building separate bathrooms for a few transgender students would cost $1.5 billion, and of course the Republicans behind building separate bathrooms are against any increase in taxes to pay for such a bad idea.
The bill is sending a detrimental message to the transgender community in Tennessee, according to Chris Sanders, executive director of Tennessee Equality Project.
“(The Legislature) is going on the attack against trans students and trans youth,” he said. “Now, the Legislature comes along and says, ‘Hey everybody, there’s this category of people that we will protect you from if you want to be protected from.'”
Sorry for the paywall here. The newspapers in Tennessee are now owned by the conservative Gatehouse Media, which bought out Gannet recently and is now the largest newspaper chain in the country. They don’t allow readers to find out about public affairs in the communities they are supposed to serve. They are simply capitalists, who want to profit from news as a commodity.
New Tennessee bill would let students refuse to share bathrooms with transgender peers
North Carolina
Of course these little Trump supporting Neo-Nazis are all over the place. We wrote about one who got himself elected to Congress in North Carolina back in November.
Alabama
A Trump parroting former Auburn football coach got himself elected to the U.S. Senate last year from Alabama named Tommy Tuberville, and he’s now under investigation for being in on the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
There is a Congressman named Mo Brooks in North Alabama who was there with Trump on the National Mall on Jan. 6 and in on the planning of the Capitol insurrection. He has yet to be charged or censured for his anti-democratic conduct.
Georgia
Rep. Majorie Taylor Green: Google
Georgia has the openly batshit crazy and totally full of shit Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green.
Texas
Of course Texas has Trump-supporting Senator Ted Cruz, who may have a hard time getting reelected after taking off for a vacation in Cancun as his people suffered a massive power and water crisis due to a freak winter storm last month that left millions without power and clean water for weeks. He would like to be the next president of the United States. He should not even be in the United States Senate.
If we learned anything from the role and performance of the press in the Trump years, it is no longer sufficient to quote these Republicans in the newspaper and on television news exposing their radical, right-wing views. It is the role of the press in a democracy to promote democracy, not to excuse and allow fascism to flourish by giving it the dominant side in the argument in terms of space in the newspaper and air time on television.
Washington, D.C.
Remember back when Trump said of the protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia that there were “good people on both sides?”
I covered the stories when they tried to bring their Hitleresque philosophy to Washington, D.C.
White nationalist Jason Kessler holding a Confederate battle flag on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Sunday, June 25, 2017: Glynn Wilson
Freedom of Speech Rallies Show Free Speech Alive and Well in America
Neo-Nazis Vastly Outnumbered by Anti-Racist Protesters in DC Rally and March
No, there were peaceful protesters, and then there were violent white supremacist insurgents. Antifa only showed up to get in their way.
Capitol Insurrection
The American people got to see what they intended on Jan. 6 when they stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the certification of the results of a national election. They can carry the American and Confederate flags and talk about democracy and free speech all they want, but we don’t have to parrot it.
First Amendment
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not guarantee a right of free speech to politicians or domestic terrorists who want to destroy American democracy and impose religious monarchy or fascist dictatorship here. It also does not support a right of free press to news organizations that simply want to profit from covering football or conservative politics.
It does not apply to a private company like Facebook, which is not “the press.”
The First Amendment reads: “CONGRESS shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It says nothing about private companies, which are free to ban hate speech and fascist propaganda at will, just like a restaurant owner can kick out and ban disruptive customers.
As the press, we reserve the right to fight fascists by investigating them and helping to bring them down. As I have written many times before, objective journalism was not designed to just tell both sides of every story to make money. Its original mission was to publish the best available version of the truth to promote democracy, which is the opposite of fascicm.
We can’t help it if some conservative Christians and Republicans don’t understand that. We are not afraid of them. Are you?
Google and Facebook have not learned this lesson yet. Instead, Google is screwing the press out of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, while Facebook censors our content and promotes Trump’s brand of so-called “conservative thought.”
Sacha Baron Cohen
I urge everything to listen to this podcast from The New York Times interviewing Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor famous for Borat films but who also did a brilliant job of playing Abbey Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago Seven.”
He makes the point in the most direct way I’ve seen yet. To paraphrase, he says Facebook does not allow nipples, but it does allow Nazis.
Sacha Baron Cohen Has a Message for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
This must stop.
Happy Sunday. Enjoy it while you can.
Then let’s get busy again making sure no more fascists get elected, and continue our altruistic struggle to preserve democracy and keep life livable on planet Earth.
Good article. I expected nothing less from republicans. They are soulless creature with obsessions to destroy this country. And I’m furious not many of us are even outraged.
People are numb, I guess, after everything we have been through.