But you don’t have to watch or listen. Read the news in the morning, then go for a hike –
Glynn Wilson
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It must have been just another ho-hum day on the job for Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. Board Air Force One at Maxwell Air Force Base with your travel bag and laptop to tag along as President Donald Trump pretends he wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize and end the war in Ukraine by meeting with Russia’s right-wing dictator president Vladimir Putin at another military base in Anchorage, Alaska.
All you really have to do is record what Trump says and type it up, and then write a story about how Trump and Putin agreed on One Thing: The war in Ukraine is Biden’s fault, not Putin’s.
Trump and Putin Find Common Ground on One Issue: Biden
It must be a pretty cushy job if you can stomach it. I could not for all the money Newhouse paid star writers in the gilded age of magazines.
The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth
I’m afraid I would be tempted to smuggle in a ghost gun to take out America’s first fascist dictator, since the power of the pen appears to have no real power anymore.
It’s a wonder that Iran, with an $80 million price tag on Trump’s head, has not employed a shoulder-fired missile to take out Marine One as it flies over the Potomac River around here, to rid the world of the commander in chief who ordered bunker busting bombs dropped on their nuclear plants in operation “Midnight Hammer” back in June.
NAJ – GW
I have this recurring dream based on the film “Charlie Wilson’s War” when Texas Congressman (Tom Hanks) meets with Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) and they keep talking about what the Afghans need to fight the Russians and “shoot down those damn helicopters.”
It’s based on a true story and the Republican Congressman was given the highest honor by the clandestine services for his role in helping to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and win and end the Cold War against Russia. Now the occupant of the White House is a partner and tool of another Russian dictator. Where did we go wrong?
Trump E.P.A. to Reconsider Biden’s Ban on Asbestos: Does Trump Have a Conflict of Interest?
It seems to me Alan Feuer has a better job at the Times, covering extremism and political violence, including the former criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against Trump. (They should probably update his bio note).
“During President Trump’s first turn in the White House,” he recently wrote, “right-wing extremists like the Proud Boys were on the streets, weekend after weekend, raising their voices — and oftentimes their fists — about issues such as immigration, the squelching of conservative speech and the removal of Confederate-era statues. But in the first seven months of Mr. Trump’s second term, there has been a conspicuous absence of far-right demonstrations. And that, some leaders of the movement say, is because the president has effectively adopted their agenda.”
“Things we were doing and talking about in 2017 that were taboo, they’re no longer taboo — they’re mainstream now,” said Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, who took part in many of those early far-right rallies. “Honestly, what do we have to complain about these days?”
Whether it is dismantling diversity programs, complaining about anti-white bias in museums or simply promoting an aura of authoritarian nationalism, Feuer points out, “Mr. Trump has embraced an array of far-right views and talking points in ways that have delighted many right-wing activists who have long supported those ideas.”
Last week, in fact, on the eighth anniversary of the violent far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where neo-Nazis marched by torchlight chanting about immigrants and Jews, Augustus Sol Invictus, a Florida lawyer who helped organize the event, marveled at how thoroughly the Trump administration had adopted a position that had once been on the fringes of political discourse.
“Eight years ago you were an extremist if you protested being replaced by immigrants,” Mr. Invictus wrote on social media. “Your life was over if you talked about stopping or reversing it. Now it is official @WhiteHouse policy.”
In Trump’s Second Term, Far-Right Agenda Enters the Mainstream
For the record, I also covered events related to the Neo-Nazi actions in Charlottesville and D.C., and got to know some of the activists with Antifa in campgrounds. A simple search on the NAJ for “Antifa” turned up 35 stories.
During the Biden administration, Feuer points out, “far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were severely hobbled, largely by the criminal prosecutions of dozens of their members who took part in the Capitol attack.”
The Oath Keepers, for example, “a militia-style group of current and former military and law enforcement personnel, barely exists anymore. Its founder, Stewart Rhodes, no longer appears in public as often as he once did at far-right demonstrations or standoffs with the government.”
While some far-right groups, like the fascist organization Patriot Front, have continued to stage public demonstrations, researchers at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a nonprofit organization that tracks political violence, have found far fewer right-wing protests this year compared with recent years, the Times reports.
“In addition to the disruptions stemming from the Jan. 6 criminal prosecutions, some experts in far-right extremism say that the relative quiet of extremists is because the Trump administration has enacted much of their agenda.”
“The rise of alt-right a decade ago was a backlash against the first Black president and ideas of progress in race and immigration,” said Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “Now, a decade later, we’ve seen the opposite of those ideas normalized in the highest levels of power, including at the White House.”
Echoing Tarrio, she added, “Why do you need to protest when the White House is basically doing what you want?”
It’s a far, far, far right world they are creating in Washington these days, and so far the only thing the other side can muster to counter the new Neo-Nazis in charge are a few funny signs and some big talk.
Democratic Leadership Responds to Trump Threat to Orchestrate a Federal Takeover of Washington, D.C.
If you thought the Neo-Cons were bad, this is far, far worse.
Then there is Gavin Newsom, governor of California, who I plan to meet with soon once I make it to California. That’s where the real resistance to Trump is now based.
Governor Newsom, California leaders make major announcement countering Trump’s gerrymandering scheme
Meanwhile, I’m with NYTimes columnist Nicholas Kristof.
“America is losing credibility as a democracy, with Freedom House now ranking the United States less free than former dictatorships such as Argentina, Taiwan and the Czech Republic,” he writes. “We lag in well-being, with life expectancy shorter in Washington than in Beijing. We trail in education: A young person in once-impoverished South Korea is today far more likely to finish high school and get a college education than an American.
“Yet there is at least one area where the United States still excels: our wild places. We have some of the world’s most glorious wilderness — and if you want to salve the pain of other national failures, one of the best ways to do that is to accumulate blisters and mosquito bites on our magnificent hiking trails.” (Well I don’t agree with him on blisters and mosquito bites. There are ways to avoid that pain, if you are smart).
“Taking in these trails is also an opportunity to contrast today’s political myopia with the foresight of visionaries like President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, his conservationist friend,” he continues, “who under Roosevelt became the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service (and later served as the governor of Pennsylvania). Many government policies are forgotten just a few years later, but the instinct of Roosevelt and Pinchot to set aside wild public lands is one that enriches us more than a century afterward: It helped preserve wild places for us to enjoy, and for our unborn great-grandchildren to cherish in the 22nd century.”
He says he’s backpacked his whole life, including three trips this summer.
“…but in recent years,” he says, “as world and national events have become dispiriting, the wilderness has become particularly important to my sanity. Some people see therapists; I visit mountains. … So when friends are overwhelmed by the craziness of national and world events, when we’re angry at one another and all society feels taut, my counsel is simple: Take a hike.”
At Times Like These, My Advice: Take a Hike!
I don’t backpack. I’ve been a van camper for more than three decades. But I’ve hiked in National Parks from Shenandoah to Yellowstone, and will be hiking in Yosemite soon, where John Muir camped with Teddy Roosevelt and came away with America’s best idea. It was there they came up with the idea to begin setting aside the nation’s most scenic and environmentally sensitive wild places, yet allowing public access so the people could see and experience them for themselves.
President Teddy Roosevelt with John Muir while camping in Yosemite Valley in 1903: NAJ screen shot
If Trump has his way, Kristof failed to point out, they will be mined, drilled, clear cut, developed and privatized from sea to shining sea. No more purple mountains majesty, or “liberty in law.”
We cannot let this happen. I’ll be damned if I’ll sit idly by and let him get away with this. I may only have words to say, write, publish and share.
But what about those damn helicopters?
Cue Valkyrie!!!
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