By David Glenn Cox
Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.” For me, this is why. This blog isn’t a hobby, it’s my reason for being. I work on it 24 hrs. a day and seven days a week. And it started long ago, before I even knew what a blog was.
I made my way through school by writing, but never considered it as a career. Through luck and effort, I became a minor executive with a minor company. The boss decided one day to change the focus of the company. I was good at what I did. I was what was called a parts guru. I knew people all over the country with all kinds of surplus industrial parts. With the rise of the Internet, I pleaded with the boss to start selling obsolete parts online.
So, when he refused, I sold my 1965 Mustang and went into business for myself. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do, chase the American dream? I was suddenly prosperous, and business was great. But then, 2008 happened. In six months, I lost everything I owned. My house, my business, my car and my wife. I was homeless with $6.00 in my pocket.
So began a four-year sacred sojourn into the dark heart of America. I lived in garages and couch surfed. I did odd jobs and day labor, of any type I could find. I began writing Real Estate listings and product comparisons. But on my time, I had something to say. I was a middle class American suddenly being treated like a bum. I got watched and followed in stores and the cops gave me hard looks. But I began to see other things I’d never seen before. Mother’s telling their hungry children “no,” because a box of cereal was too expensive.
I began to meet people living under bridges and in tents. People who had their lives destroyed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was what I wrote about. The homeless and the dispossessed. I was angry and wanted someone else to know what was really going on. I was homeless but I was not a bum, and neither were the people I’d met. One man had been a painting contractor who’d once had three crews. He was prosperous too, until he wasn’t.
From Atlanta to Minnesota looking for work. From Minnesota to Portland looking for work. From Portland to Ohio, looking for work with side trips in between always looking for work. Always in the comfort of a Greyhound Bus. I saw a lot of America. The America nobody talks about. I landed a job with a small magazine, “The Leftist Review.” It didn’t pay much, but it was gold to me. It was a lifeline which kept me alive, allowing me to work and to improve my skills.
Without any notice at all my career had changed. My goals and motives had changed. This is what I was meant to do! A famous publication was looking for a writer for a series of articles on Homelessness. Needless to say, I was not hired. They didn’t want a homeless writer to tell them about homelessness. They wanted a prosperous writer to not tell you about homelessness. To avoid the hard truths and never say anything which might offend the BOSS. The publican was owned by a multi-multi-millionaire. And they wanted to tell a story of homelessness in a way which wouldn’t offend Multi-multi-Millionaires.
I learned something important from that experience. Our media, your media, is as strictly controlled as in North Korea. Controlled by the uber wealthy, who hire bright young men and women from elite schools to not tell you the news. They don’t have to lie to you, just ignore the truth of what is really going on. And with fat salaries that is much easier to do. I know that from personal experience, that when you have everything, you tend to see nothing. You don’t see the struggle from behind the wheel of a luxury automobile. But get out and walk sometime and watch how the world changes.
Fox News is straight up propaganda. So is Fox Business. CBS recently fired/quit or let go the head of their news department. From that very hour, CBS has not uttered one world of complaint about Donald Trump. They would ice on the wrong side of the cake just to please him. To them, it’s a business and they write to please the boss and to earn a fat paycheck. I write in an attempt to tell the unvarnished truth, as I see it.
I was writing articles for the Motley Fool for Wall Street. I wrote an article about Boeing’s problems with their new aircraft. It was rejected, they only wanted good news! Boeing is great! Boeing is wonderful! Spend your inheritance and buy, buy, buy! Then the airliners began falling from the sky. I got no satisfaction from being correct. Just another lesson about the truth.
There was a writing job open for a political writer. I sent in my resume and my samples. The guy emailed me back. “These are great. If you can write articles like this from a Conservative perspective, you’re hired.” Of course, I could, but I won’t. After the National Enquirer scandal, I decided to try my hand at writing bullshit, just for fun. I concocted a story that the real Ronald Reagan had been thrown from his horse in 1968 and was brain-dead in a private hospital in Palm Springs. His office and duties taken over by his stunt double, surgically enhanced to further fit the bill. Ever notice how much makeup Reagan always wore? But the audience fell for it hook, line and sinker, and I was ashamed of myself. It was just too easy.
My blog This Carbon-Based Life contains the truth as I see it. I won’t shade it or cover up the scars. I’m not rich and don’t want to be. I’m not seeking a corner office or a smile from the boss. I’m seeking survival, so that I might continue at this. It may not be much to look at and might lack all the fancy trimmings, but it is the uncensored truth as I see it.
The other day Elon Musk’s Starship mission failed after four minutes. Fox News called it a success, and only covered the first four minutes. I called it SLOPPY! Three failed missions in a row. But Elon is Trump’s billionaire buddy. We don’t want to offend them! The other networks didn’t cover it at all. I wonder why?
The fact is, I’m slowly going broke. I’m just in survival mode. So that I can continue to tell the truth as I see it, without corporate control. When I’m gone, so is a part of the truth. The jobs are few for those of us on the left and are few and getting fewer all the time. Facebook literally ran me out of town on a rail. If you aren’t going to pay us, get lost! The number of venues where anyone can post articles beyond corporate control is shrinking. Becoming more controlled by the day. You can’t say Nazi anymore and you can’t call the President a criminal, even if he is one. You can only write between the goalposts. You can imply, but you can’t say why.
Finally, let me close by paraphrasing Mr. George Bailey. “This country needs this crummy, broken-down one-horse blog. Just so people have one place they can go beyond the reach of Mr. Potter and the elite corporate media. Stories written by writer’s who have never really been hungry or homeless. Or writers who’ve never had their homes foreclosed or their cars repossessed. Writer’s whose only real motivation is not to tell the truth, but just to please the boss.
Please support “This Carbon-Based Life” while you still can because once it is gone, you’ll see no more of it’s like in your time, ever, ever again.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain
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