Editor’s Note: For any new readers of The Locust Fork, or of columnist Glynn Wilson - who pioneered this style of Web column for years at southerner.net - what you are reading here is an original take on what is intended to be a week in review column. Look for it under Categories under Connecting the Dots. It is written after the Sunday papers come out Saturday night online. Links are provided as supporting material to nail home the key points. If Wilson wrote a column for one of today’s mainstream daily newspapers, the product would look much different - due to the organizational constraints of news companies and the fact that Wilson has no editor looking over his shoulder, accept the readers, who sometimes e-mail or comment to point out typos or argue a point. It is our contention, however, that this is what newspaper columnists should aspire to as the reading public moves online. If you agree, e-mail your local editorial page editor and request that he syndicate this column. Or if you really like it and have a few spare dollars in the bank, encourage Wilson to continue doing it every Sunday by making a donation through PayPal.
by Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - You know it’s almost summer when . . . the summer movies arrive in theaters (or fill in the blank for yourself).
Around here, you know it’s almost summer when the farmer’s market opens in Trussville and Troy Ransum trucks in his natural, raw honey from Ashville and the flavor of the coffee and biscuits improve exponentially to go with the ripe cantaloupe and Florida tomatoes.
The strawberries are not so sweet yet. The peaches, they are a bit sour still. And the rattlesnake green beans are still hard to come by. But the honey is here to help stifle the spring allergies and in general sweeten up the world.
And lets face it. The world needs a great deal of sweetening.
We are a planet, a country and a people suffering from traumatic stress syndrome still - from 9/11, the Iraq war and the economy skewed for the rich - which might be a good subject for some of the cable talk TV shows, if they could get beyond the lede.
If you don’t believe me, check out the story of Carl Edward Roland, 41, who climbed onto the 18-story crane in Atlanta around 5 p.m. Wednesday and told police he was thinking of killing himself by jumping. Roland was wanted by the Pinellas County, Fla., sheriff’s department in the death of ex-girlfriend Jennifer L. Gonzalez, 36, whose body was found Tuesday. An arrest warrant affidavit accuses Roland of strangling Gonzalez and dumping her body in a pond behind the apartment complex where she lived, according to the AP.
Who knows what drove the SOB crazy enough to kill his girlfriend and camp out on a downtown crane in a major city for days. But you can bet it wasn’t the honey in his coffee or on his biscuits.
It is obvious the Bush administration is totally oblivious to how crazy the world is becoming under their watch when they have the unmitigated gall to reward the analysts behind the Iraq war intel - a major contributor to our craziness.
And not only are we suffering a huge breach of the wall separating church and state at all levels of government. Turns out the normally staid U.S. Army is full of religious zealots who want to force every member of every unit to bow down to the Christian god or face military ostracism.
Then, the Klueless Klux Klan is apparently back in the cross burning business, at least in North Carolina, where police in Durham launched an investigation after three crosses were set afire in one night. Yellow KKK leaflets were found at one site, and observers say that even today the KKK retains a strong presence in parts of the U.S. South, where there are said to be between 30 and 50 cross burnings reported every year, according to the London Independent.
“At this day and time, I thought we’d be beyond that,” said the city’s mayor, Bill Bell.
Apparently not.
Our government is also clearly in denial about the fact that our “petroleum joyride” of cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for decades may be coming to an end “this year, maybe next, almost certainly by the end of the decade,” according to interviews with experts by the AP. Could it really be true that “the world’s oil production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will peak and begin to decline?”
Our government is also so paranoid and out of control that we are about to spend $10 billion to install a high-tech missile defense system on the nation’s commercial airliners. Talk about beyond bizarre.
Then, to beat all, the U.S. government, our government, is now being accused of a massive breakdown in diplomacy in the talks over limiting nuclear weapons around the globe. We are completely out of our minds, people.
To make matters worse, the one part of our national government that has been holding it all together of late, the Democratic minority in the Senate, is on the verge of a “revolutionary break with its traditions,” according to the New York Times. If the Senate goes south, that’s the ballgame folks.
What happened to the art of compromise, indeed? In Washington, we may be witnessing the twilight of the lawyer-gods.
There is only one indication in the news this week that all may not be lost. One of the big right wing think tanks responsible for this mess has decided to close up shop.
Where is the heroic press there to save this democratic republic like Superman?
All the indicators are that the media’s credibility may only get worse.
And the movies are no help either. Just when you think the summer movies might offer the people a clue to deal with the world’s problems, a movie like “Star Wars: Episode III” comes along and makes it hard to tell the difference between the force for good and the dark force.
Since when is it considered good for democracy and the republic for a bunch of special military forces (Jedi warriors) to try and take over the government - even attempting to kill the chancellor and take over the Senate? OK, it turns out the chancellor was a corrupt Sith Lord in league with the dark side. But perhaps that could have been avoided if the writers had included in the script a few heroic journalists.
That’s our problem in America. It appears there are none left.
At least it is still possible - if barely - to afford some good coffee and biscuits and sweeten them with honey. If something happens to take that away, it will be time for revolution.
The Democrats could take a lesson from Star Wars. When they fail in a mission to save the republic, the Jedis go into exhile and plan the next operation. Let’s hope Howard Dean and company have more up their sleeves than pandering to the Christian Right.
