Welcome to American 46th, it’s wonderful to have you aboard. My name is Andrew Michael Flynn and I will be your host as we begin the dance of the newest American Presidential Administration eeking its way into the actual government. The transition will be harsh and unpredictable if everything we’ve witnessed in the last five years has anything to do with it.
There are many goals by starting this newsletter which I’ll discuss in due course, however a big one is to inject an irreverent-yet-direct perspective into the point of view and its subtextual meanings here. I will also underline that American 46th is NOT a news source or journalism, but rather the aforementioned thoughts from myself. I’m a writer by trade and have been wielding the pen professionally since 2006. My shingle is called OHPFstory and works as the umbrella for everything creative and analytical that I do.
President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris have their work cut out for them. Like, the most freakin’ work ever that a #1 and #2 coming into anywhere that have had to do anything. This place is in shambles. There’s some working parts, but the metaphoric power has been shut off and there’s rats everywhere. Well, okay, there’s always rats in government, mind us all. But there’s like an unholy amount of rats at the moment. I mean, really. But these two and the folks that they’ve brought with them are off to a decent start.
Any presidential administration is a top-down effort, but is colored in by the people that they are surrounded by. Case-in-point and alluding back to the just-mentioned rats, take a second to think of one real-life speechwriter the Trump Administration has.
I’ll wait.
You thought of Stephen Miller, I bet. Because of course you did. He’s one of the (few) folks that President Trump has surrounded himself with, for better or worse. And this one in particular has been categorically worse. Yes, Stephen Miller has written much of what’s been on Trump’s teleprompter, I do hope that this hasn’t been too jolting of a shock for you this fine Monday.
So there’s work to do, and it will be tireless with many of these folks aging quickly over the term of this Administration. Insert “but Joe Biden is already so old that he knew Moses when he wore short pants”-similar barb here. Government work isn’t easy because people aren’t easy. People, for the most part, are difficult. But they can work together to accomplish common goals.
I know, idealism is a sonofagun. Even though we’re all likely cynical in our default mode here in November 2020, there’s always a natural hope that’s built-in to when something as large and complicated as a Presidential Administration begins. Why? Idealism isn’t reality. Reality is what we’re all in at the moment and what we can say we just lived through. Idealism is wishcasting, and sometimes not at all based in logic or attempted reality. But I hope that the idealism that we’re working with here, possibly in a collective sense, will have logic and reason as its cornerstones in the attempted conversion to reality.
“People have phenomenal capacity.” -Fictional TV President Josiah Bartlet, The West Wing
What’s next? The uncontrollable coronavirus, millions of Americans without jobs, the ego of one Donald J. Trump, and fifty other news cycles all at once coming from the news-firehose of information that we’re all consistently bombarded with.
Time for a good long walk with my dog for a temporary escape.
Cheers,
Andrew Michael Flynn
7:02am Mountain Time