This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Maybe someday they’ll teach about it in schools. Or make a morality play out of it about the dangers and evils of having too much money. Who could imagine a regular Joe with maybe a little bit on the ball. To squander it all and punch himself in the face while behaving stupidly.

You have a successful and prestigious ice cream parlor. Famous for its Butterscotch ice cream. People flock to your establishment crazy for Butterscotch. But you personally don’t like Butterscotch and unilaterally decide after all these years of success, to discontinue Butterscotch. He’s the boss and he can do that if he wants. It’s unfathomably boneheaded. Fuck a bunch of customers, I’ll do things my way.

Is this really the redoubt you want to stick on? Is this the hill you choose to die on…really? Now in a fairy make believe land you just let the goddamn newspaper run itself. Endorse whoever they want and shut the fuck up! It’s so easy! It’s free! And has no negative press attached to it!

After all, what does a newspaper endorsement really matter? How many undecided American voters wavering on the fence read a ringing endorsement for Kamala Harris in the Washington Post and say to themselves, “That settles it! I was thinking about this thing all wrong! I wasn’t really sure, but now thanks to a well framed argument in the Washington Post my mind is clearer now, and my life is made better.

“News today, fish wrapper tomorrow.” – Ben Franklin

Now, let’s take a look at the math. Kamala Harris probably ranks as one of the most endorsed candidates of all time. Because of Donald Trump’s toxicity, they stand in line and come in from miles around to endorse Kamala Harris. Under this huge deluge of endorsements any endorsement by the Washington Post would largely go unnoticed as one among the many in the crowd. But to withhold the endorsement and boom! Buick meets brick wall! Shut up! Make a large donation to the candidate of your choice and go on your merry way. AKA, nobody cares what the newspaper thinks, they only care when it won’t think.

That’s sort of the job of a newspaper editor to report on and reflect on the news. The Presidential election is considered big news. Did you hire an editor and pay them a large salary to run the newspaper? Maybe you should leave them to it. The most important election since 1860, but we have no opinion. But what the newspaper is saying is that we won’t do our job today because the boss doesn’t like the probable outcome. We don’t want to say anything good about the Yankees because we’re Dodgers fans. No coverage today! The Dodgers lost.

Are they really that afraid of Donald Trump? Withholding endorsements out of fear of another Trump Presidency? You got to be a billionaire while quivering in your boots like Aunt Dorothy’s Jell-O mold? Spineless jellyfish much? Afraid of a man with more ex-partners, ex-employees, and ex-felon adversaries than grains of sand on a beach. But he’s going to specifically remember you with that famous sparkling memory of his?

When all is said and done, all the newspaper really has is its reputation. And once lost, is gone maybe forever. Democracy dies in the Dumb. The most boneheaded idiotic asinine amateurish stunt in the annals of modern journalism. Would you believe The New Fox News? Now with even more fair and more balanced. My grandma; what big eyes you have.

Ten percent of Washington Post subscribers and counting. I wonder if that’s a record for pissed off subscribers? 250,000 and counting but that’s nothing but the superficial damage. The real damage comes moving forward. If they won’t speak when asked, who cares what they say unprompted? They’ve literally screwed the pooch and lost all credibility with their subscribers as an honest newspaper.

Tell me how you patch that hole in the boat Gilligan? Maybe hire Tony Hinchcliffe as a guest editor. All of this ship on the rocks, for what? Now Gannett News Service parent company of USA Today is following suit and not endorsing a presidential candidate. Who cares? Who cares what USA Today thinks? The TV dinner of prepackaged newspapers. You’d get more honest journalism from the farm journal. But by endorsing no one after a tradition of making endorsements leaves a large yellow stain in the crotch of American journalism.

Don’t be scared, this is America. If you honestly support Donald Trump, use your newspaper to explain why. We peasants and piss ants wait anxiously for an education. But you can’t do that! Can you? That would be business suicide. So not offering any endorsement becomes the most chicken shit, obvious and cowardly approach. This I believe! But I won’t dare say it. What is Mr. Bezos embarrassed by or ashamed of? (Rhetorical question) To support Donald Trump privately but only privately, tells us more than we need to know.

We’ve reached the point here in the Trump Twilight Zone to be more specific in our terminology. Donald Trump is a Fascist and a convicted criminal. He is the most dangerous political figure in this country…ever. For the world, if elected, Donald Trump could be the largest disaster… in all human history. For NATO, Ukraine, Israel, disaster. For the environment, disaster. For the economy, disaster.

But sure, I understand. It can be so hard to make up your mind sometimes. Kamala might raise your taxes.

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn