This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

No, no, no. Oh America, what have you bitten off? What have you put in your mouth now? We are still a month out and already parts are falling off. Prospective cabinet members have their moms calling Senators. Pete Hegseth is promising earnestly to never drink again. There is a whole list of symptoms of problem drinking, or so I’ve heard from a friend. Number one on that list and undisputed champion Is the promise, “I’ll never drink again!”

If you have used this term yourself, it needs no explanation. If you have received this promise before, it needs no explanation. The mirror is broken, there’s a hole in the carpet and the parakeet is missing.

It’s really very simple, let me have my chocolate pudding now and I promise to eat all my spinach from now on. He wants the responsible job without the previous responsible performance. I promise to be good! Unfortunately for him, we’ve all heard that bullshit before in Supreme Court confirmations. But already we find ourselves knee deep in bullshit and it ain’t even started yet. Just wait until the band arrives and they get warmed up.

But oh, children; I have a question. An Attorney General candidate with no qualifications to speak of besides being a criminal himself and needing lawyers embroiled in sex scandal involving a minor? That’s okay? Let’s move forward with this one! A Defense Secretary candidate who makes a drunken frat boy look responsible? He’s okay too?

Then, out of the clear blue sky, out of nowhere the King’s choice to run the DEA suddenly, quietly tries to withdraw his name. I’m just cursed with this cynical nature after being taken advantage of by older siblings as a child. I’ve lost the ability to trust. It’s given me a cynical nature and a hypersensitivity to suspicion. Gee, why would a guy withdraw his name from a big, big job in an Administration that tolerates almost anything?

What skeletons could be rattling around in that closet? It’s like in those cop shows where the cops pull up and one guy breaks from the crowd and runs! What’s your hurry? I’ve changed my mind, that’s all! A man can change his mind, can’t he? Washington is a long way from Arizona, I might not like it there! You might investigate me and find out something truly heinous. So, I’ll just stay where I am. Maybe you might find something worse than Hegseth’s neo-Nazi tats? Or Matt Gaetz predilection for little girls.

It’s profiling plain and simple. Anyone who accepts a commission from the king is either a crook, a boob or a hack, and or a combination of all three. So automatically, that qualifies them as at least potential criminals. But now, one who is appointed accepts and on second thought retracts. There’s a fella who needs investigating.

Their excuse tells you this is all just made-up nonsense. According to the King, Junior offended some Bible thumping collar jockey types in a Mega church four years ago. For his criticism of their holding services during the pandemic. I’m sure that was it. We can’t have a man like that running the DEA. Drunken buffoonery and cash settlements are okay and sex crimes with children we can ignore. But don’t you go shorting no preacher boy! I’m sure that was it! Those preachers have long memories.

Just wait until the starting bell rings, that’s all I’m saying. It’s going to be a wild ride. We haven’t even started yet, and it’s already a wild ride. Things are going to be happening so fast. You won’t even notice the media not telling you about them. You see, the King frowns on criticism of his choices. He took the Wall Street Journal to task for mentioning his candidate’s shortcomings. That’s King speak for you to Shut up! If they call your name, you’re in trouble. Never mind why he’s withdrawing his name, he just is! It’s none of your business why! No need to go investigating anyone now, he withdrew his acceptance.

The King can accept any foible except perhaps timidity. If you’re going to be a criminal, be a criminal damn, it! Stand tall and spit in their eye if they ask any questions you don’t like! So, what, you like nose candy with your teenager sex and sometimes Ecstasy. So? He paid her! So, what if he wrote checks to stop the rape accusations. It won’t affect his job performance!

Just you wait until they get this mongoloid monstrosity of malfeasance welded and bolted together and try to get it off the ground. Then someone yanks on the pull cord and we’re off. If you put competent people in incompetent circumstances, they find competence. If you put incompetent people in incompetent circumstances, they will find incompetence.

Just wait until they try to do something.

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell

But the problem dear Yurok is not power, it’s competence. You can’t turn a cast of fools and drunks into the Broadway cast of “Oklahoma.” Intentions are wonderful, but a cast of fools and drunks remains a cast of fools and drunks. You can’t teach Eddie Gaedell to play basketball or expect wisdom from a mad king.