TomFlannery.com

In the midst of all this constitutional carnage, I’ve had precious little time for reflection. Life gets in the way of a good think. We get crushed with the mundane, the ins and outs of survival. It’s been early mornings and late nights and two jobs and greeting the door like a marathon runner hitting the tape. The last thing in the world I want to do when I finally make it home is flip on the TV to see Donald Trump butt-fucking our democracy. It’s not like he didn’t promise he was gonna do so, mind you. It’s just that it’s all too depressing for a degenerate liberal like myself to stomach. Watching this fat tiny-fingered spray- tanned intellectual basket-case sit at the same desk as Lincoln and FDR, flexing his prick like a 13 year old sitting behind the captain of the cheerleaders, makes me feel like I have bugs crawling all over me.

If you don’t laugh you’ll cry. So try to laugh. Really. The good thing about collective national psychosis is that eventually it ends, and history subsequently paints you as a withered fool, and your grand-kids sit on your lap and say things like….”Poppa….how the fuck did you manage to elect a Nazi President of the US?” Think on that moment, bubba. Where were you when the world changed? And what did you do about it? Remember, after Hitler shot himself in the face in that bunker, every German with his hand raised in that silly salute developed amnesia….and subsequently claimed Hitler was a madman. Uh-huh.

Last night Trump fired Sally Yates, the Attorney General of the United States, and called her disloyal, because she defied his migrant travel ban. Her job is to enforce the nation’s laws, not to carry out the mad twitter-isms of the child in the Oval office. It was a heartening reminder that checks and balances work….or at least they can work, that is if anybody left in DC has any stones. Trump, oblivious, simply reached for the closest toady, a non-descript white guy obviously, and carried on with his illegality. But this little historical footnote will be taught in school someday. Dana J. Boente is the new Robert Bork, the type of legacy that doesn’t get you invited to any parties from now until forever. And Yates is the first martyr of the Trump presidency. The first of many I suspect, although counting on Democrats to grow melons can sometimes give you crows feet.

We are a nation of immigrants. Unless you’re a native American, you sound like a fucking idiot when you grow all nationalistic. My family came from Ireland. Yours too. Or maybe Italy or Scotland or Africa or South America or Mexico or Germany or England or the Balkans. If Trump was the President in the 1840s one million Irish would have starved to death, instead of assimilating and making the nation greater than it was before. Because that’s what happens. It’s a melting pot….of customs and religions and music and language and cultures. What we eat and what we drink and what we wear. It all comes from someplace else and gets swept into a vortex, and comes out red white and blue. It’s the blues and country and bluegrass and rock and roll and hip hop and power pop and punk and Mozart and the Beatles. It’s Eugene Debs and Martin Luther King and Hunter Thompson and Smokey Robinson and Bob Dylan. It’s Jews and Catholics and Muslims and atheists, gays and straights, girls and guys, men and boys. It’s a big, glorious mess and it’s not always pretty and it doesn’t always fit together like a jig-saw puzzle but it has survived assholes like Donald Trump before and will do it again, because hate is like a match…it burns hot but it doesn’t burn long. And if you hold it too long it will singe your finger. You’ve got no choice, bubba. You gotta blow it out. Or shoot yourself in the face in your bunker. Alone.

I’ve got faith in my country. It’s your constitutional right to be an asshole, so I’ve no illusions that you’re going to disappear. But there’s more of us than there are of you. An asshole is one who judges a group…who refuses to take men one at a time, the way they arrive in this world. An asshole is one who expects a helping hand but won’t offer one. An asshole is one who erects barriers, and refuses to tear them down. An asshole is one who hates. An asshole is partisan and hypocritical. An asshole is racist and ignorant.  An asshole is disloyal. An asshole is un-American.

An asshole is one who doesn’t believe in the better angels of our nature.

So there.

In a bit..

–tf

We’ve only got a few more days with an adult in charge, so enjoy the security while it lasts, bubba.
Rationality is about to leave the building, replaced by the arrogance and whims of a petulant, overweight, tiny-fingered man-child with a giant hard-on for shirtless dictators and the vocabulary of a 4th grader who spent two years in 3rd grade. Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for this preening shithead. But in a democracy, or whatever it is you call it when you can get the most votes and still lose, this sort of thing can happen. Welcome to America. Or as it will soon be known, the place where nobody has any health insurance because those who need it the most vote for the guy who promises to take it away from them. We may still be the greatest nation on earth, but we sure as shit can’t lay claim to being the smartest. Before Trump, George Bush was universally regarded as the dimmest bulb to ever light the Oval office. In comparison to the guy about to move in, Bush was a fucking Rhodes scholar…a shining beacon on a hill. And I actually miss him. He was, at least, a grown-up.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Toby Keith are ready to rock the capital, followed by some kid who didn’t win America’s Got Talent….and a band called 3 Doors Down, whom I’ve never heard of but I presume are way better than Ted Nugent, who for some reason wasn’t invited. Neither was Kid Rock, another talented performer. Not sure who’s in charge of entertainment, but if Trump makes waterboarding legal….this person might be a great pilot program.

Even the people who voted for Trump are starting to hate his guts. He enters the White House with approval ratings already between his legs….and with his astounding propensity for making bad situations worse, inauguration day is really shaping up to be nothing more than the start of an inevitable death march. He’ll either be impeached or quit. Anybody who thinks this guy is gonna lay around his tower for 4 or 8 years, surrounded by the Secret Service, eating taco bowls, watching Fox, and tweeting about rigged polls while his angry white base makes do with self medicating and beating up the odd Mexican….well, they don’t understand the average dumb American voter. Fool me once. Hell…fool me twice. But….as George Bush once sorta tried to say….”well….we won’t get fooled again”. That’s wall is gonna be expensive Jethro….but try not to pay attention to that tax collector behind the curtain.

Truth be told, the man is fucking doomed. American history is filled with bad Presidents. Rascals. Rogues. Criminals. Failed actors. But never has such a certified idiot taken the reigns. Never has a man been more innately unprepared for a job that requires, if not intellectual brilliance, at least a modicum of intellectual curiosity. I know lots of people who voted for him. They did so for a variety of reasons, none of them exactly noble, but if propaganda didn’t work all the propagandists would be out of work. And while they are loathe to openly admit they made a mistake, that day is gonna come, believe me. As sure as the day Mexico returns the bill for the wall with the words “fuck you” scribbled next to the “return to sender” stamp on the envelope….or the day they get sick and can’t pay their medical bills. Trump voters these days seem confused and stunned, like a duck hit over the head. It ain’t everyday the guy you just voted for is alleged to be such a fan of golden showers. It’s not the most promising of beginnings. More like the guy who trips and face-plants on the first hurdle in the Olympic final.

Enjoy the shit show bubba, ’cause it ain’t gonna last.

That’s the good news….or the bad news, if you think…say….three years of a brown-shirt like Mike Pence is gonna make America great again. If so, I’ve got some lowered health care premiums to sell you….

It’s the final countdown….which reminds me of that Geico commercial with the band “Europe”……rocking the lunch room with their latest hit, looking all the world like potential Trump inauguration headliners. How nobody picked up on this is beyond me. I wish someone had asked me.

In a bit..

–tf