TomFlannery.com

So the kids are forced to become the adults.

I’m down with that.

These kids are old enough to get shot. So they certainly feel like they have a right to try not getting shot. Seems pretty straightforward.

Cult45ers may think otherwise, but history has taken a dim view of those caught in the web of a cult of personality. I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. But still…..these are persistent little buggers. Nothing fires up a Jesus-ian more than a late night anonymous computer screen and a daily dose of Fox & Friends. Human-bots may not be able to spell or form coherent sentences, but they can hate like a boss.

We’re living in strange times.

Lies are truth. Truth are lies. What’s real is fake, and what’s fake is real. Ignorance is prized. Intelligence is elitist. We climb mountains to punch echoes if they don’t share our ideology.

We hate with much more intensity than we love.

Our national IQ has plummeted faster than our national reputation.

We could blame Donald Trump for a lot of this. He’s a paint-by-numbers idiot and about as dumb as a mound of piss-yellow snow. But our nation pulled enough levers so that he’s now President of the United States, so we really need to look inward. How the fuck do we let this happen?

Shouldn’t this have been a done deal when he mocked the handicapped? When he attacked a POW? When he bragged about assaulting women? When he told his 1000th easily proven lie?

It matters little to his supporters that McDonald’s has a higher level of employee retention (46%) than the Trump administration (44%), despite the President’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric. This is blind partisan bullshit, hero worship on a Stalinesque level, which is the main reason our own children have been forced to stand up and say”no mas”. They don’t do partisan, and they don’t do hero worship, and of course they do not wish to be peppered with automatic gunfire. They see right-wingers jizzing all over the 2nd amendment, while completely ignoring the 1st one, for exactly what it is. Partisan bullshit. And dangerous. Because it ain’t Hannity getting his face shot off. It’s 7 year-olds in Connecticut. And 17 year-olds in Florida.

So what we have now is the last gasps of dumb, scared, angry white people. A change is gonna come bubba. You ready?

Obviously those hiding under the bed with their guns are not, but that’s irrelevant. It is coming….and you don’t have to like it. But you do have to come to terms with it….

Tyrants all fall. Demagogues all fall. If you don’t believe me, you can do like Casey Stengel and look it up.

Half our nation is  too dumb to realize what they really should be scared of, and too scared to realize that their fear is entirely based on their own ignorance. We’re lurching towards fascism and nationalism for the same reason other nations lurched towards fascism and nationalism. Because we’ve been conditioned to ignore the astoundingly rich men behind the curtain, and to cast blame instead on those different than we are. Different color. Different sexual orientation, Different religion. It’s not very subtle. Donald Trump is now our President. How fucking subtle can it possibly be? He writes and speaks at the level of the 4th grader. And 60 million people voted for him. Nearly as many who voted for the lady….but such is the fuzzy math of our electoral process.

Voted for his wall. And his racist dog-whistles. And his frighteningly simple message of division. He’s very uncomplicated. Most 4th graders are.

People voted for him because he wasn’t a woman. And he wasn’t a black fella. They won’t admit to thinking this way, of course. That’s only because to do so is admitting to being sort of a douche. But it is the case. And deep in their cups they know this. They voted because they hated. They didn’t vote for. They voted against.

Half of us get more pissed off at kids walking out of classrooms in protest than we do at kids being carried out of classrooms in body bags.

That’s where we’re at.

You can spin that any way you want. But you cannot deny it. If you trash these kids, that’s what you are saying. These kids do not wish to die, and all you’ve got to bludgeon them with is “from my cold-dead hands”?

You need to bring something a little stronger than that fool Charlton Heston waving a flintlock over his head. That’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

That’s an analogy you can grasp, no?

Sorry son. These kids are pissed off. And they’re calling you out on your bullshit. And soon they’ll be voting. And you’ll be on the wrong side of history. You’ll be that scowling white lady showering spittle on the black school girl in Little Rock, Arkansas.

You’ll be the obscenity in the face of ramrod-straight dignity. And deep down, you know it. That fact that you don’t yet care is why this wound has been allowed to fester in the first place.

Hate unchecked is like cancer. It kills. But here’s a reminder. No one here gets out alive. It’s all about the scenery on the trip….and how many you help up, not how many you keep down.

I alternate between feelings of dread and hope, and I think it’s because I spend my days with adults and my evenings with my children.

Kids don’t see color or religion of sexual orientation. Kids judge eye to eye. Adults who judge by the group are pea-wits….and kids have no patience for pea-wits.

So they walked out of class last week. And they’ll March in Washington next month. All in an attempt to shame the adults into acting like adults.

Or in acting like the kids.

In a bit..

–tf