Trump’s America: New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

We have only 16 days to go until you know who will be sworn in again in Washington, so time is of the essence.

President Joe Biden and his White House staff, along with all the federal agencies, are taking steps to try to prevent the destruction of his legacy by the next administration. They are spending money like crazy, funding all the projects they can from Biden’s infrastructure rebuilding legislation, hoping to get the projects underway to make it impossible for the next administration to halt them. Millions of jobs are being created, and the economy is benefiting from that in all kinds of ways.

But it takes time, and since the stories are not really being covered because they are considered “boring,” most people don’t even know about them.

Meanwhile, the incoming cabinet, which seems hell bent on destruction, not helping anybody or anything except themselves and their bottom lines, will do its best to destroy us all, especially those of us with the courage to tell the unvarnished truth.

The political game these days seems to be about making outrageously false statements in the interest of fooling as many people as possible and focusing the public on the alt-facts, not the facts, and keeping people distracted by sensational nonsense at every turn. This outrageousness is now a news value in and of itself, replacing news values like timeliness and accuracy.

The news media has been letting them get away with this for years, profiting from the “both sides” of it all. We dropped this charade a long time ago. Perhaps that’s why we have no profits. Our goal all along was to raise enough revenue to cover our expenses to do what we thought was right, trying to inform people in a way that helps them get past all the garbage on talk radio and cable TV news talk.

But we seemed to crossed the Rubicon back in November, in more ways than one, when a small majority of the American people voted to keep the fake news era going for another four years.

I’ve been studying up on some of the people who keep falling for this, and it seems people are more “entertained” by the crazy messages and do not understand it when politicians simply make informed policy statements or speeches. They are bored by the statement of the facts.

Even Kamala Harris fell prey to this during the campaign, when at first she was not granting interview to the mainstream media, and then when she did, what she said sounded a lot like Hillary Clinton in 2016. Call it political-speak.

Much of this is over people’s heads, since they don’t understand how government works. Apparently they like Trump because he either doesn’t understand it either, or pretends not to for their benefit.

I’ve posted this quote and story a thousand times, but I am going to keep on posting it, because this is the story that explains it best, including the role social media played in those days.

“The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.”
– Donald J. Trump: How Wrestle­ Mania Trumped Intelligence in U.S. Politics

Nobody else in the American news media has explained this so well. But apparently people still have some trust in celebrities they see on TeeVee as if they were the smart ones to trust. Just because someone looks good on television does not mean they know what the fuck they are talking about. But it is a powerful medium and hard to escape these days.

It’s like the people described in the allegory of Plato’s cave, drawing conclusions from overheard rumors from people walking along the road outside the cave, casting their shadows on the cave wall.

Plato’s Cave: An Allegory For Our Time

Stop drawing conclusions and forming opinions from gossip and rumors and shadows on the wall.

I must be brutally honest and tell you that I am burned out on this, trying to save a people and a country who won’t listen and help themselves. But I am willing to keep trying for a little while longer, if we can get enough help to remain in business.

As I told my friends on Facebook, I was up early on Saturday looking for this article in the archives, and the server went down. It took about an hour dealing with a chat bot tech assistant, but all our websites at Host Monster appear to be back up and running. But the more this goes on, the harder it is going to be.

“Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly,” Norman Maclean wrote in the conclusion to his memoir A River Runs Through It.

“So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed….” His conclusion? At least, he said, “You can love completely without complete understanding.”

Secret Vistas: A River Runs Through It

I am not afraid to ask readers for help, or to tell people exactly what we need. I will accept your help, and do everything I can think of to help you back. Somehow if we’re going to make it through the next four years, I suspect we will need each other more than ever.

A Few Ways We Have Helped Over the Past 20 Years

Case Study No. 1 – Back 20 years ago, after we first went independent on the web after covering the trial of HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy for The New York Times, we covered the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman for five years. We helped turn public opinion around and got him out of prison on appeal. His lawyers screwed up the case by filing another legal appeal with a Republican judge in Montgomery, and he was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his seven year sentence.

328 search results for “Don Siegelman”

Case Study No. 2 – In 2010, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well blew up in the Gulf of Mexico and starting gushing million of gallons of oil into the sea, we covered the story on the ground like no one else, breaking news, investigating news, writing news features and producing YouTube videos.

223 search results for “BP oil spill”

Case Study No. 3

In 2013, we found out about a plan to open up the Talladega National Forest to fracking for natural gas. We started covering the story, and it made a difference. The plan was killed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

32 search results for “fracking talladega national forest”

Case Study No. 4 – In 2016, before the national election, we heard about a Medicaid funding crisis in Montgomery and went there to cover the story. Our efforts paid off. The government found the money.

79 search results for “Medicaid Alabama”

Case Study No. 5 – In 2017, we found out Birmingham attorney Doug Jones was going to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, appointed as attorney general by Trump. We covered the campaign, and broke the story on Roy Moore being banned from the Gadsden Mall. Jones won the election.

284 search results for “Doug Jones”

These are just a few big examples of how American journalism practiced like it should be can make a difference. I don’t know if this works anymore, but we are always on the lookout for stories where our coverage could make a difference.

See how to help us here.
___
If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.