TomFlannery.com

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