We were driving home from a volleyball tournament on Sunday and came upon a vehicle that looked like it had the stereotypical Trump flag. You know the one. It’s the flag that is somehow bigger than any American flag nearby. Often these flags are flown above the American flag if there even is one. Below is what we actually saw.

So, obviously we chuckled for a few seconds as we considered the expert troll job that had been done on us and everyone else. Then, it hit me as it has before on numerous occasions. The last five years have been the lowest point in our nation’s collective history. I know that’s saying a lot but it is unfortunately true.

Good leaders lift us up. They make us reach for the stars and if we can’t take hold of the stars we at least can grab the moon. As Lincoln said, they appeal to the better angels of our nature. They manage to somehow inspire us to be more than what we are because they have moments where they are more than what they are. They do this at the worst of possible times. They are at their best when everything seems dark and gloomy.

To say one thing is the tragedy of the last five years is to insult all of the victims of numerous tragedies. You have hurricane victims on Puerto Rico that never got the aid they needed. You have families at the border who were forever separated. You had victims of forest fires that saw aid delayed. We have had over 600,000 victims of the Coronavirus and probably 500,000 of those could have been avoided with simple competent governance.

His trade wars impacted workers in numerous industries and the tax giveaway to the rich also impacted lower wage earners negatively. Meanwhile, people of color, those of various sexual orientations and gender identities suffered as well. So, for me to come on here and say the tragedy of the last five years was anything other than those things could be the height of insensitivity. Yet, that is exactly what I’m going to do.

That is because all of those things could be wrapped into a simple bow. The style of leadership that inspired some to offer more fealty to him than to the country is a dangerous style of leadership. It has made us collectively worse than we have ever been. The flag above is a perfect example. It takes an awful amount of hate to get someone to fork over the dough to buy such a flag and then mount it on their truck. It shows that they want to give out a collective FU to their neighbors that may have supported the ex-president.

Think of the arguments in favor of the “rigged election.” Biden’s crowd sizes were so small. No one flies a Biden flag. How could he have possibly won when there are so many Trump flags out there? How could he have won when so many attended the Trump rallies? It just doesn’t makes sense to them.

I never saw a flag for any other president before this. Republican or Democrat they just didn’t exist. Sure, there were political rallies and sure sometimes candidates got riffing and started spouting stuff that wasn’t true, but with only a few notable exceptions (George Wallace or Spiro Agnew) no one was inciting violence. That is until now.

The tragedy of the last five years is that everyone of us has become the worst version of ourselves. More that death, destruction, economic ruin, and horrible discrimination, that statement is a powerful one that has to be soaked in. We have been made worse. While each of us must contend with our own consciences to grapple with the cold, hard reality it is also a reflection of really bad leadership.

In the most difficult moments of our nation’s history there was always a unity that was established at least at the end. The civil war was dreadful and yet the country found a way to reunite. Natural disasters have inspired moments where we saw the worst of humanity and yet the best of humanity prevailed. Beyond COVID, I’m not even sure what the singular moment of the last five years will bring other than the man himself.

It isn’t even so much deciding whether we are for him or against him. Those decisions were made a long time ago for almost everyone. If people are still on the fence about Trump I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that. The decision we have to make is how we will choose to move forward. Will we hold those grudges against those in the other camp or try to find the piece of humanity that exists in everyone? It’s a hard road to travel down, but we’ve travelled it before and up until now we have always come out on the other side.

Jen Psaki doesn’t suffer fools, and does it in the nicest possible way.  She did it again this week.

Yesterday, Eric Swalwell of California was leaving the House floor when he was confronted by a staffer to Marjorie Taylor Greene, yelling at him to take off his mask, saying, “Biden says to take off your mask!”  Swalwell responded appropriately: “You don’t tell me what to fucking do!”

Swalwell doesn’t think his response was explicit enough.  I think it was perfect, especially to Greene or any of the Mini Me fascists who work for her.

I had a mask on as I stepped off the Floor. An aide with @mtgreenee yelled at me to take my mask off. No one should be bullied for wearing a mask. So I told the bully what I thought of his order. Predictably, he went speechless. I regret I wasn’t more explicit. https://t.co/o8j0DXWOBm

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 14, 2021

It hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. I was on my way to pick up my daughter from school. I like to listen to one of the sports radio stations when I travel to help pass the time. In the span of 45 minutes, I heard a loud siren go off on the radio with the booming announcer voice saying, “Breaking Houston Texans news.”

I braced for the worst. Had David Culley hired Rich Kotite as a consultant? Had Deshaun Watson been traded to the Eagles for a cheesesteak? Maybe Whitney Merciles had his leg amputated in a freak drive by cupcake wars accident. Nope, both of the lawyers in Watson’s long-going legal battle spoke today. Mind you nothing actually happened in the case. They just spoke.

That news required three sirens. That was only in the scant 45 minutes I listened on the radio. A part of this is by design. The siren went off three different times because radio people are taught to reset every conversation every 15 minutes. Most people only listen for that long. They certainly don’t listen to an entire show continuously. That makes sense.

For people in my age bracket, 24 hour news (along with talk radio and other forms of commentary) is a relatively new phenomenon. At least it popped up in our lifetime. Headline News and CNN weren’t there when we were kids. There might have been the occasional call in show with a bloviating blowhard on the other end, but it certainly wasn’t the cultural sensation it is today.

We certainly didn’t have Fox News or MSNBC to contend with. This doesn’t even mention really partisan stuff like OANN, Newsmax, and The Young Turks. When 24 hour news came out I was hopeful. Instead of tiny five minute chunks on the evening news, maybe these networks could dedicate an hour or two to do deep dives into issues.

Instead of just a casual mention of Islam, maybe they could spend a couple of hours talking the differences between Sunnis and Shiites. Maybe they could offer a tutorial on the origins of the religion and how that evolved into the factions and geopolitical strife from today. Maybe a lengthy special about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would be huge.

Instead of educating, the radio and television networks have chosen to incite. Of course, this is not universally true. There are people that give terrific background on key issues that could educate the public. The problem is that even with those few people, the education is used as a tool to persuade. It is a powerful tool and an effective tool, but it is still a tool at the end of the day.

Instead, the networks have chosen to amplify conflict and rotate an endless supply of trivia and minutia on a mindless loop. The effects are meticulously planned and savagely executed. Even though the typical audience tunes in for 15 minutes at a time, there is a dedicated audience and they get subjected to the amplification effect. Talk about something for five minutes and I’m informed. Talk about it for four hours straight and I’m outraged.

That’s assuming the very best. That’s assuming that as a news department I have an eye for accuracy and a desire to report the facts. If my aims are somewhat more sinister then I can fill people’s heads with crap and get them outraged out of thin air. So, people start raging about big government taking their guns, rationing their meat, and implanting a microchip inside of a miniscule vaccine.

Even if you aren’t peddling crap, you are still blowing things well out of proportion. Even the truth in excessive amounts loses context. Even something 100 percent accurate can distort the truth if the significance is overblown. Simply put, outrage and stress are drugs. Like any drug, it loses its effectiveness over time. Our body becomes resistant to it. Only more of it will make an impact. That one cup of coffee doesn’t wake me up anymore. Now I need two. The outrage at 50 percent volume isn’t getting under my skin anymore. You better crank it up to 75 percent.

To borrow from the Watson situation, I posed a question in the station forum about the need for sirens. Simply put, what is going to happen when real news comes down? Will there be a louder siren? Will there be a voiceover destined to give me heart palpitations? How will we differentiate real breaking news from the trumped up crap we have been peddling as “breaking news?” Will any of us possibly give a damn by that point?

Mother Jones published a leaked video yesterday of the head of Heritage Action, the activist affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, which acts as a propaganda delivery mechanism for Republicans while masquerading as a “non-partisan research organization”.  The Heritage Foundation’s “research” consists of twisting up facts in order to justify conclusions paid for by self serving right-wingers and businesses.  In the video, the head of Heritage Action is bragging to big donors, taking credit for drafting the voter suppression laws that have swiftly been passed in GOP controlled states all over the country.  Here’s the video:

This is how oligarchy works.  Wealthy donors get government to work for them by doing the work of politicians who’ve been corrupted.  The only difference between the Republicans (and their owners) and Russians is that they haven’t killed those who stand in their way (yet).

Now that the Trumpycans are trying to say that there was no riot at the Capitol on January 6th and that it was all just a normal tourist visit, we have breaking news.

Active duty Marine Corps officer Major Christopher Warnagiris, a 40-year-old stationed at Quantico, was arrested today for allegedly assaulting a Capitol Police officer during the Jan. 6th riot.

Look for my colleague @LambeJerry's story soon, @LawCrimeNews. pic.twitter.com/f5iYvEOU15

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 13, 2021

Read more here at the Justice Department press release.

In the first 120 days after Jan. 6, approximately 440 individuals have been arrested on charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, including over 125 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.

I wonder how many were arrested today? Or yesterday? Or any day?

You gotta wonder how many other Marines knew about this and kept it quiet.