TomFlannery.com

The government went to federal court a few weeks back and argued before incredulous judges that it shouldn’t be required to provide detained migrant children toothbrushes, soap, towels, or showers.

To level set for y’all….a man named Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2012 and was held for two and a half years. Moore felt the urge to issue a tweet saying “Somali pirates gave me toothpaste and soap”…quickly followed by another tweet by a former prisoner of the fucking TALIBAN….who tweeted “The Taliban gave me toothpaste and soap.”

So…yep….there you are. We live in interesting times Bubba…

Trump supporters are furious with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and not just because she’s a woman and….you know….not white), who likened the cages detained migrant children are kept in to concentration camps. That kids are in cages in the first place does not at all draw their ire. Nor did the fact that a congressional delegation that toured border facilities reported they witnessed children drinking water out of toilets. Such claims were dismissed as fake news on the same day Trump’s newly appointed press secretary got inadvertently beaten up by the bodyguards of his latest man-crush, that dreamy North Korean dwarf and mass murderer Kim Jong-un, who still has nukes despite Trump lobbying hard for a Nobel Peace Prize for disarming him using nothing but sangfroid and an autographed copy of “The Art of the Deal”. So….nothing to see here folks.

And tomorrow our grand high exhaled mystic ruler will throw himself a Nuremberg style rally, complete with military tanks and planes (hopefully Trump doesn’t order the military to shoot down the Trump Baby Balloon) and squirming Generals, with plenty of white supremacists in red hats cheering him on. You’ll be happy the know that according to the President, the parade will feature “the brand new Sherman tanks” despite that fact that production of Sherman tanks ceased over 60 years ago. So I can’t wait for that part (A US Army spokesperson has warned DC are residents to “not panic” when they see tanks rolling through their neighborhoods, so don’t say loads of thought hasn’t been put into this). Oh, and engineers have been examining the Lincoln Memorial to determine if the weight of stationing tanks there would affect the Lincoln Memorial’s foundation. So there’s that. Trump’s ego is threatening to damage the fucking Lincoln Memorial. This is all so normal.

I eagerly await the price-tag of all this dick-waving, which is being kept under wraps because…well….you know.

Of course all of this would have been considered insane before 2016.

But we’re now in an age of walls and terrified angry white people and Orwellian doublespeak. Dissent has once again become disloyalty. Traditional allies are out, and dictators are the flavor du jour. The free press is labeled an “enemy of the people” because, let’s face it, what’s more founding father-ish than that eh? Our moral authority in the world has not simply been eroded, it’s been eradicated.

Humanity has become a form of weakness. Trump has somehow turned into a political colossus, having cowed his own party into a level of astounding subservience that would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking scary, all this despite communicating to the American public at the level of a bullying 4th grader, appealing always to the dark side of human nature. His administration is, banana republic-like, filled with obsequious toadies and blood relatives. His supporters remain cult-like in their devotion, not even wavering when he bragged about being able to publicly shoot them with no blow-back. Democrats, as usual for democrats, have no coherent strategy, and are currently tearing each other apart on a debate stage near you. A pedophile is one again running for congress in the state of Alabama, and it’s increasingly likely that he’ll win this time. Because of course he will.

(Locally, the mayor of Scranton just resigned, barely a step ahead of the federal prosecutors chasing him down for bribery, extortion, and conspiracy. So at least some things felt normal…)

Sometimes it seems like I’m the only person in the midst of this maelstrom who feels like he’s not living in the same country in which he was born.

In a bit..

–tf