The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

I must admit that I was not watching when No. 1 Alabama beat No. 22 Auburn on Saturday in the not the Iron Bowl game anymore. But it was impossible not to find out about it on Facebook, where some of my friends still make a big deal out of the game.

It’s kind of funny, but there are still a few dumbass redneck lowlife bullies from my childhood who get their shits and giggles from time to time by calling me names on Facebook. Sticks and stones and all that, losers and suckers.

Since they are stuck in their shitty lives in Alabama with nothing to look forward to but football games on Saturdays, and I guess I’m the only educated liberal they know of, I become the subject of their stupid jokes from time to time, even as they steal our copyrighted picture of Nick Saban to post their Roll Tides when Alabama wins another game.

There’s no sense in trying to argue with these dumbasses in Facebook comments, since they live in an alt-right universe now in which facts have no bearing at all. They are suffering now because their great white hope racist president is going down to defeat, and they won’t have a liar-in-chief to legitimize their ignorant views from the White House anymore.

That’s OK. I’m having a ball camping out in a writers cabin in the mountains of North Carolina for the winter, just trying to stay away from people infected with COVID — especially rednecks who won’t wear masks or practice social distancing — until we can get a legitimate administration instituted that will actually run the government and get a handle on this pandemic instead of politicizing and weaponizing the tools we need to beat it.

These same so-called friends, some of whom can’t stand Auburn and make no secret of that on their Facebook pages on a weekly basis during football season, voted in November for a failed, corrupt former Auburn football coach for the United States Senate. Very soon they will find out just what a mistake that was, when Tommy Tuberville finds himself an idiot on a back bench in the Senate with a Democrat in the White House and Democrats in charge of the House.

He will do absolutely nothing for the people of Alabama, but apparently they doesn’t bother them. They think they don’t need government anyway, except of course when they need federal unemployment benefits, Social Security checks and health care they can’t afford to pay for.

These people don’t know a thing about me, since I have’t seen many of them in more than 40 years. I got out of the racist, white flight suburbs and went away to college at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1981, a place they’ve only been for football games. I came back 10 years later for grad school too, and successfully completed a Master’s degree. They’ve never seen much less read a college textbook and never seen the inside of a college classroom. They still live in a world defined by what happened in high school, where I was actually very famous and popular and played the drums in the marching band and rock and roll bands.

They were nobodies then, and they are nobodies now. Trump just made them feel like somebody for a few years. But he will be gone from the scene soon, hopefully prosecuted and sent into exile, if the Biden Justice Department fails to prosecute him.

These poor, pathetic excuses for human beings probably can’t read anyway, barely graduated from high school then, and get what little news they consume from NewsMax, Brietbart, Fox News or Trump’s YouTube channel.

But just in case, if they want to criticize me, here’s something to hang your cowboy hat on, rednecks.

A True Believer: American Democracy

I was once called a “true believer” by a best selling author and New York Times correspondent, and it was not meant as a compliment. It’s true. I actually believe in American democracy. And I don’t hesitate to promote it through journalism.

That was 20 years ago, when the news business was full of cynicism and consumed by the pursuit of capitalism. Words like freedom, liberty and democracy were often used by politicians to promote their cynical campaigns.

Donald Trump didn’t even bother to use any of these words, because he clearly doesn’t believe in any of them. He thought he could fool enough of the people enough of the time to get reelected to a second term so he could literally be America’s first dictator-king. And they went right along with the dictator, kissing his ring, all the while parading around claiming it was the Democrats who were threatening their individual liberties to be idiots.

It didn’t work. About 80 million Democrats, Republicans and independents who were appalled by Trump’s course language and ignorant, destructive approach to governing worked altruistically together to register more voters, turn out more voters, to out compete Trump supporters on Facebook and other social media platforms and we came together as Americans who believe in democracy to defeat him.

Turn: Washington’s Spies

Just so everyone will know exactly where I stand, and maybe learn a little something about me, as Zuckerberg knows, just look at what movies and shows I like to watch on Netflix.

For the past few days, I’ve passed the time over the Thanksgiving weekend by rewatching a series called Turn, subtitled “Washington’s Spies,” a series from AMC about the ring of true patriots who played a critical role in defeating the Red Coats of the British Army in the Revolutionary War. I’ve long been more interested in that war than the other one fought over slavery nearly a hundred years later, although for some reason, I still find myself writing about it from time to time.

We Can End the Civil War Once and For All Time on Tuesday, Nov. 3

In Turn, the Long Island farmer and his childhood friends are portrayed like an offshoot of the Sons of Liberty, who play a key role in “turning the tide” in the fight for American independence.

Jamie Bell stars as Abraham Woodhull, a.k.a. Samuel Culper, a Setauket cabbage farmer turned spy. It’s actually a drama based on a true story of the Culper Ring that spied for George Washington for real in the 1770s.

The series with four seasons depicts many important historical characters and stories that were perhaps not revealed in their entirety in high school history classes, where my friends probably didn’t pay attention anyway.

The back story of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware is depicted, as well as how General Benedict Arnold turned on the Revolution and became a traitor to the cause.

Character and Class

I’ve spent my life since leaving my home town trying to become an educated person of some character and class. That’s exactly what their hero Nick Saban tries to teach his student athletes at Alabama, as I wrote about 11 years ago. They didn’t read that either. They still don’t get it.

Maybe his fans should learn a lesson or two about that. They are the reason I don’t pay much attention to football anymore. The entire football culture of machismo and violence seems to me to be bad for the country. That mentality helped Donald Trump become president, as he used the same football stadiums to fool the uneducated masses into voting for him.

I was back in Bryant-Denny Stadium last year briefly when Trump came to Tuscaloosa for the first half of the Alabama-LSU game, pulling for LSU, which won that game 46-41.

I just feel sad for those poor, working class people who never learned any better than to make fun of people on Facebook. As far as I’m concerned, they can take their racist views back to their kitchens. Trump won’t be around to let them bring it out into the open for long, and chances are, they will get banned from Facebook soon anyway. Then what will they do? Where will they turn? To Parler? The new app of the Qanon conspiracy theory right?

Be careful there, though, because the Biden F.B.I. will be watching. And I will be here to cover the story when you get arrested for threatening or committing violence against your fellow Americans.

“Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis,” you fools. Look it up.