The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

MOBILE, Ala. — What would you rather read? A story of gloom and doom or a tale of human hope for the future? Or must we cover both sides?

New American Journal graphic by Evan Riddle

Reading the news online and watching what’s left of the Sunday morning news talk shows on broadcast television as the rain begins to cascade off the roof, again, I sense a great desperation in the land. That could be my own desperation, but I don’t think so.

After more than a year of the Trump Twitter tsunami and the first reality TV presidency the psychological health of the nation and the world seem to be at grave risk.

What kind of a story could I possible tell to change this and help people understand? I don’t know if it’s even possible to write something that will make a difference in this case, but I want to try.

After all, I am a firm believer in the ability of the press to make a difference on public opinion, politics and the environment, something I once proved with academic research against the institutional paradigm. In my experience, I have demonstrated this power on a number of occasions, some of which I outline here.

But the traditional press and media in the United States is clearly more desperate to keep the old economy going than to embrace the change we need and do what it will take to save us. So if we keep going down this path, the story is pretty much a tale of gloom and doom.

What am I seeing and what do I mean?

Since Trump’s election, while many major players in the press and media have acknowledged fault in the way the campaign was covered, even Facebook, much of the intellectual thought on how to fix it involves a desperation to somehow appeal to Trump’s voter base and get them to consume factual news.

There have been all kinds of efforts by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers, and not just in the U.S. The UK Guardian has produced a number of stories trying to appeal to the Trump voter, the Americans who have been called everything from middle class to working class, to “the little man” to Hillary Clinton’s campaign focus group approved term “Everyday Americans,” which never caught on while Trump’s speeches and Twitter insults of her did catch on with these people.

There is an incredibly honest opinion column in the Sunday New York Times written by one of the female correspondents who covered the Clinton campaign under the headline: ‘They Were Never Going to Let Me Be President’. I wish I could get all my Facebook friends who are long-time Hillary Clinton fans to read it, but I suspect many of them have already stopped following me on Facebook because of all the honest and accurate stuff I’ve already published about the campaign. You know how the world works now. If they don’t see you on Facebook, they don’t find out about it and can’t read it, which is crazy when you think about it.

If people are only going to read stuff they agree with 100 percent, we are never going to get out of this mess. More gloom and doom.

John Dickerson of CBS has gone to the trouble to write a cover story for The Atlantic magazine on the presidency, clearly in an attempt to get people to understand the history and the problem.

The Hardest Job in the World

But like the broken office he writes about, trying to appeal to the audience that will never pay attention to this message is like a lone wolf howling at the moon in the wilderness. Those who need to hear the call are never going to hear it. Besides, why at this point would we be interested in saving “the presidency?” Would it not make more sense to weaken the office and get it over with (see argument below)?

I considered writing about Earth Day today. The Times had an interesting piece on it.

America Before Earth Day: Smog and Disasters Spurred the Laws Trump Wants to Undo

But will it sway Trump to change course or convince his followers that their very survival depends on paying attention to this?

Sorry, but the answer is clearly no.

Michael Bloomberg even went on Face the Nation and said EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has “walked away 100 percent” from the job, but who is listening?

Liberals, environmentalists and intellectuals, maybe, but the “Trump voter?” Forget about it.

Earth Day

On Saturday, we went to Fairhope for the Earth Day event. On the way over we listened to National Public Radio for a few minutes, but gave up and turned on some music. NPR has sadly become not just radio for liberals, but Black Lives Matter and LGBT radio, in a way that appears to be designed as if the producers think they are going to get Trump voters and kids to listen and change their world view. This is not going to work.

Same with public television. The Trump voter is already convinced that is all liberal propaganda and they already get their talking points from right-wing commercial talk radio, Fox News and maybe Breitbart. This is not going to change in the foreseeable future. The partisan divide is not going away.

I spent a fair amount of time in Fairhope talking to a tie-dye T-shirt salesman from Mississippi about this very subject. Levi Johnson is also a musician and artist who advocates for social unity, a worthy goal.

Many people now seem to have hope for the future because young people are finally getting involved in the political process, in part because of the backlash against Trump, school shootings and other forms of discrimination like police violence against African Americans. If there is hope, perhaps it is in the next generation of leadership, although we have seen that go south so many times before as apathy and basic economic survival take over after a burst of activism in the aftermath of an external crisis.

So the way I see it we have four basic options.

The one most Democrats think will happen is that enough Democrats will get elected later this year to impeach Trump after special counsel Robert Mueller issues a report on Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Maybe that could happen.

But many people, including fired FBI director James Comey, say that lets the people off the hook and Trump should just be defeated in the voting booth in 2020. That might be harder than it looks.

There are trial balloon rumblings that perhaps Trump could be convinced not to run for reelection in 2020, another option, or that he could be defeated in the Republican primary. I don’t see either of these things happening, so they are probably not viable options.

I have already advocated for arresting Trump now. That would be the best option for deflating Trump’s base of support. Put him on trial on live television and show that the president is not above the law and we can take back the county from the likes of Scott Pruitt and work to turn things around. Unfortunately this probably won’t happen either.

Levi Johnson had another interesting point, however. He thinks the longer Trump is in charge roiling up the country against him the more people will become activists to fight the direction he is taking the ship of state. That is true.

The problem is, how long must this go on before we reach a breaking point of no return? On global warming, climate change and a host of other economic issues? How much of this craziness can we take before we end up in another world war?

Trump may be having fun jumping from his threats of war with North Korea to Iran and launching trade wars with China. It is not fun for the rest of us or the people in those countries and other places where their economy and environment are affected by what Trump says as well as what he does.

We all got spoiled by the class, character and competence of President Barack Obama for eight years. It’s sort of too bad that the 22nd Amendment says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” If it had only prevented consecutive terms, we might could convince Obama to run against Trump in 2020. No doubt he could beat Trump. But that would take passage of another constitutional amendment, not going to happen now.

So at this point there’s no one else on the horizon famous and competent enough to take down Trump in a head-to-head election. Unless Comey thinks he can do it. But he has said he is no longer a Republican and the Clinton Democrats hate him more than Trump supporters.

The logic takes me back to this: Arrest Trump now. What if instead of letting Richard Nixon off the hook by resigning we had tried him as the criminal he was and sent him to prison? Do you think Reagan would have gotten away with Iran-Contra or Bush would have gotten away with the fake WMD war in Iraq if Nixon had done time? Would Trump even be trying some of the stuff he’s doing now if we had shown for real that the president is not above the law?

Now if the New York Times editorial board the CBS News team would get onboard with this argument, we might actually make it happen. Unfortunately they still feel the need to pander to Trump’s base for economic reasons.

Capitalism trumps democracy, again.