A night view of the White House: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. BOUND – This little detour back to the American South for the past six months has been interesting, to say the least, presenting some fascinating opportunities I never envisioned. Covering politics and the disastrous 2024 election from Arkansas, then making my way back to my home town of Birmingham, Alabama for the winter and working on a book about my old friend and Muscle Shoals rock legend, guitar slinger Wayne Perkins. Then covering a new exhibit of historic civil rights photos by another old and dear friend Spider Martin for public radio.

It seemed as if Jesus Christ himself was directing my every move.

But as I tried to sit on the sidelines and retire from covering daily news and politics as Don the Con Trump took over the country and brought in Elon Musk to help dismantle it, threatening my Social Security and anyone else’s who might disagree with him, I just can’t take it any longer.

If there is a God, he or she needs to do something to stop this madness. If there is an intelligenct life form on another exoplanet within range of us through a wormhole, they need to intervene now!

Someone in the press in America needs to do more to stand up stronger to America’s first dictator, since everybody and their brother is caving to the demands of Trump as we watch from afar in horror at the Great Unraveling of American democracy and the Great Capitulation by law firms, universities, news outlets and even all the tech billionaires, happens right before our very eyes.

I don’t get it. If I had a billion dollars, I would spend every penny of it to stop what Trump is doing to our beloved country. Why are they kissing his ass and ring like he’s some kind of a monarch or king? He’s just a stupid bully who doesn’t understand anything about how to run a business, much less a government, and his ignorance of the law and even what a tariff is and does is fucking appalling and infuriating to watch. He’s driving us right into the hands of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who has wanted American democracy destroyed for his entire evil life.

If Trump is not an actual Russian asset, as some have claimed in major books, he’s certainly doing everything he can to act like one.

A New Red Scare Threatens American Democracy From Within the White House

Since he first arrived on the national political scene back in Mobile, Alabama in 2015, wearing white pants and shoes and escorted into his first big stadium rally by little Senator Jeff Sessions, David Underhill and I saw that Trump was going to be a big hit with the undereducated working class in America. The rest of the press and media in this country wrote him off as a clown and a joke who had no chance of even winning the Republican nomination in 2016, much less the presidency.

Along with the Democrats, Republicans and Christians Against Trump in 2020, The New York Times and others, we fought like hell to get Joe Biden elected president and then to bring the economy back from the disaster of Trump’s first term, including his mishandling the Covid Pandemic and gutting the United States effort to combat climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation.

Old Joe did what no president had ever accomplished before – and many tried, all the way back to Ronald Reagan – getting a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed through both houses of Congress, putting millions of Americans back to work and directing much of the money into the fight against the devastating long-term impacts of climate change. But when old Joe stumbled in one debate with Trump – mainly due to a bad preparation plan by his campaign staff at Camp David – we too thought the amazing campaign of Kamala Harris had a chance.

But no, there were still many Americans who cared more about the price of eggs than the future of this great country, and could not go to the polls to vote for a Black woman for president, including thousands of Black males, Hispanic voters, young voters and even some women.

What were they thinking? That once installed in the White House again, Trump would somehow change and care a whiff about them or their future?

I mean we reported at length on the plan by the Heritage Foundation to turn this democracy into a theocracy. It was called Project 2025 and everybody had to hear about it. It was on every cable news channel, including Fox News, and every social media platform, even if the biggest one of them all, Meta’s Facebook, even though they tried to bury the actual news links with bots and the stupid algorithm. It was even all over YouTube.

Did anyone actually believe Trump when he said he didn’t know what it was, and it was not his plan?

Well, it’s being implemented now with a speed no one could have imagined or articulated. Is anybody happy now? Only the little dingbats running Congress like Make Johnson and Majorie Taylor Green.

It’s true this trip gave me a chance at a couple of things I never planned for, a big time book deal with a New York agent and major publishing house, and a chance to make it on public radio. We are still waiting to hear back from New York and Los Angeles, so a four book deal is still in play. The first one being the story of Wayne Perkins, a Third Edition of my memoir Jump on the Bus with a new rock and roll lead chapter, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll But I Like It, as well as a book on Spider Martin and another on Flying V blues rock legend Lonnie Mack.

For that matter, my long-term plan to ultimately end up in California is also still in play, and the options there are getting better and better. In addition to a chance to help bring back the Hotel Jeffery in Coulterville, California where John Muir met Teddy Roosevelt and went camping in Yosemite Valley for a week with no Secret Service present, then coming out with a plan to start building national parks, there is a new campground in the works in the shadow of Yosemite and I have the inside track to become its manager with a free place to live and a paycheck to boot.

But first I need to make it back to Maryland for cataract surgery, to help manage a large national park campground where there is a staff shortage due to Trump’s attack on the National Park Service, and to see if I can find and write some stories that might make a difference. Admittedly it’s a long shot, because people do not trust the news anymore, relying more and more on podcasters for information and entertainment.

But I feel like I have to try. That’s been my mission for more than 40 years, so it seems like I have to try one more time before giving up the ghost.

With us luck, dear Hobbits, and as always, we hope to see you again somewhere down the dusty trail.

Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More…

We will need your help one more time, if you can spare a dollar or a dime.

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