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