The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – If a story could change the misdirection of our country, I would write it.

If a song could save the day, I would play and sing it.

If a movie or show could make the people understand, I would produce it.

If an A.I. bot could turn the tide, I would employ it.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to turn things around, but we need to find it.

This land is your land, this land is my land. It was made for you and me, not he, no king.

This Saturday, June 14, is Flag Day. But downtown in the nation’s capital city, the streets will rumble and tear under the tread of a mad mob boss dictator’s military parade. The streets will be closed to traffic as tanks roll in front of the White House so Donald Trump can celebrate his 79th birthday like the dictators he admires in Russia and North Korea.

What a sad state of affairs.

If I was free, untethered, I would be there, the sole citizen standing in front of the tank like the Tank Man, or the Unknown Protester or Unknown Rebel in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989. Or at least to be there to photograph this monstrous insult to American democracy.

Instead, I will build and light a fire as a National Park Service ranger tells a story about a flag.

The national flag of the United States, often referred to as the American flag or the U.S. flag, consists of 13 horizontal stripes, alternating red and white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows, where rows of six stars alternate with rows of five.. The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 U.S. states, and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that won independence from Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War.

Flag Day commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. The Flag Resolution stated “That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

Flag Day was first proposed in 1861 to rally support for the Union side of the American Civil War. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation that designated June 14 as Flag Day. On August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was officially established by an Act of Congress.

No King Day

Donald Trump posted this image from his social media platform on the White House website, proving what we’ve been saying all along. He literally wants to be the first king of America, an authoritarian dictator who destroys American democracy: NAJ screen shot

Our proud tradition of establishing a democratic republic with no king began in early December 1783, when George Washington, who was so popular he could have become a king for life, instead bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern and resigned as commander-in-chief. In a final appearance in uniform, he gave a statement to the Congress:

“I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them, to His holy keeping.”

Washington’s resignation was acclaimed at home and abroad, “extolled by later historians as a signal event that set the country’s political course.”

Trump is what happens when people forget or fail to learn history. He and others involved in this most corrupt administration by far in American history want to obliterate history, to try and rewrite it to serve rich, white oligarchs, and the bots will be programmed to go along as long as they are unregulated and people like JD Vance and the Heritage Foundation are calling the shots. Plus their allies from Silicon Valley, like tech billionaires Elon Musk and right-winger Peter Thiel have their way.

Thiel’s program Palantir now has a multi-million dollar contract to gather and collate every bit of data on every American across government agencies and plug it into a program his own employees have called a massive threat to democracy itself in a letter to the country.

“… democracy faces escalating threats: biometric data collection on immigrant children, journalists being targeted, science programs defunded, and key U.S. allies, like Ukraine, sidelined. Trump’s administration has sought to greatly expand executive powers while alluding to monarchy,” adding that: “Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend.”

The signees highlight what they say is Palantir’s “increasingly violent rhetoric,” a nod to Palantir chief executive Alex Karp, who publicly boasts about how the company’s tools are used to kill enemies. He once jokingly said that Wall Street analysts who “tried to screw” the company should be sprayed with “light fentanyl-laced urine.”

The letter also zeros in on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, which has hired a number of former Palantir employees to assist in slashing and burning the federal government.

The tech workers admonish the White House for its moves with DOGE and beyond to undo diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, arguing that those principles “remain essential for critiquing power” and ensuring advanced A.I. is deployed ethically.

“As Musk’s DOGE operation dismantles U.S. government institutions under the guise of exposing corruption, opposition remains silent,” the workers write. “Government databases are already erasing references to transgender people and gender-affirming care. These injustices could be facilitated by the very software infrastructure we help build.”

Their aim, they write is “to speak out while we still can, and to work against the dangerous path in the history of technology we are currently heading down towards.”

Related: Chances Are Elon Musk is Already Using Your Data Collected Illegally by DOGE in Building His A.I. Machine Grok

It’s up to the people now to stand up and stop this.

This land is your land, and it is my land. It was made for you and me and EVERYBODY! Not just the likes of Trump and his cult of cronies and MAGA dupes.

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