TomFlannery.com

I can’t believe we are back here again.

People are dying at an unprecedented rate (We just passed 250,000 deaths, which is what Fauci predicted. He was then called an “idiot” by his boss). The President has all but abdicated, mad-tweeting in his alternate universe and sending his legal minions across the land to duly humiliate themselves in court, trying to prove non-existent fraud. He will not concede, so the President-elect and his people will be coming in blind on day one. The nation is rudderless. It’s like a horror movie. ICUs are at capacity, and they may soon have no choice but to send people away, which means sending them back home to die. All this, in the so-called greatest nation on earth, in the year 2020. Merry Christmas.

Doctors Without Borders are sent to places in the world facing medical catastrophes. They are here now. In the United States.

We were asked to sacrifice. Like our fathers and grandfathers were. They were called to wars overseas. They considered it their duty, and they went. We were asked to stay home if at all possible, and wear a mask if we did go out. This could possibly save the lives of our fathers and grandfathers. But we refused. We whined. We ignored science. We argued that we had the absolute right to kill another. We took to social media to belittle and malign, to spread lies and disinformation, and showed a nationwide selfish gene that must have staggered the greatest generation. We embarrassed ourselves from the top down. And now a quarter million people are dead that should be alive. At current rates, Covid-19 deaths in the United States will surpass American WWII deaths by January.

It’s difficult to comprehend.

Where does this startling lack of empathy come from? This appalling ignorance?

How is this the same nation the sprearheaded the D-Day invasion and destroyed the greatest evil the world had ever seen, and then came home and didn’t really consider the sacrifice all that worthy of talking about? How is this the same fucking planet?

It’s perhaps too easy to blame Trump for all this. He’s a cartoonish figure…..a shuffling, obese jackass with what looks like a ferret stuck to his head. A man with no intellect. No sense of humor. No compassion. No sense of honor. No moral compass. Hell, not even a dog. He doesn’t read. He can’t spell. I get it. The Jesusidians didn’t like the non-white fella, and they hated the woman. But this was shooting at the fly with a machine gun. Nobody should be surprised that he destroyed the entire house. It wasn’t like he turned into an asshole. He clearly already was one. So this one is kinda on us. It’s hard to argue that a nation dumb enough to vote for a Donald Trump doesn’t kinda deserve all the wreckage that comes with that fateful decision.

And what’s going on now is not at all surprising. He’s been saying all along that he would only accept the results of the election if he won it. Which is an outrageous statement for a sitting American President to make. But we all yawned. Leading Republicans continued to fan him and feed him grapes. His cult cheered. The press barely stirred. And here we are.

He’s hiding behind the only wall he managed to build, which is the one around the White House. His schedule is empty. He has forbidden any member of his administration to speak to the Biden team. He golfed all weekend. He hasn’t attended a Covid task force meeting in months. All of his recent tweets are immediately flagged with a “this is complete bullshit” warning. It’s surreal.

Like many others I let my guard down for a bit over the last few weeks. I wore my mask…..but I was going places I really didn’t need to go to. The weather was fine and we all sorta got lulled. We got together and fist-bumped and elbow-bumped and talked of things getting back to whatever normal used to be. The virus went from the foreground to the background. The election allowed us all a chance to (figuratively) exhale. Finally, an adult was gonna be in charge. Things were gonna get better because they couldn’t get worse.

And now things are worse than ever. The virus the cult claimed would magically vanish after election day has not followed the script. Once again MAGAs have been betrayed by pesky science.

And now kids are coming home from colleges. Extended families will gather around Thanksgiving tables. If the virus had chops it would be licking them.

There’s good news on the vaccine front, but mobilizing to make these available to all requires herculean efforts. And, dare I say, cooperation between the outgoing and incoming administrations. Lives are at stake. And Trump doesn’t care.

He’s never cared if we lived or died. He’s bragged about being able to shoot supporters and not lose their devotion. Now he’s tossing them onto ventilators.

This nation is on the precipice.

The job ahead of Biden is as daunting at the one that faced Lincoln. That sounds like absurd hyperbole but it’s not.

At all.

In a bit…

–tf