In Union there is Strength –

The Lincoln Memorial: Glynn Wilson

“A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”
— Abraham Lincoln

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, N.C. — Why can’t I just wake up on one beautiful spring Sunday morning in America and see beyond the view of the mountains a scene of peace, justice and prosperity coexisting in a country that is supposed to be smart and great?

Does working together to form a more perfect union really require so much hardship? Why does it seem so impossible to educate a population of people with so much in common to simply show up to vote for competent leadership?

Why does this have to be so freaking hard? Why do so many people have to keep dying for this cause?

I would rather be planting more beans in the new garden this morning. Instead I find myself reading stories of massive protests going on not just in American cities, but all over the world.

While I listen to a story on NPR comparing this to the fall of Rome, I am having a hard time watching happy broadcasters play the trumpet and act like all is well in the world, that today is full of more nice little feature stories to tell on “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Douglas Boin Wants To ‘Think Differently About Marginalized People’ In New Book On Ancient Rome

We are still in the middle of a global pandemic that has the world economy on the brink of collapse. Yet all kinds of people on all sides of the various political issues that divide us have overnight abandoned the stay at home orders to march in the streets and destroy not just government buildings, but small businesses that were just getting opened back up after three months of lockdown, some of those minority owned shops.

I’m having trouble breathing here myself, with the economic juggernaut weighing on my neck. I’m having trouble deciding what to do next. Even my basic human instincts are suffering from this seemingly intractable political divide.

While the current crisis is about racial injustice, a long-standing worthy cause, there are many other issues worth protesting about in America today that call for protesters to surround the White House. Women, for example, are still not equal in the U.S., and then there is the class struggle. Economic inequality in America is appalling.

Then of course there is Trump’s corruption and collusion with Russia to undermine American democracy, and his blatant attacks on science and the environment.

I have been calling on people to surround the White House for three years to demand Trump’s resignation. But my idea was a daily, peaceful candle light vigil. Not attacking the place to the point where the peoples’ house had to be blocked off with ugly fencing. Public access to public monuments in the nation’s capital has been diminishing since September 11, 2001. This is a tragedy of its own.

My survival instincts on one hand tell me to stay out of it, to withdraw from the world, to keep myself safe in a rural area where there is a plan being developed to survive an escalation of the pandemic and economic crisis. Mark my word the novel coronavirus pandemic it not over yet. Far from it. The numbers are still growing and reaching deep into rural America.

I fear our economic problems will only be exacerbated by mass protests at this time.

On the other hand, my instincts as a reporter, a writer, a journalist and more importantly as a stakeholder in the American experiment in democracy and the survival of the human species on planet Earth tell me to pack up the camper van and head for the middle of the melee in Washington, D.C.

If I thought my video camera and experienced voice could somehow get out there among all the Facebook live videos and bring wisdom to the streets, I would say to heck with my personal safety and my life and go there to face down the militant police and radical protesters. But then they would most likely just beat me to a pulp or shoot me to death anyway. That is the state of respect for the press in Trump’s and Zuckerberg’s America.

White police officers, taking their lead from Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, are now directly targeting members of the press covering protests. But reporters are also being beaten up by protesters themselves, on the right and the left. Some seem to think they don’t need us anymore, that their causes can be fought without the press, even though the role of the press in fostering democracy is a cornerstone of our foundation.

The police abuse the press. Again.

Then again, the little voice in my head says, why would I put my life on the line for people who are not going to listen anyway? You don’t want my help? You think you know best? Good luck then.

Nobody listens anymore. Everybody now thinks their opinion is all that matters.

This is not all Donald Trump’s fault. We were a selfish and narcissistic people well before he came along and took over the Republican Party and the U.S. government. But he has certainly perfected the art, spread it far and wide in the population like a virus of a meme on Twitter, and found a way at least so far to capitalize on it.

It is also reality now in a world dominated by social media, mainly Facebook, where people demand explanations for the news in the comments and voice their opinions all day long every day, often without reading the stories provided in the links. I’ve offered to build something better, but no one so far seems willing to fund it.

Part III: How to Create a Functioning Communications System to Save Democracy and the Planet

A night view of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.: Glynn Wilson

I’m wondering if the reaction to the mass protests will be enough in November to send Trump packing? Or will the backlash get him four more years to destroy American democracy and the planet forever?

The presidential election of 2020 is still five months away. I know some Democrats think this movement will help drive voter turnout and swing the day in November. I hope they are right.

Birmingham city crews began bringing down the Confederate monument in Linn Park on June 1, 2020: WBRC

I saw that city officials in my home town of Birmingham, Alabama, took down the confederate monument there, and I wanted to celebrate the dawning of a new day because of it. But I’m also seeing how people are reacting to that, and it just seems to be an action that just further divides us as a people — and drives an even harder wedge between us.

Every movement like this comes with a backlash. In science, this is expressed as Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It also works in the social science realm.

My fear is the backlash will act like a political trap and work in Trump’s and Putin’s favor. Imagine the campaign commercials of Black Lives Matter protesters throwing frozen water bottles at police in riot gear, Boogaloo boys breaking windows and looters stealing flat screen TVs.

Trump has already started his “law and order” campaign, appealing to his base with the message that only the U.S. military can stop the disorder and put down the civil unrest. It’s hard to see how violence will do much to get the jackbooted thugs to back off of anyone’s neck. This just seems destined to bring those boots down on us all even harder.

I heard one interview on the radio this week with a BLM protester saying, “We’ve been Martin Luther Kinged long enough. It’s time for Malcolm X.”

What? Non-violence has been shown to work, while violence only begets more violence. It’s hard to see how throwing rocks through a courthouse window, like they did in Birmingham, is going to create more freedom and economic opportunities for African Americans.

Clearly the happiest person in the world today due to the violence gripping American cities is the Russian leader Vladimir Putin who has long tried to find ways to divide and conquer and destroy the world power of the United States and derail its ideals. I can’t help but feel that Putin is the only winner here.

While for some this seems like a day of winning, to me it appears more like the fall of Rome. Maybe the end of the American empire will turn out not to be a bad thing in the end for the planet. But I can’t imagine another place where the ideals of democracy have as much of a chance of flourishing. It just seems like the end.

Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome

I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before and will be again, no doubt, if I make it through this alive. It just doesn’t happen very often.

In all the reading this week, I was most moved by the words of Marine General James Mattis, who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s policy of pulling U.S. troops out of Syria and basically turning that country’s fate over to Russia. Breaking his studious silence about this president’s performance in an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, Mattis takes Trump to task for ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.

“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.”

“We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution,” he continued.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

“We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society,” he says, trying to be hopeful. “This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

He goes on to contrast the American ethos of unity with Nazi ideology.

“Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was ‘Divide and Conquer.’

“Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.”

As long as we are divided, we are conquered, as Abraham Lincoln knew. He died for his beliefs.

I was also moved last week when the National Park Service revived the dormant tradition of reciting the Gettysburg Address.

Perhaps this inspired several writers this week to bring it up in relation to Trump’s behavior. My favorite, which I already shared on Facebook, comes from New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

Donald Trump Is Our National Catastrophe: With malice toward all; with charity for none.

This is unmistakably true. Trump displays malice toward all, charity for none, and shows no respect for American values and ideals, while claiming to be about making America great again. It’s as if he doesn’t know what the values and ideals are — or is simply hell bent on using our existential anxiety to destroy them for his own personal and political gain.

Talking about a prescient analysis, I wrote this in February before the coronavirus hit America.

How Existential Anxiety Leads to Authoritarianism

Then, shortly after I posted this quote on Facebook this week, “Fascism comes to America, wrapped in the flag, carrying a Bible and using the U.S. military against civilians,” Berkeley scholar Robert Reich finally came around to agreeing with me.

I have held off using the f word for three and a half years, but there is no longer any honest alternative. Trump is a fascist, and he is promoting fascism in America.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 3, 2020

Dog help us all.

Since I can’t quite bring myself to make a decision on exactly what to do this Sunday morning, I’m going to plant some more vegetables and see what happens next. Let’s just say the outlook is cloudy and not looking good. I hope to be wrong.

Maybe some of my friends are right who believe in a coming Age of Aquarius. They say that after all this violent conflict, a new day of peace, justice and prosperity will emerge. I would like to think I might be alive to see this one day.

Unfortunately, hope on this day is not strong. I am consumed with a profound sense of sadness. Maybe digging in the earth will help.