The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sometimes epiphanies come in dreams.

I had another one of those this morning as my brain was trying to coax my body into waking up.

Not that I haven’t realized this before, and defied the knowledge.

The scene was set in New Orleans, and I was trying to investigate the real story of a how some people died over the years who challenged the conventional wisdom on stories, but were held down and held back by the powers that be, so to speak.

The mafia was involved, along with the local newspaper management and certain politicians. But that was just in the dream.

An epiphany, from the ancient Greek epiphanea or “manifestation, striking appearance” is an experience of a sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe a scientific breakthrough or a religious or philosophical discovery, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realization allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. Epiphanies are studied by psychologists and other scholars, particularly those attempting to study the process of innovation.

Epiphanies are relatively rare occurrences and generally follow a process of significant thought about a problem. Often they are triggered by a new and key piece of information, but importantly, a depth of prior knowledge is required to allow the leap of understanding.

Famous epiphanies include Archimedes’s discovery of a method to determine the volume of an irregular object (“Eureka!”) and Isaac Newton’s realization that a falling apple and the orbiting moon are both pulled by the same force, which he called gravity.

“We live in the world as it is, but is this all there is? Or is there something more?,” one religious scholar asserts. “Are we satisfied with the status quo, or do we dare to dream a world where babies are kings and where the status quo is challenged?”

Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” is so famous because in naming things as they are, Dr. King paints the picture of a world in the way it could be. A dream of equality, justice for all, a dream of the mountains being brought low and the valleys filled in.

That certainly challenged the conventional wisdom, and King died trying to make it reality.

The epiphany is: People don’t want to know the REAL story. They want a prettied up fairy tale version of an alternative reality. Trump knew this. It’s how he manipulated his working class following. And powerful people who make millions from telling stories don’t want the real story out there either.

Let’s look at a few examples.

I have a long history of trying to find out and tell the real story, in some cases exploding myths. This is not always loved by certain powerful people, who would rather profit from the myth. It’s not always the best thing for a journalist’s career either, believe me. I know.

A long time ago, when I was new in the newspaper business, I tried to tell the story of bootleggers and preachers working together to keep a town in North Alabama dry and in prohibition. It never saw the light of print, because the publisher wanted the town to stay wet — for all the money they could make from alcohol-related ads. I was fired and sued the newspaper in federal court. I won the case. The truth won, but I was black-balled because of it.

I didn’t kill me or my career, however. I persevered.

Here’s an example from New Orleans. In my time in the Crescent City teaching at Loyola and writing for newspapers such as The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, a group of reporters and photographers would be known to gather on the old Audubon Golf Course to knock some balls around for exercise. There was a giant rock on the course that people called “the meteorite.” It even came up in stories now and then in the local press.

But it didn’t look like a meteorite to me, so I conducted an investigation. What I found out ended up being stamped on a plaque when they renovated the golf course later. I presume it’s still there.

I published the story in the local alternative weekly Gambit. The editor went along, but many people were not happy with the true story. This was the lede.

“This may come as a surprise to some, but the so-called meteorite near the No. 8 green at Audubon Park is a chunk of iron ore from Alabama, most likely Birmingham’s Red Mountain. It didn’t drop in from space. It was dropped there by a fool public relations man, and sat there too heavy to move after the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition ended in 1885.”

A Matter of Course

A certain author and former New York Times correspondent from Alabama once told me over a fried chicken lunch that he liked the meteorite story better.

See what I mean?

One more story involving New Orleans, this one taking place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I had moved my stuff back to Birmingham by then and was working on a Bush AWOL story and planning a move to Washington, D.C. But I offered to go back and cover the hurricane, which appeared to be headed right up the mouth of the Mississippi River toward New Orleans.

The last story I covered for The Dallas Morning News was about what would happen if “the big one” came up the river and hit the city.

Global Warming Makes Saving Louisiana’s Wetlands Hard

But the editors I talked to said no, that’s OK. We will send down staff writers to cover it. I was free-lance and charged significant rates. They were cheap, as usual. So I watched from afar and saw them screw up the coverage as usual.

At one point I had a source — a top management level security guard from Alabama who had traveled to New Orleans with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to help out — call and tell me he had been an eye witness to seeing “bodies being stacked up like cord wood” in a warehouse out by the airport. I pitched the story around. Nobody was buying. So I finally just leaked it to a cop reporter I knew from the Times-Picayune newspaper. He just laughed and said that could not be possible, yet an eyewitness — someone who was there and I knew personally to be reliable — said it was true. He saw it with his own eyes.

That story was never told, so the only thing people found out about was what they saw on CNN, and much later, the story about local cops shooting civilians trying to escape the city on a bridge.

So the point for today is, it’s no wonder people, Congress and the press are not interested in telling the real story of what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5 and 6. It doesn’t fit the framing of heroic cops fighting off terrorists and saving democracy.

Never mind all the collusion and collaboration between cops and members of the military, including the leadership, and the role played by members of Congress in inciting, staging and carrying out the insurrection. It seems to be fine to scape goat the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, a few far right fall guys.

But we can’t hold the former president responsible for his role in inciting the insurrection? And Congress will never investigate its own members, the Republicans who were in on the planning and refused to vote for certification of Joe Biden as the legitimate president? Really?

I’ve told the real story of what happened, and gained and lost readers subscribers and donors because of it. Probably gained more than we lost.

Whatever. Call me a true believer, but I believe in chasing the truth. And trying to get it out there.

Believe it? Or not.

You know what happens to journalists who try to do that? They all seem to die by suicide. Remember Gary Webb?

Gary Webb, Dark Alliance and Kill the Messenger

If something happens to me, don’t believe it.

This is my motto.

Fiat justitia ruat caelum: “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

Let the heavens fucking fall.

Trump is a traitor, and so are members of Congress who helped him try to stage a coup against this duly elected government.

If there is any truth to the slogan, “no one is above the law,” then it can’t also be true that you can’t indict a sitting or former president.

The penalty for treason is death.

Let the heavens fall.