Existential Anxiety – Oil on canvas 16×20 – New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon [Art Market Place]

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A storm is coming.

More than one storm in fact.

This might be a good time to plan an escape from staying inside the Beltway in the nation’s capital region, with all the traffic and tension that goes with living in such a place.

When we sit around the campfire 10 miles north of the Washington Monument and the conversation turns to all the problems in the world, I’m sometimes asked: Are we not facing a looming disaster ahead?

“Absolutely,” I answer. “We’re hurtling toward more than one looming disaster.”

Crisis of Democracy

We are facing a major crisis of democracy, when roughly half the American people are so confused and mislead by propaganda on social media and cable TV news talk that they still mistake a corrupt, grifter and now a convicted felon as not just a legitimate candidate for president, but some kind of white, nationalist savior on the side of a radical, right-wing vision of God.

This is a vision that threatens to destroy American democracy, dependent as it has always been on a separation of church and state, which is being obliterated at every turn from the White House to the Supreme Court to state legislatures in red states and even down to the school board level all over the country, where radical, right wing Christian Republicans have taken over and vow to ban controversial books and even close down libraries and obliterate an accurate teaching of American history in favor of a white-washed, religious myth.

In some good news on that front, there is some evidence that the unanimous guilty verdict in the New York Hush Money trial may be eroding at least some of Trump’s support. Is the worm turning against Trump – finally?

Trump Guilty Verdict Moves Voters

The Environment

We also face a series of environmental disasters, many due to climate change from global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation.

But again, half the country has been fooled into believing this is some liberal myth.

No matter how much money the Biden administration allocates to tackle some of our most pressing environmental problems, the news is buried by all the sensational clickbait being spread on cable TV news talk and social media about Trump. Even what’s left of the mainstream, traditional press and media in this country can’t seem to get the word out on these stories. Most people don’t even know about them. How could they? They are not exactly going viral or trending on Twitter (X), Facebook, YouTube or TikTok.

Biden Administration Releases Stronger Clean Air Rules for Chemical Plants and New Standards for Regulating Chemicals in Drinking Water

Biden Administration Announces Tough Auto-Emissions Standards to Combat Climate Change and Promote Electric Vehicles

Media Crisis

Which points to another crisis, the break down of the power of the press in this country to cover enough news accurately to get the mass public to understand what’s actually going on and put breaking news events into historical, political context.

I’ve spent most of my career as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and web publisher making a difference on public affairs here and there, when the right stories come along. But no amount of accurate information seems to matter anymore, when most people are not paying attention or paying attention to the wrong things.

I’ve spent the past decade in and around the nation’s capital covering the stories I can get to, and sharing the rest. But the bots and social media algorithms have been tweaked against us for years, replacing the timely news story with funny memes and the personal memory replacing actual history.

If there is any truth to the phrase, sometimes attributed to philosopher George Santayana, that “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it,” we are headed for trouble.

So I’m headed out soon. I do not want to remain this close to Washington to have to endure the summer heat in July and August, or even through the November election, when all hell could break loose. I’m headed to the mountains, and will give you a detailed update when I know more.

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