TomFlannery.com

I have a good friend who is expert in all things stock market, and I’ve called him about 7 times over the last two days asking him to explain what is happening with all this Reddit/Gamestop/WallStreetBets stuff and he patiently does so, over and over, and I pepper him with questions and he answers them all and I think I finally understand and thank him and hang up and then 30 seconds later I’m more confused than ever and have to call him back, and we’ll do the same dance again and I ask things like “but how can I sell stock I don’t own?” and “oh by the way who or what the hell is “Robinhood?” and I start to feel my brain ooze out of my ears, and I can hear his eyes rolling on the other end of the phone as he once again mentions “short selling” and I’m suddenly reminded that I only owned stock once in my life, back in the early 90s…..$1000 worth of the company that colorized old black and white movies and did the animation for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”…..a company that helpfully waited until they cashed my check before they filed for bankruptcy, as their major investors realized that the highly touted technology actually made everybody look like they had a bad case of jaundice, thus ending my career as a titan of Wall Street before it ever had a chance to flourish.

It would seem that for a few brief moments this week the unwashed masses were able to turn the table on the 1%ers, and while I doubt any of the Wall Street bros are gonna miss any meals over this, they did get punched in the nuts a few times…..and that hurts no matter what your balance sheet says. That being said, if you’re allowed to move the goal posts in the middle of the game, it’s pretty hard for the schlubs to score significant points….so this is probably no more than a cautionary tale going forward…..something for them and the SEC to collude over. But it sure was fun while it lasted, especially if you didn’t have any skin in the game. Or if you were GameStop’s CEO, who went from scrounging to keep his doomed, pandemically ravaged business afloat to waking up one morning this week as a paper billionaire.

We’ve always judged the economy on how rich people are doing. Isn’t that odd?

Rich people make the rules, and when they decide that their rules are no longer working, the tear them up and make new ones. And while the government is still having a hard time finding those $2000 pandemic checks for us, massive infusions of cash to banks and airlines always seem readily available.

It’s almost like the system is rigged or something, eh?

Well…so it goes. They’ll write books about what happened this week. Hollywood will swoop in and make a movie too, starring an unabashed liberal no doubt….and outrage will be re-fomented just long enough to make the same people we’re railing against even more money.

Is this a great country or what?

I am kinda jealous. I sometimes wish my brain worked differently than it does. I kinda wander around in my own head, and keep inserting my debit card into the machine the wrong way. Others are plotting long term financial strategies and I’m researching the Battle of the Somme. I’m the type that doesn’t check the receipt to find out if I’ve been overcharged, and will remain content as long as the garage door opener works and things around the house don’t break.

I’ve never been, nor will ever be practical enough to tussle with the stock market. And I’ve despised bullies my entire life…..and I feel like that virtual world is filled with them. I’d rather hang out with guitar players. We might be poor but we’re way better conversationalists.

I don’t sense any type of change on the horizon. It’s hard to actually think it’s coming when, as an example, the minimum wage is $7.50 and the average rent for an apartment is $1200. You can do your own math there if you wish, but please recall that your rent is supposed to be no more than 25% of your income.

Go on, I’ll wait.

Ain’t your heart breaking for them hedge fund dudes?

In a bit..

–tf

Where do we go from here?

We’ve already lost so much. Friends. Family. They’ve disappeared down a rabbit hole of ignorance and bigotry and phantasmagorical lies.

“The Big Lie” is what they’ve been calling the one saying the election was stolen, but there couldn’t have been the big one without 1000 little ones….each one drawing blood. Pin pricks……one after another. By now our arms look like train tracks, we’re despondent junkies…..and we’re all pale and weary. It all adds up. All the drops of blood add up to a bucket brigade worth of carnage.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

*********

All we want is for things to feel normal again. They don’t have to be normal…..just the feeling at this point would be good enough.

We don’t want to wake up every morning, only to be bombarded with whatever stupid shit was posted in the wee wee hours……crazed….misspelled snippets of rage that overwhelm a news cycle, flushing anything remotely important down the 24 hour news drain. We missed so much decency by being fixated on the casual cruelties of a man who cannot spell the food we cook on our backyard grills.

We want to empty our heads before bed, and wake with them empty still. They should be filled with knowledge as the day progresses…..not grievances.

*********

I don’t want to have to march for things that should already be mine.

We can all agree on a Bernie Sanders meme, but not that cops shouldn’t be allowed to kill black people.

We can’t kneel in protest because it’s disrespectful, but you can mob up and smash your way into the capitol waving a confederate flag in an attempt to overthrow the elected government because you’re white.

Somehow we’ve been broken. We all cherish our children’s futures…..but have taken that to mean that we don’t need to cherish anybody else’s.

I’ve hated more in the last 4 years than I’ve hated for my entire life. And I consider myself on the side of the angels.

In a way I’m as broken as they are.

***********

There can be no justice without accountability. Do not ask for unity if you are not prepared to accept that actions have consequences. We don’t negotiate with Nazis. We stomp them out. We punch them in the face.

And there are almost never “very fine people” on both sides. To stay neutral has become morally indefensible. It’s the only time I’ll ever quote George W Bush….

“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

I mean….what do you call them?

Close your eyes. What if they were brown? Or black?

You’d slide the barricades away and invite them into the Rotunda…..snapping selfies as the passed?

No.

There would be blood running into the DC sewers.

**********

There are adults in the room now. I feel like I know them, even though that’s impossible.

Everyone I ever thought I knew has disappointed me when I got to know them.

I hope the President remains the same guy who used to run to catch the train to get home to his kids every night. I don’t need to know much more about him than the fact that he did this.

Our President walked the same streets and breathed the same air that we did, which is pretty cool. This place gets in your bones and stays there, which means good and bad things. We’re better than most I think, but not as good as we could be. “Scrappy” is a good word. And it looks good on t-shirts. It’ll have to do.

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. The President has two. The last one had none, which was reason enough not to vote for him. How broken must you be to think you can do this job without a dog to come home to?

*******

We must hang together or we will surely hang separately. One of the founders of our nation, Benjamin Franklin, said this, and he owned 2 slaves.

When you consider that, it’s not at all surprising that we’re a little fucked up. Buildings. Streets. Cities. Schools. All are named after men who owned other human beings.

But suggest putting Harriet Tubman on a $20 and that floor you thought was hardwood turns into a million wood colored snakes.

It’s this nation’s original sin, and its residue is still on the tips of fingers from California to the New York Islands.

It permeates every ounce of our ignorance….

And on and on we go.

A more perfect union? Well…no.

How about a less imperfect one?

In a bit..

–tf

Some things will change now.

A lot of things won’t.

What we’ll notice immediately is a kind of behavioral normalcy. The simple act of not acting like a social buffoon….stomping into buildings with your wife trailing behind….keeping yourself dry with an umbrella while she gets wet. Speaking at the level of an educated adult. A willingness to do the job you’ve been entrusted with without stomping around on Twitter saying “ME ME ME” multiple times a day. We should be able to catch our breath for a bit, secure in the knowledge that nobody with a sharpie is going to attempt to re-write hurricane data and the like. Nobody is going to suggest raking the forests or that windmills cause cancer.

It seems ridiculous to say that the nation needs these types of small victories, but we do. And such things will help create the new foundation that our nation requires…..a nation brought to its knees over the last 4 years. We have to start somewhere…..and if that means speaking in complete sentences, so be it.

The division isn’t going anywhere. It’s as visceral as ever. White-hot hatred kick-started by a sort of divine ignorance that seemingly spreads as virulently as the virus that has killed 400k of us. We have a vaccine for one, but not the other. It would seem that the better angels of our nature have abandoned us, and need to be re-summoned.

It’s an awesome responsibility. An awesome task. No President since Lincoln has been handed such a divided nation. I do not know that it’s possible for Joe Biden….or a reincarnated Abraham Lincoln for that matter, to reset the brains of those who considered it a patriotic act to bust into the Capitol and threaten to lynch the Vice President in an attempt to overthrow a national election.

But the attempt has to be made. Because what else is there?

Our leaders are flawed humans. Joe Biden is flawed. Kamala Harris is flawed. Just like we are. But they both possess an inherent decency…..a sheen of empathy that we haven’t seen in the last 4 years. They will make mistakes, and I trust that when they do, they’ll admit to them and try something else. They are politicians yes, but they are not grifters. They love the country, and will place it above their own interests.

They deserve this chance.

The sun broke through the clouds today during the inauguration ceremony. Historically that almost never happens. It’s always grey….savagely cold. Today, something seems different. Our nation needs all the help it can get. So the sun did its part. Who’s next?

Just two weeks ago, a mob of domestic terrorists desecrated the very grounds where Biden spoke today. Our outgoing President fled the city like a scalded dog, divisive to the last…..unable to face his own wreckage. He’s back at Mar A Lago now, ignoring the laws that say he’s not allowed to live there, to golf and rage and eat cheeseburgers amongst an ever dwindling sect of enablers. It’s almost sad….until you remember that where he truly belongs is prison. It he manages to remain a free man, that’s when he should run across a rally stage and hug the flag.

After the Civil War, when Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy was on the run, Lincoln told General Sherman….

“Now, General, I’m bound to oppose the escape of JEFF DAVIS; but if you could manage to let him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much”

I suspect Biden feels that same about Trump. Which makes him a better man that I.

But that’s ok. The President of the United States should be a better man that I.

And a woman is now Vice President. A woman of color. The dreams of girls across our nation have expanded, and while it’s historic, it seems like it shouldn’t be. We should have been here a long time ago. The fact that it took this long seems…..to my kid’s generation especially…..bizarre.

Through it all, thousands of us are dying every single day from COVID-19. Protecting each other from it remains a partisan issue…..despite the virus being an equal opportunity killer.

How do you even begin to address this type of derangement?

President Biden. Vice President Harris.

We sincerely wish you well.

But Joe, you’re from Scranton. You’re one of us.

You got this.

In a bit..

–tf

Welp. He’s been impeached. Again.

If you really think about it, he could have been impeached weekly, so it seems he got off easy.

Republicans who swallowed gasoline so they could piss it on Trump’s dumpster fire are now calling for “unity and healing”, as if finding common ground with the incel wearing the “Camp Auschwitz” t-shirt is what’s now required to save our democracy. Rapey wrestling coach Jim Jordan is chief among this crowd, and is fast gaining on Mitch McConnell as the most despicable shithead on Capitol Hill.

Banned from just about every social media platform without a large KKK presence, and too cowardly to actually do what President’s are supposed to do, which is to use the White House briefing room, Trump has resorted to making what appear to be hostage videos, looking like he’s desperately holding in a shit as he reads the words crafted by somebody else…..under strict orders not to hate-riff on his own and blurt out that he’s gonna own the libs by pardoning the shirtless flag-faced viking head and khakis guy currently in prison and insisting on organic food, because “muh rahts”. Even as Trump mocks his mob of supporters as “low class”, he just can’t help feeling that Brokeback Mountain thing in his loins….quietly weeping in front of “Fox and Friends” every morning as aides work on his weave, muttering “I wish I knew how to quit you…”

There are currently more US troops in Washington DC to protect our nation from its own President and his violent supporters than there are in Afghanistan.

There’s evidence that a few lawmakers held trumper terrorist seminars the day before the riot, so the boys could get their directional bearings. That doesn’t sound too much like treason, does it?

In the wake of the coup, metal detectors have been set up at the entrance to the house chamber, and the law and order crowd are refusing to abide by them, unwilling to put themselves through what school kids are forced to put up with daily, on account of lawmaker cowardice in the face of the big bad NRA. If my kid refuses to pass through one, he can’t go to school. If a batshit congressperson refuses, the Capitol Police stand down (seeing a pattern here?), and are subject to verbal abuse in the process, which I’m sure they would put up with from a random black person.

Meanwhile, the hallway is filled with sleeping national guard troops sent to keep these brainiacs from being killed by the crazed supporters of the President they have enabled for 4 years. The ones who chanted “hang Mike Pence” repeatedly as they rummaged through the capitol looking for him to do just that.

Nothing to see here. Just your average, everyday banana republic.

It was never about “support the blue”. That was just symbolic gibberish, like the flag pin on your lapel (John Prine called you out for that nonsense 40 years ago). If the “blue” happen to be inconveniencing them, they’re tossed aside as quickly as the children of immigrants.

The job of the “blue” for these people is to keep their knees on the necks of the same people they hate. As long as the relationship stays that cozy……it’s as black and white as red white and blue.

But start applying the rule of law to these “Patriots”? That’s when the face paint and the flags come out, if not that masks. That’s when the cops start tumbling down the capitol steps while being beaten with flag staffs and fire hydrants.

Ironic that masks might not only have protected these clowns from Covid, but also federal penitentiaries. It’s pretty hard to not arrest you if you insist on real-time photographic evidence of your crimes…..featuring your faces and your live-streamed voices. Perhaps you could have gotten away with kicking your feet up on Pelosi’s desk if you were wearing an N95 mask. And it wasn’t hanging under your chin. I feel like I need to reiterate that part. Alas, the “hoax” is gonna bite you on the ass again. A prison uniform awaits. And quite possibly a ventilator.

If this wasn’t wasn’t reminiscent of that communion line of Jim Jones Guyana kool-aid drinkers, it’ll do until something better comes along.

We’re doomed.

In a bit..

–tf

This one is for me.

You can read it if you want, but I just want to get it down on virtual paper….how I’ve been feeling the last 24 hours. It might be a bit disjointed, but then again, that’s to be expected, right?

Other than our parent’s religion, nothing is drummed into us as Americans more than the mantra “we live in the greatest country in the world”.

Flags and pledges of allegiance and apple pie and July 4th picnics and visiting the cemeteries on Memorial Day……our freedoms a sense of wonder to people all over the world. That shining city on a hill….that beacon of democracy. Pick your phrase. Pilgrims sharing turkey and stuffing with the Indians, all men created equal…unalienable rights…..life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s enough to make you feel red white and blue all over. As a kid, it’s pretty powerful stuff. As we grow and become more and more ignorant of history, it becomes dangerous.

We rarely live up to our own ideals.

Images from yesterday are what dance in my head today. Watching them in real time was familiar, because we’d always seen this sort of thing on the news….from someplace else. From “shithole countries”. Places too dumb or too dark to embrace the blessings of democracy, and the infallibility of the “free market”. Foreign correspondents being jostled by mobs as they reported from some unenlightened corner of the world, and we’d look up from our TV dinner trays with the smugness of God’s chosen people. It could never happen here.

And yet there it was…..as a mob waltzed into a strangely undefended Capitol building, and chased a lone terrified mall cop up a series of staircases, looking for the V-spot of their rage……the place where traitors had gathered to officially brand their Dear Leader a loser. To stamp it into the history books once and for all. It would not be allowed to happen. They screeched and they preened and they posed for LOTS of pictures. They waved flags, of course. But mostly Trump flags….they seemed to outnumber the red white and blue ones by miles. And then we all saw it. The confederate flag. In the halls of the United States Capitol. The flag of treason and racism, being waved in support of a treasonous and racist President, with no sense of irony at all. Meanwhile, our elected officials huddled on the floor, behind doors that were barricaded with whatever furniture could be dragged…..instantly calling to mind American classrooms during the height of school shooter season.

Cut to a side window. Weird to think that the US Capitol building could be breached by the simple act of breaking a window, yet here we are. Dudes straight out of central casting. Wild-eyed. MAGA hats. Incel beards. All flabby and pale….the color of snow mixed with dog’s piss. Clearly being filmed……and making no attempt whatsoever to hide their identity. They pour into the building one at a time, for the window can only fit one fat guy at a time. Being a revolutionary takes patience.

There are lots of wannabe Robspierre’s in this crowd, although I don’t expect this lot to know the reference. One poses in Mike Pence’s chair on the Senate floor. Another sits with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. One is shirtless, carrying a bullhorn, and wearing a viking head and face paint…..but the look is sorta soothed over by the Steve Kornacki khakis. All I could think about seeing him was….”he’s somebody’s next door neighbor”.

Is that what my Father’s generation fought and died for?

And outside the more limber Patriots are scaling the wall like Avengers, surely a bad look for the “build the wall because that will keep ’em out” crowd, but there’s little time for retrospection when you’re live streaming on Facebook to your high school buddies back home. Talk of this day will fill barrooms for the next 50+ years. Assuming we’re ever allowed to go to bars again, that is.

This goes on for…..hours. Cops are….well…..nobody really knows. We do see one. Quite prominently actually. He’s taking selfies inside the Capitol with the rioters.

We’re repeatedly told the National Guard has been mobilized. Apparently they’re coming from Brazil, because they are nowhere to be seen.

All of us are asking the same question inside our own heads. What if the rioters had been black? How bloody would your shoes be from what was running into the sewers?

If you don’t think there’s such a thing as white privilege in this country, you’ve earned your self-inflicted lobotomy.

Finally the Capitol is clear. And by this I mean Trumpers had to be flushed out of the building……as they were everywhere. Finally they’re pushed back by an unfailingly polite police force……who have not made a single arrest caught on camera. Some of the mob are holding pro-police flags as they scream “fuck you traitors” into the face of the police…..the same force that used truncheons and tear-gas to clear a path so Trump could take a picture with a borrowed bible during the summer’s BLM protests.

It’s all enough to make you think….well….you know….

Four people have died.

I couldn’t sit down as I watched any of this. My steps were being counted by my fancy watch….and were increasing by the thousands as the night wore on. At 8pm the House and Senate re-convened…..almost like nothing had happened at all. Republicans stood up after enabling a brazen coup attempt watched by the entire world, and continued to contest the results of a fair election.

It was like a bad dream. We all woke up……and nothing changed. The same shitheads. The cartoon characters who invaded the United States Capitol were allowed to walk away, unmolested.

I can’t get that Menzingers song out of my head…..

“America I love ya but you’re freaking me out….”

With no accountability, there will be no change.

Trump should be removed. He should go to jail. As should his enablers.

What kind of shithole country allows the very man who fomented a coup stay in power?

In a bit..

–tf

Well, it’s 2021.

Be careful what you wish for I guess. The pandemic rages on, as does our President, who is now on tape demanding the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory there. ON TAPE. An hour long phone call in which he sounds even more unhinged than usual, which is really saying something. Clearly this is….well….something, right? Clearly we can all agree this this is….you know….

Apparently not. Republicans blamed the media for reporting their dear leader’s actual words, their shameless ass-kissing per usual knowing no boundaries. I’m not a legal scholar, so I’m not quite sure why US Marshall’s aren’t marching into the Oval Office and dragging him out in manacles for committing treason, but eventually somebody will sort it out for me I guess.

This will turn out to be another 2 day story, like all the others. Shit doesn’t stick to shit. Or if it does, nobody cares enough to notice. Our entire system of so-called checks and balances has been laid to waste by an obese reality TV star with a wretched comb-over and the linguistic skills of a held back 4th grader. Suddenly our founding fathers ain’t looking so infallible after all. It’s like that huge pile of dog shit on the floor that nobody wants to clean up. Or even admit to smelling in the first place.

I suppose it’s hard to fathom an entire political party ramming their morality through a wood-chipper, or the opposition party being so out of touch that they allowed a snake like Trump to slither into office in the first place. But alas, here we are.

And with no accountability….the circus will remain in town. The only thing that stops this in its tracks is these craven thugs going to jail. All of them. Trump…..and every single one of his enablers. But that’s not going to happen, and you know that’s not going to happen. Why?

There’s a scene in the movie “Jaws” where they hesitate cutting the shark open in daylight because they fear what may spill out all over the dock.

So yea, that’s why.

The criminality on the surface is staggering. These are dumb criminals too. I mean….they tape themselves committing crimes, like Nixon but with no panache and the IQ cut in half. They tweet their crimes.

But still, we can only absorb so much. Social media, the 24 hour spin cycle….you blink and you miss. Can you imagine what a legal autopsy might produce if everybody was focused for a few minutes? In between telling California to rake their forests to prevent wildfires and suggesting we deal with hurricanes by using nuclear weapons, Trump may have broken 17 laws while we slept. A full accounting of this crime family could fill libraries. And how ironic that would be, eh?

There is no republican party anymore. It’s gone. Ash heaped. Swimming with the fishes. You may see a few old white ghosts hovering over Ron and Nancy’s grave after some brandy’s, but that’s just for old time sake, gathering in the dark to make fun of gays and poor people. No, it’s a cult of personality now…..which is especially unfortunate when you consider….you know….Trump’s personality. A band of white thugs hangs on his mangled syntax, willing to debase themselves enough to risk dying on New Year’s Eve dancing with Rudy Giuliani and listening to Mike Love and Vanilla Ice while not wearing a mask during a pandemic. Entire news organizations exist to do his bidding…..to repeat lies so often that the truth becomes a liberal plot. He’ll be around until his arteries finally explode, heckling from the sidelines, playing the racists in his base as deftly as he plays cruel neanderthals like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz. With no bottom, outrage is muted. Nobody can conceive of anything that he would not do, so when it comes to light, the give-a-shit meter just sorta fizzles. TFS.

Trump Fatigue Syndrome.

It’s real, Bubba.

Nobody outside of the cult thinks that any of this is ok…..but Trump’s constant idiocy is indeed exhausting. He’s embarrassed this nation on an endless loop since he’s been in office, so we seem content to just wait for Biden and Harris to come in and de-fumigate the place and start all over again. For a week I expect nothing but phone calls to foreign leaders saying “we’re sorry….we’re sorry” and “we’re not really sure how this happened” over and over again, and then arguing with the Kens and Karens to wear a fucking mask. I bet they can’t wait.

It’s 2021 y’all.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

In a bit..

–tf