TomFlannery.com

It’s one of those nights when I can’t sleep despite prescribed help. So I’ve come down to my basement office and turned on the laptop. I’ve got early Waterboys records playing. “This is the Sea” at the moment. It’s a glorious noise. I’ve followed Mike Scott’s various musical whims for maybe 25 years. Lots of hits and misses but it’s never boring. Scott makes the music he wants to make when he wants to make it. You can listen or ponder what it is that the fox says. Or whatever. He doesn’t give a shit and neither do I.

I listen to lots of different music for lots of different reasons. The Waterboys make me feel better. So that’s that.

My cat followed me down here and is busy trying to bite the tag from the bottom of the tattered couch I have in here. She tends to fixate on things. Gee, I wonder where she gets that from?

There’s a guitar on the couch. I have an 8 track recording machine in here too, with a couple of solid Carvin condenser mics. Over my right shoulder is a massive framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which I desperately need some days when I’m convinced our nation is turning into a banana republic. There are great men who seem perfect for their times. Lincoln. FDR. Dr King. Bobby Kennedy was one of the great “what-ifs”. With Obama I dared to hope. But it’s not to be. His photo was on too many walls before he’d proven his greatness. A good man surely. It’s not his fault that he happens to be black….which is like blood in the water to his opponents. Republicans don’t like blacks much. Or browns. Or women or kids or poor people in general. They love fetuses, but that doesn’t do me any good as I’m working harder and longer every year for less and less money. Save a fetus, raise a dumb white guy who thinks Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz are gonna save the nation from the hordes of socialists coming to take his guns away. Pro-life…..but let’s bomb Iran and kill the “enemy”, not to mention a few marines here and there. Let’s stop President Obama’s “War on the Rich”. And for god’s sake let’s impeach the bastard because we’re getting errors trying to access a government web site that was farmed out to the lowest bidder. Actually, farmed out to over 50 of the lowest bidders, making it into the most needlessly complex website ever created. That’s how many different contracting groups are involved in what a 17 year old kid with a bad case of acne could have done in his garage for a few bags of really good weed. Or they could have just asked the porn industry for help. Those guys know this website stuff cold.

After all, it’s only health insurance. The mongrel hordes of right wing politicians, all fiercely protective of their own government provided health care of course. are treating this like the alamo. The last stand. If health care becomes an actual right? Fuck, what’s next? A living wage? Dudes making out with each other? Ryan and his cronies might do the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk thing and go the self-immolation route. Perhaps during a live interview with Sean Hannity. What a point that would make, eh? Like the witch on the Wizard of OZ. All that’d be left on the ground is their American Flag pins. Iconic stuff.

But probably not. These weasels don’t have actual convictions. What they have is marching orders. and they goose step like storm troopers, inspiring stupid people to levels of hatred our nation hasn’t seen since the civil war. You think it’s just coincidental that a secession map from 1861 looks exactly like a red/blue state map from our last national election?

I won’t talk politics anymore. When a right winger starts going off on a fox fueled tangent, I used to have some fun. Like when Mormons knock on my door. Invite ’em in. Offer them beer and pot. Put “Sympathy for the Devil” on the stereo real loud. Ask them what God looks like, and demand specifics. Eyes? Long Hair? Short? Beard? How tall? White robe or is that just a tall tale? If they can’t answer, ask for their home address and tell them you’ll come visit them, unannounced of course. You’ll be passing out Atheistic tracts and would like them to kneel and pray to the flying spaghetti monster with you, promising them nothing but a nice hole in the ground but a lot more time to live and stuff, as atheists aren’t required to spend 2 years banging on doors begging for converts. And they’re especially not required to dress like David Palmer in the “Addicted to Love” video.

Obama ain’t doing it for me. I don’t like a guy who seems paranoid. I don’t want him snooping on me. I don’t like him driving drones up someone’s ass without due process. In my name. To make me “safe”. Wasn’t this stuff supposed to, you know, end?

No, politics is off limits for me. I’m the child of New Deal democrats. Sorry. I thought Reagan was an American catastrophe, part actor, part shaman, and part filthy rich outsider who understood poor people about as much as he understood how Star Wars was actually gonna work once it was off the power point presentations. The man wouldn’t utter the word “AIDS” while he was president. Millions were dying. To him, it was perverts who were going to hell. He’d rather secretly arm the contra rebels in Nicaragua, a ruthless pack of torturers, even though doing so was against US law. Ronnie had the perfect excuse. He didn’t recall.

No no. None of that revisionism for me. Obama is what we got now. He ain’t what I expected. Not by a long shot. But anybody wanna pick an alternative? You think this is fun, just wait until Hillary gets in there. Payback can be a bitch boys. Be careful what you ask for. Or rather, be careful in acting so batshit crazy that you simply hand the nomination to her. She’s got a memory like an elephant, and she’s going to stomp on your balls.

And she’s meaner than all of you put together.

Just saying.

But really I’ve ceased to care all that much. Politics is local for the most part. I keep doing what I’m doing. I work for a living. I work hard and I come home and some nights like this I can’t sleep. I worked hard under the Bush’s. I work hard under Clinton. I work hard under Obama. I’ve been lucky. I’ve been able to find work that pays a living wage. Not much more than that, but I’m not drowning. I don’t see much difference in the last 20 years. Political gibberish. Grandstanding. Half the judges in Luzerne County are in jail. The chief of police in Old Forge is a pedophile but gets to keep his job. My former county commissioners are both in jail. So is my state Senator, who lived down the street from me. Some local kids tossed a brick through our bathroom window and got away with it because they’re local football stars…and happen to have friends on the local police force. Future leaders of the Northeast PA Republican Party no doubt.

The only honest politician I’ve even known runs as part of the Green Party, and gets a handful of votes. That’s all. But he gets mine, I can sleep nights. Can you?

I mean, except for tonight.

In a bit..

–tftt