TomFlannery.com

Eventually we’re gonna get through whatever all this is.

We’re gonna have new leadership…..some compassionate adults even. And the arc that bends towards justice is finally gonna be allowed to go its own way, without being manipulated by closed, hateful, small minds.

Things will never be “normal” again, but we’ll find a new version of normalcy that we can live with. We’ll be able to kiss and hug and gather and luxuriate in simply being together all at once, cheering the crack of a bat or that iconic guitar riff that kicks off our favorite song.

And being outwardly hateful towards others will no longer be gleefully tolerated. You will be whack-a-moled back into your spider-hole. The way it used to be. Before….well…you know.

That day is coming, as long as the gentlest among us continue to push and pull the hardest. In the same direction. At the same time.

****

Are you ok with what you’re seeing? Federal agents in riot-gear, tossing peaceful protesters into unmarked vans, detaining them without charge? In American cities? Lines of protective Mothers getting tear-gassed by wild-eyed Trumptroopers, blindly following illegal orders, disgracing whatever uniform they are wearing. Fascism isn’t on its way, it has already arrived. And there is no longer any sideline to stand on. You either approve of fascism, or you do not. You can be as coy as you want, but you got to pick a side. You don’t get to shit on law and order while chanting “law and order”, unless of course you are just a racist hateful dick looking for some sort of small-dicked validation.

Just following orders. Now where have we heard that one before?

And when the brown shirts come for you, you might want to re-think what side you did choose. Because the back of that van can be a mighty lonely place to be.

You think it ends here? This is where it starts. And unless we rise up and stop it, it will continue. Because if they can get away with detaining you, they’ll move on to the next step. And then the next. And before you know it, people will be disappeared.

They are trying to equate dissent with disloyalty, something tyrants have done for centuries. They always lose, but history can be a bitch when she reminds us how long the games can last.

Nearly 150,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19.

Civil rights giant John Lewis is being honored in the Capital.

Our President is golfing.

But he passed a dementia test. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

****

I’ve got 1600+ “friends” on facebook…..the majority of whom I’ve never met in my life. Some I know quite well, and I love hearing from them in all sorts of ways. What they’re up to and what they’re thinking and seeing pictures of their dog in the swimming pool. That’s kinda the point of all this. Or at least it used to be the point.

But somehow there’s a very vocal minority who seem to be living, breathing members of the fucking Nazi party. Just drop-dead racists, the kind of sociopathic dead-enders who only seem to come alive when the people they’ve been taught to blame for everything are truly hurting. Adoring Trump cultists who are not at all worried that their man is making their lives infinitely worse, as long as he sticks it to us brown-queer-immigrant-loving libtards. The ones chanting “lock her up” and waving guns in their front yards and calling a global pandemic a democratic hoax that the entire world is in on just to punish their Lord and Savior….the one who gets massive cheers for walking down a ramp and drinking water with 2 hands and being able to identify small animals from pictures. These are the same ones waltzing through Wal-Mart, faces uncovered so we can better see their scowls, immune to virus droplets and buttressed by their extensive medical experience, courtesy of viral memes from Breitbart. The ones drop-kicking their own children out the door this fall into covid-land, even though Baron doesn’t have to go. Because you know…..

Somehow they also find the time to troll all your posts. Remarkable.

These people make me sad. And they can’t fucking spell either, which drives me CRAZY. Don’t underestimate this point. I can deal with all sorts of nonsensical gibberish, as long as the argument, however filled with lies it may be, is structured and ultimately spell-checked. Allow me to destroy your racist drivel point by point, and not be craze-distracted by your inability to use “there / their / they’re / your / you’re” properly in a fucking sentence.

I’m much more discriminating now than I used to be with the friend approval button. I have to do a quick profile check…..and if there’s a confederate flag or a fucking bald eagle or NASCAR-themed pic front and center…..into the Facebook ether it goes.

You know you do the same. Admit it.

****

That’s about it for now boys and girls.

Happy racism-isms! I’m about to block your asses!

In a bit..

–tf

Break It Down

written by Tom Flannery and Bret Alexander
download mp3

Tom Flannery – vocals, guitar
Bret Alexander – mandolin, harmonica, background vocals
recorded in quarantine from our respective bunkers

Find the wall that I can slide down
close to the door that gets me out of town
catch your eye before the time’s gone
then divert by pushing on ’till dawn
can’t you see
that’s just me
can’t you see

Put in the time to take you away
from the ones who got nothing left to say
what you dream is what you deserve
so take a chance if you’ve still got the nerve
tell me where
I’ll take you there
just tell me where

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

What matters most matters not at all
to the ones who won’t offer a hand when you fall
if you can feel a tear on its way down
then you’re worthy of that flag in your ground
together one
together all

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

Tell me where it doesn’t hurt
When you decide what love is worth to you
Hope and dreams they come and go
But never in the hearts of those who decide to
Follow through

Time changes everything but love
that drops from the stars stuck up above
styles come and styles go
where they’ll stop to rest ain’t nobody knows
but love stays
come what may
come what may

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

I sit here listening to “Chest Fever” from The Band….a glorious song that never fails to stir me even though I have no idea what it’s about….and neither does anybody else.

But music is its own language. When I hear Garth Hudson’s organ falling from the sky…leading into that rolling riff, it pulls me back from whatever precipice I’ve been hanging over. And that’s before those three voices arrive. Richard and Rick and Levon singing together with the power of a closed fist….

And as my mind unweaves, I feel the freeze down in my knees
But just before she leaves, she receives

That four note riff…it snakes its way into my brain and affects my dopamine levels. When I’m old and dying, instead of plying me with drugs, play me songs like this and let me drift off to wherever it is that we go when the pain stops.

George Harrison once said….”how many Beatles does it take to change a lightbulb? Well, four..”

The Band were like that. Equals. Five men. Each, on his own, would have made some sort of mark. Undoubtedly. But they could only have changed the world by coalescing. Robbie Robertson was their main songwriter, but since he hasn’t written a single great song since he left the group (change my mind), you have to wonder. Levon has always claimed that the songs were a group effort, and went to his grave bitter about Robbie getting all the credit (and most of the cash). “Chest Fever” is credited completely to Robertson, but the lyrics were largely improvised by Levon and Richard Manuel, and the song itself was tied together by Garth Hudson’s organ, surely created by he alone. It’s not the kind of song that is written alone in your room with an acoustic guitar. It’s too big for that. Too ambitious. Art like “Chest Fever” is created by ignoring rules, and then obliterating whatever is left over. By ten hands, not two. By the ache of three voices climbing on top of each other. By a crazed genius in the back who sounds like a circus calliope. And with Robbie on the fringes, like some cosmic catcher in the rye, saving the others from getting too close to the sun. Take any of the five away, and “Chest Fever” does not exist.

Everything great about American music, how it can synthesize the blues and country and bluegrass and pop and dance and classical and Little Richard induced rock and roll into a gumbo stew that can feed the world 3 minutes at a time, is here in The Band’s first few records. And it was only when these 5 men got away from each other that the music became anything other than unforgettable.

Who knows why? Egos. Drugs. Peccadilloes. Robbie went off to Hollywood. Made music for movies that sounded like….well….music for movies. The other four soldiered on, making great music as they barnstormed their way around the world, but not great new music. The muse was gone.

And then we lost Richard. Sweet Richard. That twinkle in his eye might have been helped along with the endless bottles of Courvoisier he downed to keep the train on the tracks. But he deserved so much better than depression killing him in a shit Florida motel, after yet another show. One of the saddest voices in the annals of popular music. And one of the best.

And then Rick…..bloated by various excesses. And the need to constantly move or die. Like a shark. That big heart grew so tired. He laid down to sleep and stayed there.

And we all knew what was coming….but Levon was a soul in flight. He had many more glorious years ahead. Already a legend, he became the kind that are carved on mountains. But cancer caught him when nothing else could.

Garth never said much. Ever. A true eccentric who only seemed able to communicate with music. Without it, he all but disappeared. Lost his house in 2002. Had to sell off possessions, one of which was an un-cashed check from EMI in 1979 for $26,000, at a garage sale…..irony completely dead. And if that’s not proof of eccentricity I don’t know what is.

So Robbie is alone out there…..the Band’s narrative is at his mercy. He just released a well received documentary on the group called “Once We Were Brothers”, which not surprisingly paints him as the one level-head amongst the shiftless crazies, which might be true but it’s pretty easy to re-write history when everybody else is conveniently dead (Garth was not asked to be in the doc, apparently. Also, you may want to read Levon’s memoir “The Wheel’s On Fire” to notice some….er…pushback on Robbie’s take on things).

So be it.

Some will swear I’m reading too much into “Chest Fever”.

But you can’t help what moves you. You can’t force yourself to feel bad when something makes you feel good. You can’t be lowered and lifted at the same time.

Music can do both, but the best only moves you in one direction.

And if The Band weren’t the best, they’ll surely do until the best comes around.

Now I’m gonna listen to “Acadian Driftwood” on repeat. Don’t wait up.

In a bit…

–tf

There’s no end in sight. There’s no plan. There’s no nationwide unity. Everybody is pretty much walking around doing whatever the fuck they want, as the rest of the world looks on slightly horrified, secure at least in the fact that they’ve closed their borders to us. We’re about to send our children out into this maelstrom, and will be shocked…..SHOCKED I tell you, when they start to get sick. And their teachers start to get sick. Soon they’ll all be sent home, and online classes will resume. Those not wearing masks now will not be wearing them then either. And they’ll be the ones screaming the loudest when everybody’s doors get re-locked. And they will vent their fury by screaming at minimum-wage cashiers, the way they’ve always done it. And it will go on, and on, and on. And we still won’t have any sports to watch on TV.

It’s the age of insanity……people doing the same dumb things over and over, expecting the bars to stay open.

Everything we view is filtered through this Covid maze. Time feels like it’s racing, or not moving at all. There’s nothing normal about its passing.  I can barely remember when this thing kick-started mid-March, and yet schools are set to re-open in a few weeks….and summer will be gone. I clearly remember long walks when it was snowing outside, and this weekend temps will be in the 90s. It’s like reaching for hand-rails for support and they’re not there. We’re going in circles, and time is doing the same thing.

This thing has taught us a lot about ourselves, and those we thought we knew. All this angst is crowded together and manifests itself in different ways. The pandemic has intensified both positive and negative qualities. The good are better. The bad are worse.

Many of us have become socially distant without leaving the house. You sort of fall into this rut of self-isolation, and even the thought of doing so-called “normal” things seems absurd. “Going out” is sitting on your porch. Crying is recreational.

I’ve become hyper-sensitive to what’s going on around me when I do leave the house. Who’s wearing a mask? Who isn’t? Why is that one wearing a mask with the nose uncovered? Should I move further away? Should I cross the street? Do I need to be here at all? Which of the ones without masks are just looking to be MAGA-triggered? You hate the idea of witnessing another Ken/Karen breakdown, but hope to hell your phone is charged enough to capture it if it does happen. It’s this weird twilight zone of appalled fascination. Never have stupid people been more willing to show off for the cameras.

So, in the end, really, there’s no more loitering. Get what you need, and get out. Unless what you need is hand sanitizer ’cause you still can’t find any.

But everywhere, people are working through this. Packing shelves and working registers and bagging your groceries and delivering your packages and putting up with your abuse and most of them are making shit wages and they aren’t allowed to go anywhere until their shift is done. And pondering this is when you realize how little most of us are being asked to sacrifice. And how all of this could have already been past us if we’d simply pulled in the same direction.

We could get through this. Ourselves.

Lately I’ve been sitting up late at night, co-writing songs with friends, and reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”. It was a birthday gift to me from my long-woke 22 year old daughter. A book I’ve always wanted to read. History from the perspective of those being governed, not the ones doing the governing. History from the vanquished, and not the conquerors. The “founding” of our nation through the eyes of native Americans. Our constitution from the perspective of the slaves the document did not see fit to free. The industrial revolution from the vantage point of young women in textile mills. WWII as seen by pacifists. Roosevelt’s New Deal as seen by African Americans. A history book that contains almost nothing found in the history books I was brought up on. It should be required reading, especially now. Change only becomes permanent when the pressure comes from the bottom up. From the top down? That’s not change. That’s oppression. And it’s what is happening now. And it never lasts.

We find a way to right ourselves.

In the book there’s a fascinating passage quoted…about the Iroquois.

“No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails–the apparatus of authority in European societies–were to be found….prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong…..He who stole another’s food or acted invalourously in war was “shamed” by his people and ostracized from their company until he had atoned for his actions and demonstrated  to their satisfaction that he had morally purified himself.”

Seemed pretty timely to me. For all kinds of reasons.

Maybe you too.

In a bit..

–tf

Today I actually had to drive someplace other than a store. I haven’t put gas in my car since early March. It felt so strange as I pulled into normal highway traffic….like I was doing it for the very first time. Who the hell were all these people and where in the world were they going?

Construction zones are pandemic proof, apparently. I was somewhat surprised to see interstate 81 exactly as I remember it, filled with orange signs and single lanes and closed exits going north AND south, but with seemingly no workers at all. Apparently I just missed an accident that had it backed up for miles. It’s like the previous 120 days hadn’t happened at all. I expect the road work to last much longer than this pandemic. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

At any moment I felt like I might die, as I seemed the only person not in a murderous rush to reach my destination. I knew exactly where I was going, and was pretty confident that the place wasn’t going anywhere. So I kept to the speed limit, which pissed off just about everybody in my path. I was reminded yet again why driving is just below getting a root canal without an anesthetic on my list of favorite things to do. The ride home, in which I nearly got decapitated by dueling tractor-trailers, was even more exciting. You can get used to a lot of things, but something you hate intensely is not one of them. No thanks Bubba, I’d rather walk.

But there’s some other trips on the horizon…..so I’d better get re-used to it.

It’s been so strange….these last 4 months. I’ve finally got a hair cut and dentist appointment set up, two outings that are going to require regular pants and some form of hygiene. I’ve pretty much worn 2 pairs of sweat pants since March….along with the same 3 t-shirts. Each keeps getting washed then thrown back on top of the pile. I think the last time I wore a button down shirt there was snow on the ground. I haven’t shaved in weeks…and my shower schedule has been haphazard at best. But now that things are moving again, routines will have to become more normalized….clothes chosen more carefully. Eventually I’ll even had to get gas for something other than my lawn mower.

Just in time for the entire shithouse to go up in flames again, because cases now are much higher than they were when we shut down initially, and it’s only a matter of time before Wolf steps in and tries, yet again, to save his dumbest constituents from themselves. There is no plan for safely re-opening schools at the federal level (Betsy Devos is in charge…..let that sink in for a moment. A woman with the empathy of a diseased wildebeest and the brain of a zse zse fly, is IN CHARGE) ….so states are effectively on their own. When schools go back, if indeed they do, you’ll see that the amount of things that can go wrong, and the amount of things that will go wrong, will equal each other. So despite all the caterwauling that will result when the announcement is inevitably made, the state, along with the rest of that nation, is gonna be forced to shelter in place this fall and winter. Because there are still too many knuckleheads out there. And it’s gonna cause immense sorrow and pain for small businesses. Because we don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. If we did, we might end up like New Zealand. Virtually virus-free.

But we’d gladly kill our neighbors to preserve our “right” to, well…..kill our neighbors. And I doubt the ones running around without a mask coughing on everybody could find New Zealand on a map. And besides…..isn’t it led by a….gulp….woman?

This is all uniquely depressing. I cringe when I see our numbers vs the rest of the world’s. I cringe when I see poor Dr Fauci, trying desperately to stay afloat in a sea of idiots. A man who has made it his life’s work to provide scientifically backed guidance in times such as these, being shouted down and shit on by a criminally negligent, obese man-child with a ridiculous comb-over and a bad spray-tan, who chooses to rely on the medical credentials of Chuck Woolery instead.

We deserve better.

But then again, maybe we don’t. You know what I mean?

In a bit..

–tf

If All I Get Is One Goodbye

written by Tom Flannery and Bret Alexander
download mp3

Bret Alexander – Vocals, guitars, keyboards

Find the road and find the time
take what’s yours or take what’s mine
all that’s left is tears to cry
if all I get is one goodbye

Route 14 took me out of town
with a bag of memories that make no sound
retrace my steps to find the lies
If all I get is one goodbye

Lived along the river with the indian name
on different streets that all looked the same
with just enough time to not ask why
if all I get is one goodbye

Can’t change the color of the blues
or my style of working shoes
I never look ’em in the eye
if all I get is one goodbye

Birds on a telephone wire
taking a break from the church spire
cutting across the darkening sky
if all I get is one goodbye

Can’t change the color of the blues
or my style of working shoes
I don’t look ’em in the eye
if all I get is one goodbye
if all I get is one goodbye

It’s summer and there is no baseball. Normally we’d be near the all-star break by now. Pennant races would be pretty set. Locally we’d be deep into a Rail Riders playoff push….it’s always a good time at the stadium. Having a Triple-AAA team here is badass.

Cold beers ($7 each? Life is a sacrifice son…we do what we must do….) and the warm sun and wandering around the stadium perimeter, people watching. Or getting a nice stretch of dry weather and settling in for a few night games….perhaps with some fireworks to cap the night off. The sounds of baseball. The organist punctuating things. The crack of the bats. The thud of a 90+ mph fastball. The vendors…….selling hard. The world slows down for those few hours…..and you’re content to watch young men play a little boy’s game. And play it with such effortless grace that you’re half tempted to think that you could get out there too. If not for the fact that you are neither young nor effortlessly graceful. Baseball punctuates both the start and the end of summer…..and this year we have neither. It’s just days drifting past….anonymously. Baseball is usually everywhere. The TV. The radio. The local parks. All ages. And now, there is nothing but silence. And I’ve had months to get used to it and I still can’t. There will be no boys of summer this year. And there will be no Mister October either. Until this returns, the world just seems even more crooked on its axis. Summer with no baseball is like a bar with no beer.

College football appears doomed. Thirty seven players for the North Carolina Tar Heels have tested positive for Covid-19, which is the type of grim warning that dumb people like Betsy Devos so often ignore. If you told ACC and SEC fans that football could commence only if every man, woman, and child south of the Mason Dixon line wore a mask, they’d be sleeping in them and stomping the living hell out of any Ken or Karen caught on video in supermarkets crying about their “rahts”. Because “FOOTBAW!!”

But it’s a little late for all that now. This thing has gotten away from all of us, and now that we’re being forced to drop-kick our kids back into classrooms, I assume it’s gonna get even worse. Strap yourselves in.

What happens when a teacher tests positive? Do all the students quarantine? What happens if a student test positive? Do all his or her classmates quarantine? What about their teachers? What happens if I get sick….and my kid has been to class. Because of me, does my kid have to quarantine? What about her classmates? What about her teachers? If a teacher gets sick, and was around other teachers, do they have to quarantine as well? If teachers get sick in large numbers….what then?

If our nation was being run by adults, we would have answers to these questions. But it’s not so we don’t. It’ll be wild chaos come the fall. And we’re all gonna be locked back up. With no football. Because of course the NFL is doomed too. It’s gonna be a long winter.

In the fall/winter my Saturday’s generally consisted of me waking and putting on College Gameday on ESPN. That ran until Noon. Then the first game of the day would commence. Then the marquee 3pm games would be next. Usually the SEC. Then the early evening games…with staggered starts so you could flip back and forth and not miss any endings. Then the national prime time game…..followed by the West Coast games that would kick off around 11pm. So it might be 2am before I’d move for any reason other than to pee or to refresh my beverage or to scream that Notre Dame lost already and were thus eliminated from the national championship playoff before labor day. Or perhaps jump in the shower during a half-time featuring the same highlights I’ve seen 17 times already. Of course Sundays work the same with the 3 NFL games, one of which will feature my Steelers losing to a team they were heavily favored to beat. Another double digit hour shift. And let’s not even talk about the Thursday night college game, or Monday Night Football. Because….well…..ok…..you can toss them in there as well. The only thing that might get me off-track is playoff baseball. In which case I’ve been known to watch one game on the TV with another on my laptop and another on my phone. At the same time. And to text my nephew to get steady reports on a fourth. It ain’t easy, but it sure is fun. I think Jerry Lee Lewis said that.

And now, all that is gone. And like Henry Hill in Goodfellas, I get to live my fall and winter “like a regular schnook…”

These are strange days, Bubba. Strange days indeed. We all gotta fill the voids with something. It makes sense that maybe we could start by being better to each other.

But we haven’t been very sensible lately.

In a bit…

–tf

I’m running of of things to say about our President.

I mean…..I can always shit on him. Don’t get me wrong. But I feel like I’m repeating myself. It is a struggle to maintain a high level of written outrage when faced with so much relentless material.

But….what the hell. It’s not like I can leave the house without getting coughed on by some shitheel willing to kill people so he can strut to his restaurant table without wearing a mask.

So it ain’t like I don’t have the time.

Trump is a blatantly racist twat with the morals of a diseased toad. He has no bottom. He’ll go as low as he has to go to fire up the goobers in his cult, who are increasingly calling to mind the dingbats in Jonestown, Guyana, who willingly lined up to be poisoned, because that’ll show ’em, eh? The racism isn’t even cloaked in dog-whistles anymore. It’s tossed out wholesale like red-meat to one of Joe Exotic’s tigers, and gobbled up with the same enthusiasm. Today his target was NASCAR’s lone black driver, who was so uppity that he reported the noose he found hanging in his garage. Because calling out Bubba Wallace is just what Lincoln or FDR would have done.

The only way out of this nightmare is to frog-march the spray-tanned motherfucker out of the White House in chains, and carry the spectacle live on Hannity, in the hope that carrying it on Fox might break the spell he casts on about half of my facebook “friends”.

If Facebook has any redeeming qualities, and that’s highly doubtful, it’s that it makes it really easy to tell how many of your “friends” are potential Klan members. It’s been staggering to me to see the posts of people I thought I knew….spewing hateful, racist spittle that makes about as much sense as Trump at one of his Covid rallies. “All Lives Matter” and “grr I ain’t wearing no mask because my rahts…..grrrr” and “I’m gonna own me some libtards” and “socialism……grr…..I can’t define it because I’m too busy listening to Ted Nugent….but I know it when I see it grrrrr….where’s my relief check anyway?….from my cold dead hands…..grrrrr..” Having a conversation with a Trump supporter these days is like trying to convince my cat to read Proust.

(If that makes sense to you, then you’re probably not a Trump supporter.)

I’ve never wanted to throat-punch so many people at the same time in my entire life, and I realize this isn’t a good state of mind to be in, so I try to decompress by sitting on my front porch with a beer and 10 minutes later an obese pick-up truck roars past hanging a confederate flag from one side of the bed, with a Trump 2020 flag from the other side, and I feel a sudden urge to want to throat-punch myself for even thinking that things were going to get better. Because sometimes it’s hard to tell which virus is doing the most damage to our country. Eventually there will be a vaccine for Covid-19. There ain’t no vaccine for stupid, bubba. It comes straight from the top now, and the ones who might have been a little hesitant to shout “yeee-haaaw….I don’t like me some black people” in a crowded theater are now lining up to do so because they’ve been given papal dispensation from the grand cyclops, who defines a good day as one in which he doesn’t have to delete a tweet after half of twitter start making fun of him for the misspelled words.

And don’t even get me started on his children. I won’t pick on poor Barron…..he’s just a poor sap with questionable genetics and a bemused look that says “once I get my inheritance I’m outta here…..”. So he gets a pass. The other 2 boys are so blindingly stupid that they make Ivanka, who has the IQ of a pair of boxer shorts and the self-awareness of a skunk at a garden party, seem like Eleanor Roosevelt in comparison. How these kids manage to tie their own shoes in the morning is a mystery solved only because they have enough stolen charity funds to pay somebody to do it for them. Don Jr. was posting anti-mask gibberish the day before his own un-masked girlfriend tested positive for the coronavirus, which I’m sure he didn’t find ironic at all. And he’s not even the dumbest son. Eric tried to be clever by posting pics that showed recently arrested Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell with Bill Clinton, only to be met with a barrage of photos showing her with his own father. He deleted the tweet quicker than a dog yelps when somebody steps on his tail. The only competition between the older Trump boys is who might be as dumb as the old man.

Melania? She’ll get out of Dodge as soon as her tour of duty is over. Anybody who thinks she’s in this for the duration thinks Hilary is gonna go to jail over her emails.

November beckons. A nation rages. And is sickened. Half pull one way and half pull the other. To be silent now is to be complicit. What’s at stake is whatever you can dream of. What’s at stake is whether those dreams are even worth dreaming in the first place.

Choose carefully.

In a bit..

–tf