“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
― Sir Isaac Newton

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sitting here in front of a big screen hooked up to the internet on a late summer morning and wondering what to say about a nagging question on the future of humanity and democracy, I find my mind wandering and wondering what the world must have been like in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton and the Royal Society of London published Principia Mathematica.

Newton describes a law of universal gravitation, that is “what goes up must come down.” He sets forth an explanation of the laws of mechanics, including the third law of motion, which simply stated says: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” He also provides a mathematical formula for calculating the speed of sound.

The writing of Principia ushers in a wave of changes in human thought, significantly accelerating the scientific revolution by providing new and practical intellectual tools, and becomes the foundation of modern physics.

But from other writings, we know that Newton was as puzzled by the idiocy of some human behavior as those who put down the first version of the Christian Bible.

It comes as no wonder to me why early scholars predicted the imminent end of the world, since it must have appeared as though people were so stupid they would fuck it all up like any day now.

That sums up how I tend to feel on a semi-regular basis, although every now and then, people seem to find a way to rally and vow to live another day.

Election Day in November 2020 was such a day. Even while we were still waiting on the Covid-19 vaccines to be developed, the outcome of the election was enough to give us some hope.

It’s Official: Trump is A Loser – Biden is President-Elect

Twenty-five years ago I was so immersed in both the literature of science and the social sciences that I formulated Wilson’s first social law based on Newton’s laws: “For every high there is an equal and opposite low.”

Anyone who has ever experienced a hangover should be able to provide empirical evidence to back up the truth of this law.

Of course I was being a bit funny when I posted it on the early web, providing a theory to live by to avoid the worst of the laws from getting too high: “When the going gets rough, keep an even keel and head for the beach.”

FAST

These days I tend to favor mountains over beaches, but the laws remain the same.

Except in the House of Representatives, where facts no longer matter.

As I have hinted before, I will quit the damn news business before I will cover the Trump MAGA world as if it was normal. A simple glance at the headlines anywhere else will show you that every other news outfit in the land is trying to do just that. I refuse to play that game, even if it means we have to shut down and go out of business.

Scanning the world trying to find something worth covering, I recently picked up on a story from the New York Times.

Presidential Centers Issue Joint Statement Urging Civility in Politics to Protect Democracy

Of course I was more critical of this statement than the Times, which covered it straight, and one of George W. Bush’s supporters who saw it tried to post a comment questioning me about my motivation. The comment ended up in the spam folder, so I didn’t publish it or reply to it. The poster used an anonymous identity and a fake email address. I refuse to publish that kind of crap, which is one of the ways we are different.

But the more I thought about it, it might be worth responding here. This is the comment that came in on this page:

Welcome to the New American Journal

I am very curious about your news service. At a glance it seems like a breath of fresh air in today’s politically driven media climate. All the major news sources slant their stories one way or the other. You describe yourself “practice a form of objective public service journalism based on a scientific definition of the term that explains what’s going on in the world without all the extremist, two-sided pretense of other for-profit news outfits that constantly push sensational clickbait and treat news as a commodity.”

However, as I look deeper into your articles they all seemed to be heavily slanted to the left, just like all the other news outlets. Two of the examples you give on your site as proof of your objectivity and effectiveness are about how you helped defeat conservative views and help Democrats gets elected.

I want to believe that you are truly unbiased and not trying to change the minds of Americans by only reporting what you want to. I write this to you hoping you can explain this to me.

What makes you different from every other bought and paid for Democratic extremist news source?

First of all, we know from academic research in communications that bias is always in the mind of the beholder. This person is obviously a right-winger claiming that “every other bought and paid for Democratic extremist news source” and “all major news sources slant their stories one way or another.”

This is false on the face of it. Just because Fox News always slants to the right does not mean MSNBC always slants to the left just because some of their commentators are liberals or Democrats.

There is a popular meme on social media that says the facts and reality have a liberal bias. This seems more true than ever, but it was even true in Bush’s day, when there was no Weapons of Mass Destruction program being developed in Iraq.

Many critics have found just as much reason to claim that the New York Times is “conservative” as those who claim it is “liberal.” The Times has always published columnists of both slants on its editorial and commentary pages to present a balanced view, and tried to avoid blatant bias on the news pages. As I have written before, if the Times has a built in bias, it is one of being the Fourth Estate and part of the “establishment” in the United States of America. You might say it is part of the “Deep State,” but then that would show your own anti-establishment bias, would it not?

This is how objective news worked in the 20th century, if not before in the 19th, or since in the 21st.

I wrote that mission statement long before Trump came along and blew up American Democracy and tried to overthrow the government to implement himself as America’s first authoritarian dictator. At the time, in 2014, I was still willing to search for someone of a more conservative bent to publish in this journal and to quote in articles. But in this new time we live in, AT or After Trump, we must acknowledge that authoritarian dictatorship amounting to a form of fascism is NOT an equivalent competitor in a democracy. It is the intellectual opposite of democracy, and must be stopped by whatever means necessary.

I probably shouldn’t mention it, but I was recently party to a conversation between a conservative ranger and a Trump supporter who was camping near Washington, D.C. to attend the trials of the Proud Boys and protest on their behalf downtown. Of course the Trump supporters were trying to cheat by stealing free nights without paying for camp sites, and sneaking to stay in the campground longer than the allotted 14 days in a calendar year. Because of the influence of Trump on our culture, nearly everybody seems to cheat these days, even people who claim to be willing to fight for “freedom.”

To end the conversation and get rid of the MAGA MoFo for good, I only had one question: “You say you stand for freedom. So why are you so willing to fight for authoritarian dictatorship? How is that freedom?”

The response? Stunned silence. He turned and walked away and left the campground.

Should Biden Be Impeached? For What?

Now I have just one more thing to report on today. I have no interest whatsoever in covering House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s idiotic plan to hold impeachment hearings of President Joe Biden. I could write something funny about it, but I found that New York Times opinion columnist David French did a pretty good job of summing it up.

Notice that even this “liberal” columnist goes out of his way to show that he is willing to consider any real evidence showing Biden corruption, if there was any, which there is not.

“I do not write this piece to vouch for Joe Biden’s integrity or to defend any aspect of Hunter Biden’s conduct or career. If solid evidence of profound misconduct did exist — equivalent to proof of Clinton’s false statements under oath, Trump’s quid pro quo phone call with Zelensky or Trump’s riot — then opening impeachment proceedings would be an entirely proper response. But an impeachment inquiry in the absence of such evidence is an abuse of the House’s power, one that represents yet another dangerous escalation of American political combat.”

Where Is the Evidence, Speaker McCarthy?

The MAGA camper at one point asked, “So what about Hunter Biden’s laptop?”

“What about it?” I asked. “As a news story, it’s a nothing burger. There is no there there.”

At some point we have to be interested in reporting facts, not just both sides of biased opinion. That was the problem with the 20th century model of objective journalism.

That’s how we are different. We will not kowtow to both sides just to make a buck. If only one side appears to be working to try to save democracy and the planet, then we have no choice but to take sides on both of those fronts.

Everything else is biased commentary.

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