This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It’s that same old story Morning Glory and we’ve all heard it before. Former First Lady and overfed pompous bitch Barbara Bush once commented on Hurricane refugees as having it so good living in the Super Dome. I mean, who doesn’t like sleeping on a cot with 900 to a restroom. Sure, there were just a few dead bodies lying around. But you can’t have everything now, can you?

But this is how Republicans see things filled with their preconceived notions of what us little people are really like. So, when J.D. Vance says he has a cure for the high cost of child rearing just close your eyes and wince. Let your relatives take care of your kids while you work those two jobs. Well gee, why didn’t we think of that? He’s a genius!

But in the land of childless cat ladies this makes sense. I’m in Atlanta, and my sister is in Chicago. I’m sure she’ll be glad to watch the kids. Or I’d get my mother to do it only she’s dead. Simplistic solutions for simplistic minds. Spoiled affluent gold and diamond wearing Bible thumpers preaching from the mansion’s balcony. Proof you can take the boy out of Appalachia, but you can’t take the Appalachia out of the boy. Just drop them youngins off at mamas’ trailer but buy her a box of wine first.

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re goin’ through – David Bowie

It is an amazing mind set, almost delusional. Telling people how they should live their lives by radar. Being ministered to by people who know nothing about you. They have the answers to all of your problems! Even if they have no understanding of them. One size fits all! After all, Jesus said, Blah blah, blah, blah. Peace be with you.

But Jesus never tried to tell people how to live their lives. He only criticized the money changers and the hypocrites. Those who would make a show of their faith in the temple attempting to advance themselves. Who would criticize someone for leaving coppers in the collection plate.

You know when you travel around the holy land preaching the gospel with 12 unmarried men. Eating together and living together people are bound to talk. The Old Testament is clear in its stand against male homosexuality. Female homosexuality not so much.

But you’d think as a Rabbi living with 12 men, the subject was bound to have come up? Tell me Rabbi; you are a wise man, what would God say about such behavior?  Just one of a thousand hypocrisies. Or you are on a boat half the size of a Great Lakes Freighter with all of the world’s animals loaded up two by two. Upon this rock they build their church. 

This is how they do it by downplaying the hypocrisy and ignoring the truly troubling. Making the Bible mean whatever they want it to mean. A sword and shield of one size fits all orthodoxy from Billy Graham to the Pope. You cain’t go agin the Bible it’s God’s inspired word. Except God didn’t exactly know how this universe he created actually operated. He forgot to mention he had created North and South America. Which is why their discovery came as a shock to even the deity. Oh yeah, I meant to tell you about that, but I forgot. It was a rough week. God has never once healed an amputee.

If you want to believe, believe. All I’m saying is the Bible is the roadmap for salvation in the next world. It is not a rule book for how to live in this one. And I strongly resent any attempt to use said ancient text as a form of coercion or holy writ.

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”  ― Mark Twain

In the old Soviet Union, even the one-party state had Conservatives and Liberals. The Conservatives wanted to approve the new five-year plan immediately. While the Liberals insisted on reading the new five-year plan first. Bureaucracy is the same with either a frock or an iron fist. WE BELIEVE This! So, you will believe this also or else! No one knows for sure what is in the new five-year plan exactly. But will stoutly defend it as a matter of orthodoxy. All should be thus, one size fits all. So sayeth me in the name of the lord. 

Mr. J.D. Vance says school shootings are just a fact of life. Gosh, our hands are tied, and we’d like to do something. Thoughts and prayers everyone! Think about how bad we must feel on our way to the Country Club. Just give all your problems over to Jesus.  Who would ever say such a sick and depraved thing? We should just accept murder in our schools? Trusting in Jesus to keep them safe?

A powerless government of Bible thumping do nothings! Powerless to stop climate change. Powerless to stop polluters. Powerless to tax the rich. Powerless to help the homeless. Powerless to stop school shootings. But with more than enough power to run your life based on their beliefs in a “Good Book.” I dare you to claim the two parties are the same.

“Men (and women) are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt