“Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” – John Adams –

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly…” – Thomas Paine, The American Crisis –

Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again –

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s funny how things work, and how often they are hard to explain.

As a wordsmith — you can call me a bad one if you want, although I can prove my effectiveness over time — all I can do is try to tell a story that will help people understand.

I can’t make them read or listen, like someone once said about leading a horse to water. If people don’t want to drink the water of democracy, or get out in the heat or cold to fight for their own survival, you can’t make them.

Maybe you can inspire them a little bit now and then, when the cause is ripe.

Some days I feel a little like Thomas Paine. Not because I compare my writing or life to his. Most people probably think Paine was a rich and famous successful writer, this author of the works that are often credited with not only starting the American and French Revolutions, but winning them. That is not the case. He died a discredited pauper in a house in Greenwich Village, mainly because he denounced religion.

Of course you don’t have to believe me, since I am not the only one to write about it. If you would rather rely on a print magazine owned by the Newhouse brothers in New York, or an author who went to Harvard, you can read all about it here.

The Sharpened Quill

Of course you might have to pay a little something to read it, if you’ve been reading a few of the New Yorker’s free articles on Trump’s impending impeachment this month.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly…”

The world was undergoing a revolutionary crisis when Paine practiced his craft in the late 1700s. I could and have cited other writers who emerged in the midst of other periods of upheaval in history, including Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain and others.

It could certainly be argued that we are now embroiled in one of the most difficult times in our history, both in terms of the state of democracy and in the quest for human survival on planet Earth. Many writers are already declaring that democracy is dead, and that it’s too late to save the planet, at least for humans. They may well be right on both counts.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s say we still have a little time, and a sliver of hope.

If one were to construct a matrix on the factors that determine whether democracy will survive or how the planet can be saved, we have some founding documents to go by. We don’t have to do this in an ignorant vacuum.

Back in Paine’s time, some pretty smart people — yes mostly men of course, some of whom owned slaves (but not Paine) — a Bill of Rights was written and ratified by the states as Amendments to the United States Constitution that contain the essential elements for ensuring the survival of American democracy into future centuries.

You all know what they are, so I won’t take the time to reiterate all the essential quotes here. You can go back and read them for yourself in the Bill of Rights.

But I would like to remind people here that freedom of the press was considered essential.

No where in the constitution does it say that a permanent standing army, or military industrial complex, was essential. But these days, we have come to celebrate the permanent military with two national holidays and an obligatory “thank you” to members of the military for their “service,” each time we see one of them in uniform.

I think we have made a HUGE mistake in not according similar thanks to news reporters, who have surely been as involved in every battle that has been waged in the name of democracy for the past 243 years.

Instead, we get anywhere from 34 to 43 percent of the American people willing to go along with the rants and whining of a dictator-king wannabe who calls “the press” such names as “bad people” and “enemies of the people.”

Of course “the people” are also an essential component in this matrix to save democracy and the planet. As the likes of Abraham Lincoln have pointed out, we are supposed to be a “government of, by and for the people.”

So if the people are not willing to do their duty to save us, chances are there is nothing that can be written that will do the job.

Sort of like the situation encountered by teachers in the education system, if students are not open and willing to learn, there is probably not much any professor can do to teach them what they need to survive. Or, think of it like the rats in the famous experiment exposed to cocaine and food, where the rats chose the drug every time until they died.

If people are nothing more than animals who will choose the most sensational garbage to consume until they die, and take down the entire global ecosystem with them in the process, then this may all be for naught.

I can write all day long every day until my fingers fall off from arthritis, like one editor friend of mine who died in recent years still trying to write with his final weed-smelling breath, and nothing will come of it.

This is just as true for every reporter at the New York Times, the Washington Post, all the other newspapers barely hanging on to survival, as well as all the broadcast reporters who read what we write and work to put it on television for more people to see.

We can work our asses off for very little money and try to inform people about what’s going on. But if the people won’t take the information to heart and stand up to do something about it, we will all fail.

This has nothing to do with electing democrats or republicans either, with small or capital Ds and Rs.

The Democrats in the U.S. can’t save us all by themselves, certainly not with partisan posts on Facebook and Twitter.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama knows this almost as well as I do. He’s trying to reach people with a unifying message, although I don’t think many are listening yet. Maybe when the election gets closer we can get them to listen.

Social media can be a great tool for getting a message out to more people, but it is not enough. There are no journalists working for Facebook. It’s just a platform where news can be shared and commented on, when the algorithm will actually show it to people.

The problem is Facebook has helped destroy the economy for news by sucking all the advertising revenue out of it. And Twitter is the platform Trump has used to further undermine the press and our democracy. If people can’t see that and help us use these tools for good, then why keep fighting?

Why? Because I have a long history of proving that it is possible to make a difference by covering the news in a certain way, framing issues in a new way that goes well beyond what the very profitable press of the 20th century did.

I mean big newspaper chains made HUGE fortunes for the owners over the course of the century. What did they do with those fortunes? They bought mansions, and yachts, threw parties and laughed at the people they fooled into subscribing and advertising. They helped Trump get elected in 2016 by covering “both sides” of the story, and they are helping him still by republishing every false claim and Twitter tweet as legitimate news.

I suspect there is some academic in the field of communications research now involved in a content analysis study trying to figure out what percentage of the content of newspapers and television news is drawn from quotes posted on Twitter. It sure is an easy place to find something to publish to fill the space and time, easier than all the mailed press releases in the history of print publishing.

But what about the effects? Is anyone looking into that?

Thomas Paine didn’t know anything about this in his time. There was no academic field of communications research. There were only newspapers, no radio, no TV, no internet, no social media. If there had been, he would have been discredited long before he was able to publish the works that not only helped launch our revolution, but win it.

If I could just beg your indulgence for a few more minutes, let me try to make the case that I happen to know quite a lot about how to use these platforms to win. Trump talks about “winning,” and he’s had something of a record of success at fooling people for profit. If Mark Twain were to return from the grave, he would be astonished at how successful Trump has become as the biggest charlatan of all time.

It is not clear that anything can be written to stop Trump from destroying our democracy and our planet, but I have been trying my best here and there, to the extent that we can put the resources together and get to the essential stories.

If only I could get more people to stop scrolling the Facebook and Twitter feeds for a few minutes to read this book, perhaps then you would understand my own record of success — and be willing to listen to me when I make a recommendation on what we need to do going forward. I can’t explain it in one free news column or Facebook post or Twitter comment. I wrote an entire book about it. Ignore it at your peril.

Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again

All I can do is tell the story. If people won’t read it, or heed it, then all may be lost.