This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It was 1994 and I was living in Atlanta when the Olympics came to town. The opening ceremonies were highlighted by an aging Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame to open the games. The Butt Hurt Committee was immediately incensed. You mean! The same Muhammad Ali who refused to serve in our beloved army and fight in the Vietnam War? Never mind it was twenty-five years ago. Never mind, Ali was the best-known American Olympic athlete of our time.

Take a second to realize Muhammad Ali might not be your cup of tea. But for a world-wide television audience, he was boffo. From the young man who won gold in Athens and stormed on to the world stage. To an old man dying and passing the Olympic torch on to a new generation. But the Butt Hurt Committee didn’t like his domestic politics. But 200 hundred years before the Butt Hurt Committee, they were sewing red A’s on each other’s clothing.

Burning witches and holding ethnic inquisitions. The same theme is found over and over. “I don’t like it! It’s all about Me! I could just ignore it and go on about my merry way. But I must save everyone from themselves, I know better.” There be sin going on here and I must stop it! Bert & Ernie? Huh, huh? What do you say to that? They’re trying to indoctrinate our children with Muppets! Isn’t it obvious? Bert & Ernie are Gay!

No, it’s obvious that Bert & Ernie are puppets who rarely engage in sex with either gender. They have no personal life and don’t own a car or take vacations. Oh no, they cast Halle Berry as Ariel, the mermaid! Mermaids can’t be black! Everyone knows mermaids are white! Mermaids are fictional and thus they can be any color you like. If the idea offends you, don’t go to see it.

Speaker of the Butt Hurt Committee, Mike Johnson, complained of occult and sacrilegious messaging in the Paris ceremonies. But this is an opening Olympic ceremony and not the live action “Greatest Story Ever Told.” Johnson was upset by the depiction of Leonardo’s Last Supper. Because to the Butt Hurt Committee any references to the painting are the same as the actual event. So, the painting is also sacred as the last supper was sacred. You can’t poke fun at a famous European painting, even if you are Europeans. We don’t like it! It makes fun of our savior!

I don’t care much for Rap music, but that’s okay, it’s not made for me. I’m not the target audience and if I like it. That means they are probably not doing it right. Same with country music, I don’t have a broken heart, a pick-up truck or a drinking problem. Listen to your heart’s content children! It don’t concern me none!

The book banners and the culture killers. We don’t like it! Whatever it is, we’re against it! Tipper Gore labeling CDs with naughty lyrics. Who remembers back when they accused Styx of promoting the occult? Now admittedly, I smoked a lot of weed back in those days, but I never once thought of playing the Grand Illusion record backwards to check for messages.

Why oh why, don’t those crazy French put on a show I like? Something for the folks in the buttcrack of the North Georgia Mountains? Leonardo? Wasn’t he in Titanic? I didn’t know he painted.

Trading in intolerance and welcoming any grievance to expand the herd. It is human nature as much as human politics. There are some people who are just persistently unhappy and wanna bitch about something. Remember, behind every silver lining is a dark cloud. “Hey, you kids!  Stay off my lawn!”

These are people the Republicans call “our people.” Though their own ancestors be immigrants they fear…immigrants. They fear books and strange ideas! We want it to stay just like it was back when Shep was a pup. Back when a newspaper cost a nickel and a candy bar was a dime. “Once there was a time when certain folks had to come to the back door, Pepperidge Farm remembers.”

I’m on the threshold of age myself, so I feel qualified to explain. As you age the world around you appears to be changing rapidly. But you are still you and standing still. As you age you cannot keep up with the speed of the changes all around you. Everything you know becomes old and dated, forgotten and the world around you becomes unfamiliar and strange. Hostile and somehow different. Filled with new people with funny haircuts and peculiar ideas.

They desperately cling to those who promise them to bring back the good old days and address their grievances. Going downtown to the Soda Fountain at Rexall drug store and getting myself a twenty-five-cent chocolate Sunday. We will stop all these new “Woke” ideas! Schools don’t need more money, they need the Ten Commandments! They need to make school like it used to be back in my day. You know, walking five miles uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow.

Make America Great AGAIN! It used to be great, back when I felt comfortable in it.

You might not believe it but back in the day, the Butt Hurt Committee were near certain that the Beatles were a sign of the coming apocalypse. They were convinced the Fab Four had a sinister and secret plan up their sleeves to destroy Western civilization. It was all a plot!

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought  ― John F. Kennedy