John Prine’s Dead

There’s been no shortage of commentary over the past few years and I’ve kept my tongue between my teeth. But it’s the Fourth of July, we’re still awaiting Opening Day, and I’m fuckin’ pissed.

There’s a disease poisoning a subset of our population, and it’s been advancing against our communities longer than some will admit. It targets the vulnerable, it’s decimated the Main Street economy, and there’s no countering vaccine. The poison that’s rotting our country is not viral, it’s ideological. I’m not talking about traditional conservatism (though it’s not my flavor, I believe there’s a place for it.) It’s not Trumpism, since Trumpism may be the only ‘ism in history that lacks any ideological underpinnings at all. The noxious epidemic that’s plaguing our society is modern Republicanism. The party abandoned its scruples decades ago in favor of tax cuts and activist judges, and all that remains is a governing philosophy of “I got mine, fuck you.” I know that’s coarse and divisive, but they snuffed out 95% of polling locations in Kentucky last month, and I’m fuckin’ pissed.

At least the Atwater campaigns had the decency to dog-whistle about states’ rights and Willie Horton. Today’s republican incumbent is blasting out white power videos and slinging the Nazi logo at the merch table. The party that used to ridicule the celebrity-worshipping/Hollyweirdo culture of the left has elevated Donald Trump as its figurehead – an image-obsessed ratings junkie who steps away from his mirror only to watch his own press conferences. He’s Vince McMahon, minus the charm. Don Draper minus the looks and the talent. And the emasculated enablers in the chambers tremble at the thought of what Feather Fingers might broadcast via his considerable social media reach if they dare cross him publicly. Meanwhile the base they’ve courted has been so conditioned by the GOP’s septic media apparatus to reject abject truth, reason, and science, that they can’t be convinced to wear a god-damned mask indoors during a global pandemic. Forgive my language, but Fauci’s gettin’ death threats, and I’m fuckin’ pissed.

350 mental health professionals wrote a letter to congress in 2019 warning that Trump’s deteriorating mental health is a threat to our nation. 89 former defense officials and military leaders publicly raised alarm about his aggressive response to national protests. Several GOP operatives whose careers have been defined by helping Republicans get elected have emerged as the Democrats’ most compelling marketing operation for this year’s election. Yet the supporters soldier on in support of this deceitful rube because Hannity and Tucker have convinced them that their enemies are the ESL-immigrant who arrived here with nothing and the black folks taking issue with the statues honoring the country’s traitorous history. Sorry if the race reference makes you uncomfortable, but George Floyd was murdered by a cop over twenty dollars and I’m fuckin’ pissed.

Our government has bungled its response to the Coronavirus so spectacularly that existing linguistics can’t even capture it. Let me reach for an absurd analogy: It would be like if someone were to inherit over $400 million without lifting a finger and then were to subsequently lose over $1 billion within a few years. An unfathomable failure, no? We’re several months into this nightmare, we’ve lost 130,000 Americans and counting to this disease – many of which could have been prevented with more decisive action – and we’ve made approximately zero progress at the federal level. Joe and Julie Patriot sacrificed their weekly stipends to help flatten the curve, in part, to buy time to develop a national testing and tracing strategy. What’s been done on that front? President Collar Stain has repeatedly mused about how much better our numbers would look if we weren’t collecting them. This drooling simpleton sits atop the party’s ticket, and we’re expected to take it seriously? That might be a cheap shot, but my mother hasn’t been able to hug her grandchildren since February and I’m fuckin’ pissed.

I’ve been blessed – I’ve known no one who’s fallen ill or lost their life to this virus. But I also don’t know anyone who’s spent any valuable time at all with their loved ones in the past four months. Everybody I know has followed the guidance of leading scientists in the absence of federal direction. They did so with the expectation of progress…an expectation that our leaders would do everything they could to improve the reality on the ground for all Americans. Progress that has been realized in other countries. Unfortunately the party in charge during this pivotal stretch in history is in a state of disrepair…a party so broken, incurious, and diminished that it’s incapable of meeting the moment. The apparati that were structured to counter-balance imperial malfeasance have been compromised so thoroughly that the whole con operates in plain sight. We’re a joke without a punchline. I don’t mean to be melancholy, but John Prine’s dead, and I’m fuckin’ pissed.