TomFlannery.com

Americans are a complicated people who are in love with simple solutions. This spells trouble. We are fertile hunting ground for a vast variety of snake-oil salesmen. Thus, we want more guns, no guns, walls built, less taxes, more services, free schools, blue skies, cheap drugs, the free market, Jesus in the pledge, no muslims, less mexicans, and government cheese. And we want it all now. And if somebody dares to stand up and point out that such wants require, you know, details and stuff, well…that person is stomped by the populist mob, who view an intellectual argument as highbrow elitist snobbery at best, or, at worst, just a bunch of long words strung together to test the spell-checker.

Our current political climate is so juvenile that it is collectively dumbing down all of us, to the point where all that we leave behind on the couches we collapse into every night is the residue of freshly killed brain cells. A man who could very well be the next President of the United States recently proposed printing more money as a solution to our economic woes. Read the sentence again if you want. I’ll wait. Ok? And his sage economic advice was met with howls of, not derision for being so breathtakingly ignorant, but delight. For isn’t it so obvious? You want more money? Just fire up the lazy proles at the US Mint. Make America great again.

We used to have guardians against this type of nonsense. But Cronkite and Murrow have long been replaced by bought-hacks like Hannity and O’Reilly, and the generation that once marched to stop a war are now out pounding the pavement looking for their 2nd or 3rd jobs, because “retirement” is now a synonym for “the day you die”. All but the top 1% are doing the doggie-paddle every minute of the day, and instead of getting pissed at the ones who tossed us in the dirty water, we’re shitting in the pool to spite each other. Pissed off people are rarely rational. And Americans these days have to be the most pissed off people on the planet. And the least rational.

Words have no meaning anymore. Or, rather, they mean whatever we want them to mean. So telling the truth has become quaint, like a kid who takes his hat off when he walks into your house. Thus many can and will still argue that universal healthcare is an American impossibility, despite the happy healthy Canadians looking down at them and waving frantically saying….”you fucking idiots realize that all of the politicians arguing against government health care HAVE government health care, right?” Facts are extremely inconvenient at times…..and never more so when we have no time. I gotta pick up my kid from the sitter after leaving my 2nd job, and you want me to hit up Snopes.com to validate a meme on facebook? You’re ADORABLE.

So 2 are left standing. Our choices. To run this nation. If you were to take a poll they’d probably be the 2 most hated people in America. So you gotta hand it to us. When we fuck things up, we do it monumentally.

I’ve become tone-deaf, as only someone who supported Bernie Sanders but considered him far too conservative can be. I look at Donald Trump and think he’s hilarious. I’m not scared of him. There’s a part of me…..the part that loses myself inside Netflix binges…..that actually wants him to win for the sheer entertainment value alone. I want to see him on the world’s stage, kissing Putin’s ass and getting everyone else’s name wrong, desperate to access the launch codes but not knowing how to open the briefcase…..wondering why the lowest bidder can’t seem to find the laborers to get the wall built even armed with wheelbarrows full of not exactly inflation proof freshly printed green-backs. I want to see him issue crazy orders….and watch as nothing happens. I want to see him take on the iceberg that is the house of representatives, recently described as “435 heads up 435 asses”, and slowly lose what little is left of his small mind in the process. You want change? Oh, you’ll get change alright. I’m almost tempted to vote for the asshole myself.

Hillary has better hair, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. For years she’s been bloated with the same dirty money that republicans have gorged themselves on. She’s so bought and sold she might as well decorate herself with corporate stickers, like a Nascar driver. The main joy I’d get from her winning is watching Fox news collectively set themselves on fire in protest, like those Vietnamese monks.

I want to take all of this seriously. I really do. But I have to stop laughing first. I presume that won’t happen until after November, when it’ll be too late. When we start casting votes not for who we admire, but for whom we despise the least, democracy has officially broken down. I should feel inspired inside a voting booth, not like I need a shower.

If you think this is the best we’re capable of, you’re part of the problem. Only nationwide disgust can save us now.

“In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.”

—Joseph de Maistre

God help us…

In a bit..

–tf