The Big Picture

Breaking Out of the Spiral of Silence

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been 13 years since I first wrote a column from here. It was 2005 and I was house sitting for a close friend in Silver Spring, Maryland. The newspaper and magazine freelance business had already started to tank in the early days of…

Michael Cohen was There the Day Trump Began Breaking Bad

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The Big Picture -  By Glynn Wilson -  When the neo-western crime drama Breaking Bad first hit Netflix, I watched the first episode and said “no,” I don’t want to watch this. But after Donald Trump was somehow elected president of the United States and the drug cartel-related money laundering plot of the show seemed…

Say it Ain’t So: A Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump?

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  The disconnect from reality is palpable. It makes me dread waking up, turning on Matilda the Mac (the pet name for my computer) and scanning the headlines online. Not a day goes by in the era of Twitter and Trump without a story coming down the pike…

Are the Country and the World Savable?

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  MOBILE, Ala. — What would you rather read? A story of gloom and doom or a tale of human hope for the future? Or must we cover both sides? Reading the news online and watching what’s left of the Sunday morning news talk shows on broadcast television…

James Comey Forgot: Let Justice Be Done Though the Heavens Fall

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  As an educated lawyer, former FBI director James Comey should know the Latin legal phrase, “Fiat justitia ruat caelum,” which means: “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” He apparently forget that under the pressure of the election in 2016 and in trying to serve President…

The Beginning of the End of Trump’s Presidency

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The Big Picture -  By Glynn Wilson -  FLORENCE, Ala. — For all practical purposes, the presidency of Donald J. Trump is over. It’s time for someone to inform him that he should resign now before the FBI has to arrest him and escort him from the White House on live national television. This Trump…

So Trump Wants to Establish a Press Blacklist Database?

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Add my name to the top of the list. I say Trump should be arrested and removed from the White House, now. – The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION – If Donald Trump’s crazy tweets, undignified behavior, unqualified cabinet appointments, disastrous policies and authoritarian bashing of the press has not been…

I Don’t Mean to Toot My Own Horn, but…

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  I lost a friend on Facebook this week. Not a real friend, mind you. Just a friend on Facebook. The relationship was so short I don’t even remember his name. All I remember is that his profile picture was the logo for the Auburn Tigers football team.…

How Wrestle­ Mania Trumped Intelligence in U.S. Politics

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“The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.” – Donald J. Trump – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – So the news broke with the usual urgency late on a Friday that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe of the FBI, prompting…

Thinking About An Honest Life by the Singing River in Muscle Shoals

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By Glynn Wilson – MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. — Sitting beside the Tennessee River in McFarland Park by the Florence Visitor’s Center after spending a few days in the quad city area often just called “the shoals,” I cannot help but think about what might have been. What if I had stuck with the music business…

We Can All Learn From the Russian Indictments and Tactics

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — If special counsel Robert Mueller can issue 14 indictments against Russians who conspired to mess with an election in the United States who he will never actually be able to drag into court and jail, why can’t he indict the top man who obviously…

Floating on Polluted Waters in a Sinking Ship

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By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — We are floating on polluted waters in a sinking ship. We might as well look at the U.S.S. United States of America as The Titanic. Remember, it was the ship that was not supposed to sink. When it became obvious that it hit an iceberg and was going…

Trump Drives the World to the Brink of Crazy

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The world has truly gone crazy now. Thank you Donald Trump. Or “Fuck You Trump,” as Alabama running back Bo Scarborough yelled as the Crimson Tide made its way through the tunnel onto the field to play the Georgia Bulldogs in college football’s National Championship game on…

The Marketplace of Ideas Suffers From A Major Glitch

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“And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” – John Milton, Areopagitica…

A Sunday School Lesson From Hugo Black to Judge Roy Moore

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — Judge Roy Moore is right about one thing. “The world is watching,” he said the other night in church near here. So now that we have your attention, world, there are a few things that need to be said. Everybody in Alabama is not…