Fourth of July 2020 –

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. I

A view of the Statue of Liberty at sunset from the Staten Island Ferry: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, N.C. — It’s such a beautiful, cool summer morning in the mountains as I rise about six. Yet the coffee has a particularly bitter taste on this Fourth of July as American Independence seems to be morphing into something utterly unrecognizable.

How can anyone write about how they will feel on a Sunday if they have to project how they will feel by writing their columns on Wednesday?

This has long been my favorite national holiday, as independence seems more worthy of celebration than the fake Christian holidays polluted with Pagan rituals. But this year as a country we are torn asunder like never before, or at least like nothing since the American Civil War.

This thing the world has long celebrated as American freedom, symbolized by the French-made Statue of Liberty and the red, white and blue Stars and Bars flag, has always been just an ideal. It’s based on a series of narratives and myths built up over the decades into something so idealistic it probably couldn’t hold up and last forever anyway.

The Gateway Arch at the Jefferson Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri: Glynn Wilson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote in the so-called Tree of Liberty Letter. “It is its natural manure.”

Of course that line can be seized upon by both sides of the partisan divide. So maybe it is just a bunch of horse shit, although I do not want to believe that.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, whose accomplishments I will not dismiss and denigrate in a historical fallacy, wrote the line that “all men are created equal.”

Cherry Blossoms at the Jefferson Memorial: Glynn Wilson

Yet as some scholars and journalists are now pointing out, the United States was built on the back of two original sins: By the labor of enslaved people; on stolen lands through the genocide of indigenous peoples.

The revolution wasn’t only an effort to establish independence from the British—it was also a push to preserve slavery and suppress Native American resistance.

At least as long as our politicians were willing to go along with building the myth, it was a beautiful myth.

A view of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota: Glynn Wilson

Now we have our first president who refuses to even try to unite the people and keep the dream alive. Donald Trump just had the unmitigated gall to go to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and shoot fireworks in a close crowd of unmasked white conservatives and called protesters on the left “fascists.”

What? Anybody who knows anything about Political Science and the political spectrum knows that fascism belongs on the far right on the graph.

Perhaps this president is confused by his friendship with his financier, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has managed to turn a communist country into a fascist-capitalist country in a generation.

Trump barely mentioned the novel coronavirus in his campaign speech, allowed by the National Park Service on federal land stolen from the Sioux, even though it has now killed more than half a million people worldwide and more than 130,000 in the U.S.

What are the masses of average 100 IQ people supposed to think, when they can’t get anything resembling the truth from cable news? Where everything is a partisan, political fight, and not just on Fox News.

It is somehow understandable that the native Americans would be upset, still, and that young African Americans are just not right with taking it anymore. In spite of the election of the first African American president just 12 years ago, our American story doesn’t seem to be working for the natives, or the descendants of slaves.

So what is a country to do? Tear down all the statues and start over? Defund the corrupt, racist police departments? Maybe it’s a start.

But I am troubled by some of this, and it’s now obvious that our education system is just not working either. It’s not their fault, but the young African American men in my home town of Birmingham who were caught on video starting a fire under the Thomas Jefferson statue, not the Jefferson Davis statue, and throwing rocks through the courthouse window as the Birmingham police looked on without tossing tear gas grenades or charging into the crowd with billy clubs, would do well to go online and study this story a little more — if they expect to change the narrative in useful, constructive ways.

University of Alabama students who were caught betting on who would get the coronavirus first in bars might also need to spend a little time in a jail cell to revaluate what freedom and an education mean.

If we must tear down this system to rebuild it — right in the middle of a global pandemic and economic depression – we better understand where we are coming from, what’s wrong with the stories we have been living by, and figure out where we are planning to go with this story in the future.

Anarchy on either side just leads to more anarchy. If you think you can build a better life for yourself with more anarchy and chaos, you are sadly, tragically mistaken.

Rather than throwing rocks and stealing what’s left of the fast food, fake cheese and processed mystery meat in the quick mart, somebody better start planting gardens of fresh vegetables. Call it a liberty garden or a crisis garden and add a zen garden, whatever.

Of course I recommend getting away from overcrowded cities to sparsely populated, fertile areas with plenty of local produce and fresh water — in a camper van — and finding farmers to help. That is my altruistic mission. I am as free as a bird. Won’t you join me? Or at least help finance it?

The #Vanlife Business Is Booming

An American bald eagle, along the cliffs over the Potomac River in Virginia: Glynn Wilson