Live with that if you can –

“In absolute government, the King is law.”
– Thomas Paine

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The news business is dead.

Just ask The Washington Post: The latest news? Not right now, thanks.

Long live the news writers who braved to tell it like it is and not suck up to the powerful to live a comfortable suburban life as the world burns.

Sorry kids. A friend and former photographer and I recently shared a few IPAs and barbecue at Jim ‘N’ Nick’s in Five Points South, along with a few laughs in spite of the times we find ourselves living in as the 2024 election went awry. I told him a couple of funny stories about things I’ve noticed since making the trip back to my home town for a documentary film premiere.

Jim ‘n’ Nick’s BBQ: Glynn Wilson

He suggested that I write a funny column about it like Lewis Grizzard used to do, back when the world was a little more normal and not so screwed up.

I thought about it. For several days. And tried to work up to doing funny. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Nothing about this is funny.

Although I will say that standing in line at the Sam’s Club in Trussville and watching the little old ladies wait patiently for the rotisserie chickens to come out of the oven at precisely 11 a.m. was a pretty funny scene. It is apparently a daily ritual around here. I munched on black grapes while we waited, a little worried that I might get busted for shop lifting for eating the fruit before paying for it. But nobody said anything.

Suburban life is what it is when you live on what they call a “fixed income.”

I’m wondering what all these Trump voters will all do when he gets around to gutting Social Security and loses everyone’s retirement income in a bad bet at investing it in the stock market, after it all crashes when all the new, higher tariffs on imported goods causes inflation to come roaring back at record levels.

You don’t like the price of eggs and gas now? Just wait a few months.

Not many people will be able to afford the rotisserie chickens then, not even at Walmart prices.

Will they regret their votes then? Sorry. It will be too late.

Will they then pray to Jesus to feed them by turning two fish and a loaf of bread into a meal for all? Exactly how would that work? I can’t wait to find out.

I can’t remember off the top of my head what the other funny thing was.

But I did think it was pretty funny that Charles Bethea, the Atlanta correspondent with The New Yorker, recently went out on a field trip with some right-wing former military preppers and took in some of the training for himself.

The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War

You may recall he’s the writer who picked up my breaking news story back in 2017 that former judge Roy Moore was banned from the Gadsden Mall for hitting on teen aged girls while he was an assistant district attorney in Etowah County. That story, of course, was picked up by every news outlet in the land and every late night talk show host on TeeVee, helping to elevate Birmingham lawyer Doug Jones to the United States Senate. Too bad it was only for a half a term.

The Final Breach of Judge Roy Moore is At Hand

Americans have totally lost the ability to learn anything from the news as the watching of TikTok videos and Reels on Facebook has taken over their brains and they don’t even know it. It’s all about how people spend their time on a daily basis. It used to be 30 minutes reading the newspaper, a couple of hours of radio, and then four hours or so of television. The internet started cutting into newspaper reading 30 years ago, then radio and later television and movie programming moved online too. Then social media came along and blew everything up.

The human brain is simply not capable of keeping up with it all, opening the door for the next phase of the evolution of technology, Machine Learning, or Artificial Intelligence, which will in the not too distant future take over much of the production of information and many more thousands of writers, photographers, editors, producers and even programmers or “coders” will no longer be needed once the bots are capable of writing their own code.

They promised a guaranteed minimum income for putting us out of work. Where is it?

Anyway, on the way down to Southside, I was trying to remember things and places I used to like to go when I lived here back when. I stopped by Highland Golf Course and ordered a Bloody Mary, taking in the view from the clubhouse, where I used to hang out with guitar player Rick Kurtz back in the day. He’s dead now, like many of my friends.

The view of Highland Golf Course from the Clubhouse on Birmingham’s Southside: Glynn Wilson

I stopped in to see Don Murdoch at Highland Music, still there on Claremont Avenue. It used to be at 30th Street and Highland Avenue back in the late 1980s, when I had the NewsBreak newsstand, book store and coffee bar before Starbucks came along and capitalized on the coffee craze.

He had a black set of Ludwig drums with Zildjian symbols on sale for $350, momentarily allowing me to fantasize for a few brief moments about getting back into the rock and roll business. But it never worked out before. How could it possibly work now?

I also got an ironic laugh this morning at the naïveté of The Washington Post, when a writer there went out of his way to defend the so-called “deep state,” and tried to make the case that they would out last Trump. These people are so arrogant and full of shit that it will almost be worth it to see them forced into early retirement when nobody reads the paper anymore, online or in print.

Report from inside the ‘deep state’: We’re not going anywhere

But it reminded me of something Thomas Paine wrote back in 1776, when writing, newspapers, books and history meant something.

“In absolute government, the King is law,” Paine wrote.

Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, & Despots

But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

A government of our own is our natural right: and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello may hereafter arise [Note: Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman of Naples, who after spiriting up his countrymen in the public market place, against the oppression of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day became King], who, laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, finally sweep away the liberties of the Continent like a deluge.

In Common Sense (January 1776) Thomas Paine galvanized the American public with the thought that full independence from Britain was possible. It marked an important intellectual phase of the movement when many individuals in the North American colonies began to think that there were two alternatives that were now possible: an alternative to British rule and an alternative to rule by a single man.

In these passages Paine worries about a newly independent America reverting to a monarchy. Paine thought an agitator like Massanello might prey on discontent to take over the government and declare himself king. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Robert Livingston (December 1800), worried in a similar fashion that republicanism in America was only skin deep and that there lurked a monarchie masquée (hidden monarchy) just below the surface. It should be remembered that there were some who thought George Washington should have been a monarch not a president in the new American nation. In Paine’s strict republican view if there were to be “king” it would have to be the rule of law not that of a single man. Furthermore, if a day of celebration were to be set aside then homage should be paid to the law (the “Charter”), a crown set upon it to remind those gathered that “the law is king”, and at the end of the ceremony the crown should be smashed and scattered among the people as a reminder that the notion of kingship is a dangerous thing in a free republic.

Thanks to Trump, and social media, we forget. Maybe when they can’t afford the gas to get to the Sam’s Club to buy the rotisserie chickens they will remember. But don’t hold your breath. It’s over. It’s just a matter of time.

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