Today’s piece is free to all. Please consider becoming a subscriber for the price of a pint. Only $5 a month to access ‘em all. Three a week since February. And still going strong.

Subscribe now

When I initially read this, I was convinced it was some sort of poorly aimed parody. Surely something this vile is beneath even HIM.

Right?

Well, I should have known better. It's all too real, and we're once again reminded that there is no bottom. There is no shame. He is a human being without a single redeemable quality. He’s incapable of even a shred of empathy. He’s a gargantuan stain on our nation. A cancer. A festering boil. A raging, graceless, narcissistic toad with the morality of a diseased eel. A man who's soul must have resided in his umbilical cord. An unabashed grifter with unabashed grifter kids he would gleefully set loose in a dinghy during a raging tempest if he thought it would pad his bank account. A supersized asshole who bores in on all the other assholes and inspires endless grievances and tiki-torch marches. A sleazy manbaby you might not trust with your own daughter...but who somehow gives you the confidence to be a blatant shithead in public, when you used to only feel comfortable being a blatant shithead in private.

Being a cosmic asshole has never been more acceptable. Read his note about Powell again. Recall that it was written by a cowardly draft-dodger with "bone-spurs", about a man who served this country in war, and broke through racial barriers to serve it as part of government when he got back home. You didn't have to always agree with Colin Powell to respect his service and dedication to a nation that often treated him as second class. Powell was everything Trump isn't. Quiet. Measured. Intelligent. Non-rapey. Exuding class. Brave. Patriotic. He saw through Trump and his unseemly crushes on dictators pretty early on, and was openly embarrassed for the nation he had dedicated his life serving. Unlike other prominent republicans, Powell spoke up, earning Trump's everlasting enmity. The word "loyalty" means different things to Colin Powell than it does to Donald Trump. One wanted what was best for the nation. The other what's best for himself.

After Trump spearheaded the coup attempt on January 6th, Powell left the Republican party in disgust. Oh to be inside the General's head that day as he watched on TV with the rest of us as a mob of brainwashed, historically ignorant traitors impaled cops with American (and Trump and Confederate) flag poles, and crawled through smashed capitol windows, howling like half-starved dingos. What might he have been thinking? What could have led this nation to surrender to such a clearly deranged con man? What mistakes of the past helped pave the way for this comically bloated, artificially colored faux-strongman to overwhelm the synapses of 75 million Americans? Was Powell thinking back to the days of Reagan castrating the middle class at the same time he kept them occupied with the bread and circuses of abortion and gay-bashing and Jesus monitoring and the "war on drugs"? Was he remembering how slippery the slope can become when it's been greased with imaginary grievances? Even Powell could be duped by relentless propaganda, as his UN testimony concerning WMDs in Iraq proved. But he must have viewed January 6th as the culmination of outrage that had been festering.....flames fanned relentlessly by his own party. He must have wondered where the party could possibly go after something like this. Trump assumed power, under the assumption that you ALWAYS doubled down. Truth was irrelevant. There was nowhere to go but the next level of batshit-crazytown. David Duke? Ted Nugent? Alex Jones?

We used to laugh at Donald Trump.

So Powell, no liberal, said "fuck it" and announced that he was voting for Joe Biden.

***

Donald Trump is the Andrew Golota of politics. A man who even if he's winning the fight can't help but punch his opponent in the balls.

As remarkably classless as the statement is, the reaction to it amongst his fellow republicans is equally appalling. Dead silence, or gleeful trolling. How any member of the military, from the lowliest private to the Joint Chiefs, could support Donald Trump after this latest gob on a veteran's grave is a modern mystery.

It's gets tiring listening to his gibberish. Reading his 4th grade-level hate. Trying to ignore his constant litany of delusional bullshit. But what truly wounds the soul are the ones who continue to support him no matter how low he goes. No matter how rancid he gets. They cheer and cheer, as whatever it is that died in him is apparently dead in them as well.

They, and not him, are the reason we’re doomed.

In a bit..

—tf

Scranton Time - bits and pieces from Tom Flannery

The Andrew Golota of Politics