TomFlannery.com

And so it goes. Again.

I write these things for me. You can agree with my sentiments or not agree. I honestly don’t care. I like to keep a record of what I was thinking when such craziness occurs. It helps to keep me grounded. It helps to make me feel normal. And it reminds me that I was on the right side of history. Then, And now.

I do feel like I’m repeating myself, but it’s less because I’m derivative and more because the same shit keeps happening over and over again. We arm ourselves to the teeth, legally and otherwise, and seem intent on slaughtering each other like hogs, in places where one might not expect hog slaughtering. A concert. A school. A church. We’re numb to it. It rates a shrug….perhaps a few mouse clicks. One or two social media comments to rile up the fanatics, and then we holster our ideology until it happens again. Next week. Next month. Tomorrow. The next mass shooting is probably already in the works.

We’re morally bored. Dead kids? Meh. Dead pregnant women? Meh. Not kin to us so…..

Toss off the ubiquitous “thoughts and prayers”, argue about the true intentions of guys arguing over flintlocks  200 years ago….then find something to binge on Netflix.

Short of some sort of Trumpian “extreme vetting” of angry white dudes, what exactly are we doing? Not that dead people and their families don’t appreciate your thoughts and prayers and all that, it’s just that they don’t seem to be helping much. The latest set of victims were deep in thought and prayer already….and then this dude wearing body armor and carrying what’s being called an “AR-15 variant”, whatever the fuck that means, riddled them with  bullets. I’m sure it matters to some what he was carrying, but the dead no longer give a shit. For obvious reasons.

Information on the shooter is coming out. Typical white trash. Abused his wife and child. Abused pets. Court-martialed out of the military for being a loser. He was a felon. He wasn’t supposed to legally own a gun, but wasn’t flagged during any background checks (apparently because the Air Force didn’t enter his conviction in some database), which makes sense to somebody I’m sure, but not me. His facebook page proudly displayed a pic of his illegally obtained gun, buy nobody really gave a shit. America. Guns are like porn.

His crime is not labeled terrorism because he’s white. If he was brown, Trump would have called him a deranged animal and Twitter-threatened him with free tickets to Guantanamo Bay. But these days the only thing that forces Trump to put DOWN his phone is when a white guy kills a few dozen innocents.

Our fearless leader is as inspirational as a bag of kitty litter. Looks for your moral leaders elsewhere, bubba.

After most-recent-angry-armed-white-dude did his killing….the shooter was chased by a guy with a gun….the “good guy with a gun” from the NRA narrative. A brave man for sure. He deserves the accolades he’s receiving….that’s all I got to say about that.

But even THIS bit is ideologically twisted….Fox News is jizzing all over themselves over this part of the story…..and taking it a step further in saying that what we REALLY needed was for armed “good guys” to be INSIDE the church during the service. So thanks hero, but next time Geraldo really would prefer if you weren’t late. Because you didn’t show up until after they were all dead.

(Just wait for the armed-carry goons to start volunteering to pass along the collection plate in a church near you. See how safe you feel when that dangling shoulder-holster hits you in the face, bubba.)

A country musician named Caleb Keeter was part of the concert in Las Vegas when that shooting happened. This is what he said….no doubt pissing off Nugent and Kid Rock in the process, but still…..

“I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life. Until the events of last night… We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.”

It became personal. See how these things work? Our stomachs get twisted when we hear about cancer, because we’ve ALL been touched by the disease in some way. Nancy Reagan became an outspoken advocate for embryonic stem-cell research only after her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Before that? She stuck to the “life begins at conception” talking point, and considered it immoral.

Was she a hypocrite? Or did she truly believe one way, and then flipped, like Keeter, when the proverbial bullets started whizzing past her head?

Paul Ryan and his ilk? They don’t care….because it’s not their kids….their homes…their schools….their churches. They are politicians. By definition they are narcissists. The world is what they can touch and feel. The rest is shadows…..worthy of “thoughts and prayers” but not much else.

It’ll happen again. And again. And perhaps someday…..just about all of us will have been touched personally by these mass shootings…..the way we’re all touched by cancer.

And then, the better angels of our nature will come together, unarmed, and truly make America great again.

In  a bit..

–tf

It’s been less than a month, and as a nation we’ve already forgotten. It’s just another Wikipedia entry now….a future trivia question. Perhaps the subject of an upcoming book or two……maybe a network news magazine segment during sweeps week.

Fifty eight people killed. Well over 500 injured. By another pissed off white dude with guns. Motives unclear……but “white and pissed off” will do until something that makes more sense comes along. Welcome to making America great again.

In the immediate aftermath we once again swore that this time, something, anything, would be done. The usual suspects said the usual things….the same talking points were trotted out. Conservatives offered so many”thoughts and prayers” than God finally told them to cut it out. Liberals scoffed at deity references and vowed to take on the NRA this time……campaign contributions be damned.

Of course all of this was happening when the cameras were rolling. Politicians love nothing better than the timbre of their own bullshit, and the opportunity to score cheap partisan points while riling up their respective bases. Essentially, half the country ended up arguing with the other half via facebook comments and on Twitter…..sometimes even managing to do so without misspelling every other word. Trump ended up providing the leadership we’ve come to expect, tweeting about kneeling black football players and throwing paper towels at thirst ravaged Puerto Ricans. Absolutely nothing changed. So we’re right back to where we were, awaiting yet another unknown dotard with an arsenal to start spraying bullets in a crowd, or in a classroom. And when that happens, the cycle will start anew.

Cue the hand-wringing.

Are we really no better than this? Do we value human life only within the brutal rhythms of the 24 hour news cycle? I’m continuously staggered by our lack of collective memory….by the seeming randomness of our empathy.

Reporter Carl Bernstein says our nation is in the midst of a “cold Civil War”…a phrase I initially rolled my eyes over but soon wished I coined myself.

As a nation we’re racist and sexist and homophobic. In a pinch we’re also astoundingly generous and progressive. The stupid shit we say is not always mirrored by our actions, and the stupid shit we do is not always mirrored by our internal beliefs.

We elected as President a man who is wholly supported by American Nazis. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. If we elect a man who is supported by racists, does that make him a racist? Does that make us racists? Is it even possible to have this type of discussion nowadays?

We stare into the face of scientific evidence and reject it. We accept as truth any lies that buttress our own beliefs. The truth itself has become largely irrelevant. In a cold war we feel entitled to our own version of the truth.

It already feels that Las Vegas was part of some alternative universe. Something that happened a long time ago….that we can barely remember. Except for the families and friends of the dead and wounded….it may as well have not happened at all.

In a bit..

–tf

Today was like an unrelenting, cold rain.

We woke up to the news of yet another mass shooting…..the body count growing steadily as the day progressed. Twenty. 40, 50. At the time I’m writing this, it’s 59 dead. An additional 527 are injured. Both numbers will probably grow. Another pissed off white dude (imagine the Trumpsters if this dude had been black or brown?) with an apparently legal arms cache….this time positioning himself high above the crowd, shooting down into them like fish in a barrel. I won’t bore you with the gun control argument, since this nation watched little children get slaughtered like hogs at Sandy Hook and did nothing. We’ll bicker for a few days on social media and then forget all about Vegas, until somebody else takes on the grisly arithmetic. Trump stopped golfing long enough to bafflingly offer his “warmest condolences” to the families of murder victims. Who says such stupid shit? The man must have been home nursing his Vietnam era heel spurs when they taught empathy at school.

We debate guns when the murdered bodies are still warm. We debate climate change after the hurricanes crash through and we’re picking through the rubble. We offer each other umbrellas when the rain stops. We have the attention span of our President. And of course, we offer a multitude of “thoughts and prayers”, inane gibberish in the face of horrors we’re not brave enough to tackle with actual substance. We do the same things. over and over again, and expect different results. That’s the exact definition of insanity.

It’s disgraceful, but welcome to America, where our politicians are bought and sold like….well…like guns. Washington DC is collectively desperate to avoid being put over Wayne LaPierre’s knee and spanked like misbehaving children. The place is filled with moral degenerates. Fuck them. And fuck the NRA too. They’re no better than ISIS.

Kneeling is unpatriotic. Hoarding enough guns to start a revolution gives the founding fathers a collective red white and blue chubby.

And shame on us. Collectively. We allow it to happen. Over and over. And we elect the same dishonest shitheads, over and over. A nation deserves its elected government. Liberals screech but do nothing, afraid of being mocked by Ted Nugent. Republicans call for MORE guns, afraid of being mocked by Ted Nugent. And the blood money flows into the coffers of both parties. Pay no attention to the man with the automatic weapons behind the curtain.

I’m not sure where we go from here. We can’t slither much lower without digging a trough around ourselves. We literally watch each other get riddled with gunfire and turn the channel. And Puerto Rico? Since we can only handle a single blaring headline at a time, they might have power again in time for the Los Angeles summer Olympic games. Geraldo and Anderson Cooper have left the building….on their way to warmer bodies. Gotta feed the beast bubba.

In the midst of trying to digest all of this, word starting leaking this afternoon. Tom Petty. Rumors. Cardiac arrest. Life support. What? Everybody ran towards Google. Hoping for a hoax. For fake news. Even the losers get lucky sometimes. But no…..he’s gone. My head is spinning….my heart is colder than it was yesterday. Somebody at work said to me…”how you you make a horrible day even worse? Tell me Tom Petty died..”

I was 13 when “Damn the Torpedoes” was released….my twin brother already had Petty’s first two records. I remember “I Need to Know” blasting out of our basement. But DtT was the rocket fuel. I would listen to (at the time) FM107 to hear “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That” (always with Pink Floyd tossed in the mix, since “The Wall” was released at the same time…weird the things you remember)….great songs that somehow sounded HUGE on little car radios. Instantly memorable. Perfectly crafted. Glorious noise. And that voice….like some mutant offspring of Dylan and Roger McGuinn. And his secret weapon, guitarist Mike Campbell….a guy good enough to play with ANYBODY…..but who chose to remain a sideman in the Heartbreakers for 40 years. Because if Petty wasn’t the best songwriter and bandleader in America, nobody could come up with anybody better. He was as consistent as the changing seasons, a man for whom “greatest hits” sounded superfluous, so iconic was his catalog. He was so good for so long that we took him for granted. A song like “Free Fallin'” might be the most perfect pop song ever written. It will be on the radio for the next 50 years.

When I listened to Tom Petty I was always lifted. I’m trying to come up with a better way of saying that, but I can’t. The last gig my band played we kicked off the show with “You Wreck Me”. My god…..I felt like I was levitating.

I want to sleep, and wake up to no more dead.

In a bit…

–tf

While the mayor of San Juan is wading through sewage with a bullhorn, assisting with rescue efforts, the President of the United States sits at his golf course in New Jersey, surrounded by servants “doing everything for him”, insulting her via Twitter.

He lowers the human decency bar. And then he somehow manages to lower it again. And again. Over and over. He has no bottom. He carries his own backhoe with him.

It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting. It’s abhorrent. It’s appalling. It’s the behavior of a coddled, sociopathic, narcissistic, deferment-addled 4th grader who refuses to take his medication. He has the morality of a diseased weasel. If he was buried at sea all the fish would die.

And STILL, apparently because he’s not black and/or a woman, and can play pissed off white people like Yo-Yo Ma plays a cello, his supporters defend him. If he buggered a small child in the Rose Garden on live television, he could blame it on Hilary’s private email server and probably GAIN support. It’s no longer mindless partisan hackery. It’s gone way past that. It’s become a cult of personality.

Up is down. Lies are truth. Truth is “fake news”. Education is elitism. Ignorance is patriotic. Nazis are “fine people”. Black football players peacefully railing against injustice are “sons of bitches”. He drained the swamp and filled it with the human equivalent of nuclear waste.

Our nation has no moral compass. It’s gone. So, obviously, any type of moral leadership is out of the question. We’re a banana republic being led by a man who makes Robert Mugabe look like Winston Churchill. He makes Nixon look like George Washington.

He won’t be impeached. It would take republican lawmakers with balls and integrity for that to happen and….well….you get my point. This nonsense will continue until 2020. So get used to it.

But still, what comes next? Somehow 63 million Americans voted for this tiny-fingered human-combover, so there’s no telling what might come next. Perhaps David Duke. Or Mike Pence. But I repeat myself.

We’re doomed people. Doomed. There ain’t no coming back from this. We should all take a knee in collective humiliation. This is on us. We deserve Donald Trump and the wreckage he’s leaving behind….like a horse shitting on a parade route. We’re a national laugh track to a future television show. He’s creating a stain that can never be wiped clean. Like slavery.

He’s our penance. Our purgatory. For all of our sins. Children. Grandchildren. They’re going to look into our eyes and ask us, how did we allow this to happen?

What are we going to tell them?

Can we continue to lose all the battles and still believe we’re gonna win the war?

I no longer argue. I no longer try to change hearts and minds. I’m on the right side of history. I know this because I’m a student of it. If your beliefs spring from fear and loathing, you’re wrong. If you can be manipulated by somebody with a lower IQ, you’re a pawn. You’ll be discarded. You’re an object of disdain in the backrooms of the leaders you idolize.

Because in the end, you get nothing. They get it all.

When you’re down, you’ll look for a hand. I hope your country will offer you one.

In a bit..

–tf

(these are the words I said this morning at my Mother’s funeral mass. I want to remember how I felt today….)

The tears here today are for us.

But the smiles are for her.

Not only because of where she is….but who she is with.

Because I firmly believe that my Mom’s last breath Friday morning was stolen with a kiss from her husband. Our father. The man she loved with a fierceness that inspired awe in her children. Nobody could get between them. Not even us.

Turn to your partner. Look them in the eye. The love there is too frequently unspoken…..taken for granted. The great Flannery and Loftus clans are Irish after all…..entire conversations can consist of grunts, eye rolls, nods of the head, stony silences, empty glasses….or the infamous Irish goodbye, in which we vacate the room when nobody’s looking.

Now….imagine saying to your spouse….”honey, I called out our love on my LICENSE PLATE!” Their first reaction might be to increase the medication.

But my Mom was “MRSJXF”.  Personalized. I still consider it one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen. I wish we lived in a world as in love and loved…..as unabashed…as what those 6 letters represent. My Dad would call her at work….and say after multiple decades of marriage….”can I talk to my bride?..”

Boys? You can’t touch that. That’s a romance mic drop moment.

A somewhat legendary Dunmore friend of mine had no idea my Mom worked in juvenile probation….and texted me yesterday saying…”that must be why she could relate to me..”

She was fair to all. We knew the rules. Our house was never the “wait ‘till your Father gets home” type house. It was….”when is Dad gonna get home…?” There’s a Civil War story of a private trembling before a famous General….who tried to calm him by saying “there’s no need to be frightened son ….you’ll get justice here..”….and the private replying “I know that General…that’s what I’m scared of…”

She was the President. The heart of a lion and the soul of a little girl….the one that pretended she didn’t like the family dog but got caught crying when the dog died. The one who always ended up granting us full and absolute pardons.

But love is sometimes like flying too close to the sun….or staring into that solar eclipse. My parent’s hearts were intertwined……but one would give out before the other. Love is not that perfect.

My Dad passed away 7 years ago. Alzheimer’s had taken him even sooner than that…..so we watched my Mom’s heart break….slowly….day after day. She missed him so much it sometimes hurt to be with her. I agonized over how to explain her pain with words….and that’s the best I can do. It sometimes hurt to be with her.

But that’s over now. They’re together again. Where they belong. And nobody up there is gonna be able to get between them either. And this fills me with an indescribable joy. So today the tears stop, and the smiles begin. She was the last of the great Flannery and Loftus Clans to let go….so I anticipate a party of biblical proportions is brewing. The Loftus’s were a baker’s dozen with enough personality to create a smorgasbord. The fruits of their labor may be many things, but we’re never boring.

She was our Mother. Our first love. My friend Lorne reminded me that it is only with a Mother’s passing that we become orphans. It was to her we ran with scraped knees and high fevers and bad dreams…..her we had to prove our sudden “Sunday evening before an important test illnesses” to…..her we so desperately did not want to hurt….to disappoint. She gave up so much of herself for us….for her husband……and maybe it’s only now, with her passing, that we don’t take that for granted anymore. We are the sum of their parts…..glorious and goofy and stubborn and salty and fearful and fierce…faulty and fabulous…mothers and fathers and husbands and wives ourselves…wondering how they made it all look so graceful and easy….but oh so grateful they set the bar so high…because we’re Flannery’s and Loftus’s……and we’re not gonna let the old timers have all the fun.

Our family would like to publicly thank Bishop Timlin and Father Doris, for making my Mother’s faith tangible.

I want to thank my cousin Janie….and my brother Tim…..for all they did for my Mom so she could stay in her own home until near the end. And of course my sister Eileen…..our family’s hero…..who at times seemed to be capable of being in 6 different places at the same time. Our united front is because of you. You are as selfless as our Mother. We love you….but because we’re Irish we don’t say it enough. So let me say it now.

We love you.

Mom. Godspeed. From your favorite child….

Smile. That was to get you to smile…

My father once wrote about the death of a beloved pastor of this parish, saying….”life has not ended, but merely changed….”

He was pretty good with words. So I’ll leave it there……

–tf

August 29, 2017

The world is an untidy place. Fractures and fissures appear….to be mended or stepped on or avoided or argued relentlessly over. We don’t always, or even often, agree with each other. On much of anything. We’re about as politically divided as a nation not at war with itself can actually be without…..you know….being at war with itself. To conquer one first must divide. The division creates the opponents. Left/Right. Black/White. Gay/Straight. Poor/Middle Class. Confederacy/Union. You name it. It hardly matters what side you’re on. The divisions are a distraction, of course. Bread and circuses tossed to the masses by rich white men who really don’t care what side wins because, in the end, they get it all. They always get it all. What they love most about Americans screaming themselves hoarse over statues of long dead soldiers and unborn babies and the lesbians across the street is that as long as we’re so busy hating the people fighting over the same crumbs of sheetcake (thank you Tina Fey) as we are… the fact that 20 Americans now have as much wealth as half the population is lazily overlooked. Our nation is currently being led by a man who said at one of his rallies that “I love the poorly educated…..we’re the smartest people.” This line was met not by marauding Tiki torches, but by cheers. And so it goes. Bread and Circuses. And when the news cycle gets boring, toss in a few Nuclear threats and some Nazis right out of central casting. It’s like a media oil change. They’re good for another 3000 miles.

Anybody remember that Russia influenced an American election? How about the dumbest of Trump’s two dumb boys admitting that he committed treason? Ring a bell? Seems like a million years ago. And it’s all disappeared into the ether. Nobody cares anymore. Well, maybe Robert Mueller does, but even that remains to be seen.

A true American hero died yesterday. Where will Dick Gregory’s statue be placed? I think we all know the answer to this one…

We hate to admit it…..”leader of the free world” stuff and all of that. But the President’s job is largely to just make sure everybody else is doing theirs. Much of the duty is ceremonial. Speeches. Protocol. Getting all the facts from all the different sides, and doing what’s right for the nation. Reading a few history books helps. Knowing that Frederick Douglass died in 1882 and that Andrew Jackson could not have prevented the Civil War…..or that taking credit for building the Panama Canal makes you look like an idiot because it was built over 100 years ago. I could go on but you get the idea. Some intellectual curiosity comes in handy at times.

Our greatest Presidents have been the ones with the most empathy. Lincoln and Roosevelt. Our worst, Nixon, once described domestic policy, which he cared so little about that handed off to an adviser, as “building outhouses in Peoria.” When the nation gets its heart broken, it’s the President who begins the healing. Reagan’s Challenger speech ( “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”). Clinton’s soothing words after Oklahoma City and Columbine. Bush’s post 9/11 bullhorn moment. Obama’s tears at Sandy Hook. My favorite story is LBJ visiting a New Orleans shelter in the Ninth Ward after a devastating 1965 flood. He entered with only a flashlight and announced to the stunned gathering, “This is your President, and I’m here to help you!”

Words. They matter. Winston Churchill kept his nation alive in 1940 through the sheer genius of his oratory. Lincoln’s second inaugural somehow willed a bleeding, dying nation back to life……”With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds….” Words. That’s all they had left to give.

WWTD?

What would Trump do? Blame Hillary’s emails for the Space Shuttle explosion? Call out all the good people involved in Timothy McVeigh’s militia group? Keep in mind that the President has NOT really been tested yet. Forget the little North Korean dwarf threatening to nuke Guam or a few Nazis in Khakis. These are week long carnivals. I mean a real credible threat to the security and/or moral standing of this nation that will reverberate in the years to come. Clinton faced with Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Bush the elder and the first Gulf War. George W with 9/11. Not to mention the aforementioned homegrown terrorist events, like Columbine and Sandy Hook. It’s not just that Trump’s 4th grade level oratory will make any bad situation worse. That much we already know. It’s the level of defcon his narcissism and imbecility could very well trigger.

But we allowed it to happen. And we allow it to continue.

There has always been more that binds us than divides us. JFK famously said that “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal….”

Can anybody imagine such words being uttered, or tweeted, by our current President?

SAD!

Soon, as Ford reminded us when Nixon was chased out of the White House like a scalded dog, “our long national nightmare will be over.”

One can only hope. Americans do hope well. We’re the best hopers. Believe me.

In a bit..

–tf

When threatening nuclear war is only the 2nd worse thing the President has done this week, it may be time for an intervention (surely threatening nuclear winter is against Twitter’s terms of service, no?).

We now live in a nation so polarized we can’t even all agree that Nazis are bad. Fucking Nazis.

It took the President of the United States 3 days to publicly condemn rampaging Nazis killing a US civilian, on US soil. Fucking Nazis…..running down a slew of bystanders, and killing  an innocent woman, in broad daylight, in front of the world’s cameras. In America. Our fathers and grandfathers fought and won a war over this shit. And this is how our nation repays that debt? By electing a guy shamelessly supported by fucking Nazis? What’s next? Khmer Rouge t shirts? When the press asked the President why it took him so long to call out fucking Nazis, the President ignored the question and walked out of the room.

My President. Your President. Our President. Think about this. Rationally. Please. His silence is providing shade to fucking Nazis. You ok with that?

Yea yea, I know. You voted for him and you are not a Nazi. Congratulations. But before going to the polls I always ask myself a simple question. Am I voting for the guy that the Nazis want to win? If the answer is no, then I can come home to some Yuenglings and benzos and sleep the sleep of the just. If it’s yes, I’d question my……well…..entire belief system…..

You can’t reason with Nazis. That’s pretty much a historical fact. You might have a chance of getting through to a Trump supporter…although the one today who defended Trump’s reluctance to condemn Nazis on Hillary’s emails might be a hard sell. But as long as he’s not sieg heiling for the cameras, dressed like a 90s era Blockbuster video clerk, carrying a tiki torch (did anybody else find this bit hilarious?), firing off spittle in all directions….you’ve got a fighting chance. Always believe in the better angels of our nature. (Except when it comes to fucking Nazis)

My daughter came to me the other day and said…in a voice of utter incomprehension, “But Dad, they’re fucking Nazis…”

Generally I frown on that type of language, but I was strangely serene about it. Still am.

And last night she was front and center at the Scranton peace rally in solidarity with Charlottesville. Wearing her “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt. Like that old Robert Conrad battery commercial….daring somebody to knock it off. Because she’s a good kid. A kind and gentle soul with the heart of a lion who hates fucking Nazis. She’s what our nation needs more of, apparently. To use a Trump term….I find this….well…SAD!

But then again….for every pro-fascist troll lurking on Facebook comment pages today, blaming black people or Benghazi for a Nazi running over and killing an innocent woman in his car, there are 100….maybe 1000 people utterly gobsmacked that somebody is actually taking the time to cover up for fucking Nazis. There is hope. If I wasn’t the father of my daughters I might not think so, but I am and I know there is. Because if they are our future, the future is dim for fucking Nazis.

Where does the hate come from? That’s the question that remains unanswered. Why are white guys who ooze privilege outing themselves as racist buffoons? For what purpose? If these guys were waving signs advertising a sale at the local Gap store they might have done a roaring business. But we’re being led to believe these are our nation’s disenfranchised? Our tired and poor? Our homegrown huddled masses? It would be really funny if one could work up a sense of humor about Nazis.

Not sure where this leaves us. Diminished no doubt. Our President has the overwhelming support of the Nazi Party…….something even a heartless racist bastard like Nixon would abhor, he being a Navy vet with 2 battle stars. Heel spurs be damned man….Nixon was mean as catshit, but he at least had some balls. Trump is a pussy.

I realize calling the President of the United States a “pussy” might seem a bit disrespectful. But it was just this type of built-in ass-tightening in the face of authority that allowed the cocksucker to slither into the Oval office in the first place. I’m not having it anymore Bubba.

Fuck fascists. Fuck Nazis. And fuck you Mr. President.

In a bit..

–tf

We have become a nation of moral cowards. Seemingly every time our President opens his mouth (or twiddles his thumbs) he says something offensively, outrageously fucking stupid.

The other day he confused life insurance with health insurance. The President of the United States literally does not know what fucking health insurance even IS.

And yet? Nothing. How much longer will we accept being humiliated in front of the rest of the world?

History is a bitch of a judge. Choose carefully boys and girls. Once you’re on the wrong side of this one, there ain’t no coming back.

ps

“But her emails…..”

…….so went my latest facebook post……some spleen-venting into the ether of the dumbosphere. Since like most I tend to congregate amongst my own kind, there were no dissenters, although I suspect some verbally challenged right wing vulgarian with a Hillary hard-on is searching for the usual “Obama is a Muslim and hates America” response…..hopefully with the words all spelled correctly and the proper usages of “their” “there” “they’re” “your” “you’re” “too” “to” et al…..

I ask for so little.

As George Bush, no longer the dumbest President ever, once said…”bring it on”. I do not argue. I delete.

My life is a tad shallow these days….so I take my fun any way I can get it. Remember, no matter where you are, there’s always somebody dumber than you in the room. It’s a near mathematical certainty.

Trump is fresh off his best Nuremberg rally impersonation, spewing 4th grade-level bile to thousands of perplexed boy scouts yesterday, demanding their “loyalty” like some coke-fueled African dictator surrounded by his personal militia. As low as he’s managed to set the bar, he still, somehow, almost daily, slithers under it. Recall that his Trump-Youth speech was preceded by an on the record conversation with a reporter in which he clearly and unapologetically admitted to the world that he doesn’t know the difference between health insurance and life insurance. Not a big surprise for a man who thinks that Frederick Douglass is still alive mind you, but still a bit of a stretch for someone who somehow talked 63 million people into voting for him. The fact that a decent percentage of that 63 million had better hope they never get fucking sick again until the day they die probably won’t sway them in the slightest because…..well…Benghazi.

But I digress, as I often do when I’m writing and feeling thoroughly convinced that we’re totally doomed. I see nothing redeemable on the horizon. Even if our nation collectively comes to its senses and forces Jeff Sessions to frog-march Trump out of DC wearing a jump suit the same color as his face/hair……we still gotta explain this one to the next generation. It’s like that tattoo you got after drinking that 12 pack of PBRs. You can wear long sleeve shirts all you want…but that chick’s name is still there. And it’s different than your wife’s.

Surely this nonsense won’t continue for 4 years though, right? Well, it could I suppose. When Stalin had a stroke and was pissing himself on the floor, his minions were afraid to call a doctor for fear that maybe, you know, he’d get mad at them if he somehow didn’t die. That sorta explains Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Pat Toomey fairly well I suspect, a pack of soulless cowards without a single ball between them. And the less said about that sorry old fool John McCain crawling away from his government sponsored brain surgery so he could start the ball rolling on fucking 20 million people out of even a fraction of that level of care, the better. I was taught to respect my elders.

At this point I honestly think Trump could sodomize a Shih Tzu live on Fox and Friends and gain support…..because Alex Jones would just tell everyone that Obama fucked a Golden Retriever at Bohemian Grove while dressed as a goat. Plus, Hillary harbors pedophiles in the basement of pizza parlors…so….you know….there is that.

After all, nearly 10 pct of US adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows….and when you finally wrap your head around that one, you’ll see that all sorts of things are possible.

So there ’tis…

In a bit..

–tf

A hot Sunday. A day to do nothing. To remind ourselves how hard we work and how we deserve a day to sit on our ass and drink beer in the sun and watch the grass grow.  A day that “exercise” is defined as taking the garbage out.

But somebody needed help. There was a benefit set up by a friend. He asked for help. A friend had fallen on hard times. So….that was that. No hemming or hawing. Because that’s what friends do. Especially musician friends. What time do you need me? Ok, I’ll be there.

That doesn’t make us special. It makes us human. Which is why I’m proud as fuck to be from here. Humanity abounds. There may not be any fucking jobs….but there’s humanity in spades.

The sound system was set up. Guitar cases piled up. Drums at center stage. And the music started and never stopped. A full shift. Six hours at least. There was a schedule…I think. But that gets obliterated quickly. If you’re there, you’re on call. Wanna play this one? Grab this guitar. Key of G. You’re tuned down a half step? Fuck. Gimme a capo dude…I got this. Prima Donnas….down a half step. Damn…how am I supposed to blow harp if you’re tuned down a half step?! Never mind…I got it…..I think…..

You play your instrument. Or somebody else’s. It doesn’t matter. It’s a community. If you can’t hit that harmony vocal, you just ask somebody else to do it. So he puts his beer down, finds an open mic, and nails it. Or maybe he nails it and doesn’t put his beer down. More likely actually. Or maybe he doesn’t nail it, but he tries like hell. That’s what live music is all about. Like a NASCAR race. Sometimes we crash too. We rubberneck as much as the guy on the freeway driving past the wreckage….but we got short memories, man. Because that chorus is coming back around in 20 seconds, and I got another chance. It’s called community, motherfucker.

People dance and drink and knock your microphone stands over and request songs while you’re playing songs….always a challenge but if they are dancing and knocking shit over and screaming requests it means they aren’t bored as fuck so you do what Steve Winwood suggested and you roll with it. There’s free beer at the foot of the stage too. Granted, it’s a keg of Keystone Light but…who the fuck do you think you are…..the Beatles? It’s free….and nobody thought to bring along a copy of their backstage rider saying they stopped drinking Keystone Light when they were 18 and finally got a job….and refuse to drink anything less prestigious than Budweiser or Coors Light…although we’d love to swill Guinness or Sam Adams but can’t afford this $4 pint nonsense….which is why we’re demolishing the keg of Keystone Light like dehydrated pirates…..and promise to never do so again….until the next time. Admirable self-denial, eh?

I digress. I frequently do. But you get it. I know you do.

So the night is old. We’re home. But with no regrets. A nightcap on the porch. With the crickets for company. We’ll sleep good. And once again we’re all glad we could do what amounts to little….but can sometimes mean so much. And tomorrow the cycle starts anew.

What I see is that, whatever it is that divides us, we’re still willing to come together and help those who need helping. Differences seem to disappear at times like this. Oh, they’ll probably come roaring back in the morning…….but that’s fine…..because that won’t undo what we’ve already come together for.

Wouldn’t it be great if things could be like this all the time? If, for the time that the guitars and drums are pounding, and the bar is moving rhythmically, like people on an escalator in an earthquake…we could lock in and fulfill the promises that we all want to make to each other but don’t for fear of being…..well…..

You get it. I know you do.

Let the music wash over you….like a waterfall. Join that drunken conga line when it rolls past your table. Drink the free beer. And when that call comes….just ask what time you should be there.

In a bit…

–tf

June 2 at the V-Spot in Scranton…