This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox’

Obviously, a great man has passed. Great in spirit for the smallness of his desires. Elected to the presidency on Richard Nixon’s disgrace and a general abhorrence of Washington inside baseball. A man of character and integrity was accidently elected. A rare commodity in American Politics. A man who lived in the same house he always had lived in without any golden toilets. Jimmy Carter was what we the people said we wanted. It turns out we prefer stolen notebooks and October surprises. The snide remark and the crooked deal.

Jimmy Carter was the most religiously devout President maybe ever. That being so, the Bible thumpers and blue haired ladies against freedom always generally hated him. He was always meek and calm, and we wanted blood thirsty. Let’s just send the B-52s (not the music group) and call it a day! Let’s just bomb the shit out of them! Teach em a lesson!

Carter brought the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation, and they hated him for it. It was meaningless, they said. A political stunt! A big nothing burger, yet the treaty still holds. An American President who brought peace and not war. An American President who won a Nobel Peace Prize and deserved it.

Now this is going to really blow your mind. Facing an energy crisis never seen before in American history. The President once went on TV and tried to explain the problem to the people. America, he said,  needed to transition away from fossil fuels. Because otherwise, this country would be involved in an endless series of energy wars with huge budget deficits. Sure, it was a crazy strategy speaking truth to the American people like they were adults. Trying to explain with facts and understanding but getting “This ain’t Charlie’s Angels“ in return.

Putting solar panels on the White House roof in the 1970s was forward thinking and considered radical. Insulation ratings for buildings once unheard of are a building standards today. The Ray guns gleefully threw the solar panels off the White House roof. Solar energy? What’s that? How weird and strange! We don’t need any of that! Petroleum uber Allis! But just imagine, if between bouts of Professional Wrestling, we had taken the President’s advice?

No Iraq Wars maybe. No Afghanistan and maybe no 911. A whole different world we could have had if we had just simply chosen it. The last moon shot was in 1972, and this was an America that still thought it possible to change things for the better. Building solar energy test plants to build and develop new energy technologies. China is today building a solar plant based on one the Carter Administration built.

Why would this country ever want to lead the world in alternative energy technology? Just for jobs, shits and giggles and billions of dollars in profits? These are the same people who told Henry Ford to get a horse. They said household electricity is dangerous! Those bright lights hurt my eyes and after all, what’s really wrong with a candle?

The beginning of the inversion and the apathy. Good ideas are considered bad ideas. Modern ideas are a threat to old technologies. Let’s do it the old way! We don’t want to do that. We’ll just pay out the gas money and fight the wars. GM’s electric car was quickly put away for forty years until it became unavoidable. If China makes cheaper solar panels than us, whose fault is that? We had a fifty-year head start and a kick the ass of government money to boot. But America plans for the next quarter, not the next generation.

It looks pretty clear to me the Carter Administration didn’t fail; we did. We should have listened to them about alternative energy. Everything Mr. Carter had predicted has come to pass, just like he said it would.

They rode Jimmy Carter out of Washington on a rail. He was laughed at and scorned, but he was right. Ronnie Ray gun spent millions updating old obsolete battleships. So, the American Navy would always be ready with cutting edge obsolete battleships. No one was happier to see Jimmy Carter leave town than the Democratic Congress.

There was the Democratic Party in Washington and then there were the interlopers from Georgia, interfering in the status quo. Carter’s fights with Teddy Kennedy are legendary. And Kennedy threatened to primary a sitting Democratic President, But I’m sure the constant infighting and threats had nothing to do with Ray guns eventual victory. A White House and a Congress constantly at war with each other. Let’s vote for them!

Vote shiny thing! Who needs progress? Down with progress! Just say filler up! America voted for shiny thing, punched themselves in the head and it’s been downhill ever since.

But at 100 years of age, I’m glad Mr. Carter has gone to his rest. A man of his stature should not be forced to witness what is about to come. He belongs to a different America than the one we live in today. Gold tennis shoes and autographed Bibles and the blue haired ladies against freedom just love him so! He’s just like Jesus if Jesus had had three wives and was a low-down lying cheat.

A morality play for America played out on a world stage. We will bury the last honorable man in the ground and ensconce a disreputable man in power. The King will be forced by protocol to attend and show respect but will see it only as a blemish on his own spotlight. But  for just one moment and maybe for the last moment ever. The smallness of the King will be reflected in the greatness of the humble.

“The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an “opening”; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none-not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature; no appreciation of art; no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life.”
― Eugene V. Debs