By David Glenn Cox
While some have pointed to the poor optics of having a golden statue of Trump at the front door of CPAC convention. A statute of a golden ass to be kissed and nuzzled and sublimated before entry. I’d counter it’s not bad optics as much as bad reality. The Faux Cancun CPAC reality or the people hungry and desperate to survive reality. The idea of jetting off to sunny climes during a winter emergency while your little toy Poodle dog stares out the window shivering, waiting, and licking at the ice in his water bowl occasionally. The optics of breakfast buffets, three martini lunches with champagne and ice cream for dessert, versus waiting in a food bank line and wondering if they have any toothbrushes.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rightfully calls out Bronx police for their roll out of a $75,000 robot police dog. Okay, who forgot to plug in the pooch? “Okay class, today we are going on a field trip down to police headquarters. “Today we’re going to learn why your history books end with Bill Clinton.” I know it sounds like a lot of money, but a robot police dog won’t pee on the rug or scratch up the upholstery in the police cruiser and it’s gonna save us a fortune in dog treats! It’s like starving Ethiopians buying a five-thousand-dollar barbeque grill. A cast away on a desert Island with nothing to read but the Kama Sutra. A Costa Rican Space Shuttle.
At the high school I attended, a trip to the police station could be considered vocational education. For drivers Ed class we would go up to the road and watch the traffic. “Did everybody see how they stopped when the light turned red?” Our math problems designed to put us on a successful career path. “Suzie buys two hamburgers for $3.00 each and two orders of fries for a dollar each. How much change should Suzie get back from a ten-dollar bill? If the pizza was ordered at nine fifteen and it’s nine twenty-five now. How long do have to deliver it before it is free? We had Marine Jr. ROTC because this was limited horizons high. The recruiter was great, I asked. “Why would I want to join the Marines?” he answered, “you wanna get the fuck out of here or what? Do you like it here? Is there some attachment to this place?”
It was at the same time hysterical and terrifying. The realization that the school was just going through the motions trying to unload people off their books. It was to education what Wal-Mart is luxury shopping. A school without an alumni website because no one wants to remember ever being there. We don’t have class reunions we have weekend retreats and encounter groups. We don’t want to revisit high school as to get over it. Stories of the good old days, “And then the cops arrived and took their knives away!” The education I received there was clear and incontrovertible, this town does not give a damn. The best thing you can do is to get the hell out of there.
The golden statue and the minimum wage worker. While the Republicans swill champaign and chase hookers, they fight vociferously to maintain the minimum wage at $7.25 per hour. Shameful and tone deaf. “How many hours does a minimum wage worker need to work to afford a Ted Cruz weekend getaway?” Lost in the conservative mind set they fail to understand that poor people are expensive. I dated a girl in high school, and her parents were rich. She told me her daddy the colonel would give his old tennis shoes and sporting equipment to the maid so she could give them to her children. She thought a lot of her daddy for doing that. I thought, maybe if you paid the women a decent wage, she could buy her own damn tennis shoes and wouldn’t have to wait on your daddies hand me downs. But I was sixteen and trying to get someplace and kept my mouth shut.
A message sent and a message received; we have all the money in the world to purchase high-tech wizardry to put you in jail but really don’t care if you starve. The computers in our police cruisers are way better than the computers in our schools. Mark Twain said, “every time you stop a school you need to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail.” Republicans romp in their Orlando Versailles, eating from the buffet, drinking only the best and frolicking in the white chemical South Florida snow. Spitting in the faces of struggling Americans, bragging of insurrection, laughing at criticism of “Let them eat cake” and believing they have a future in this country.
You won’t notice if they cob off of work to party like it’s 1999. They were all going to vote “no” anyway so what does it matter? Their real allegiance is to the golden ass and the church of self-entitlement. Fuck em, I’m going to Cancun! “Yes, this is the state Attorney General and I’ve just hit a deer wearing eyeglasses. It’s not important, is it? Why should I lose my job just for hitting a pedestrian? Shit happens, get over it. Why should my life be ruined over nobody?”
Pimped, plumbed, and combed by alternative fact they have entered an alternate reality. They watch Faux News and see only shiny happy people espousing mindless platitudes. They’ve bought into their own hype and entered a feedback loop, “They like it when we’re cruel!” While America struggles in a winter of our discontent, they jet off to summer camp and leave us shivering in the window. If a man won’t take care of his own dog, what makes you think he gives a shit about you? It ain’t optics Bubba, they don’t just look like assholes, they’re the real thing.
This Carbon Based Life 