This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It is sort of like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Because of the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t be able to release their monthly employment numbers. And it is a good thing too! You remember when the evil one fired the last person in charge? Well, he’s withdrawn his own nominee to replace her. But the free market won’t let you down! ADP the payroll company says by their figuring the jobs number is 32,000 jobs.

Trump fired the woman for 75,000 and now it’s forecast down to 32? The numbers are twice as bad as poor. Twice bad enough to get you fired. But the signs are all around us. There isn’t a fast-food joint in America not running some sort of combo meal special trying to lure patrons in the door. There’s not a car company in America not offering some sort of gimmick or credit come on. Discretionary spending has hit the skids.

Just Donald Trump’s wayward mouth alone has done enough damage to the economy, all by itself, to bring on a recession. As Americans, we’re trained from birth to always look at our feet. We watch things close to home. The world? That’s some place else, way over there! Canada has been one of our closest and most trusted allies for over a century. And in nine months, they’re ready to close the border. Of course, it’s not all our fault. Wait, what am I saying? Of course, it’s all our fault. It’s all Trump’s fault!

As Americans, we’re used to Trump’s bullshit and forget other countries aren’t temperamentally suited when he casually talks about taking over their country. As Americans and Trumpikins, we take such bluster as the idle bullshit it is. Then the Barney Fife ICE raid on the South Korean Battery factory in Georgia. Holy Shit! To you and I, it’s just take as a blurb in the news. But to the South Koreans, they don’t see it that way. To Koreans, it was an outrage and national insult, something that would go on in China or the third world. Oh, and the 350 billion dollar South Korean investment deal in America? That agreement is yet to be signed. Hmmm?

Boy, I’ll tell you what. That South Korea is my kind of country though. You get arrested and the president of the country gets involved. You’re not even to the ICE facility yet, and your president is already calling the state department demanding answers. Not some piddly little department chief or ambassador. Oh no, you get the president’s immediate attention. Do you think Donald Trump would do that or anything like that for you?

But more than just South Korea, it tells the entire world to STAY AWAY! Enter at your own peril. The incident screams out a warning to the whole world. SAAB is willing to build a factory in Canada to build Gripen fighter jets. Replacing the 100 billion dollars in F35s ordered from Lockheed- Martin. Offering jobs and stability and no need to worry anymore about commander crazy pants down in Washington.

I’ve said this before, but it seems to have no impact. Let’s try it this way. Imagine, you are a character in a dystopic novel. And you suddenly discover the big peace summit, the one Big Brother and Winston Smith have planned and trumpeted for weeks, isn’t really a peace summit after all. It’s an extortion gambit. Peace isn’t even on the agenda, but organized theft is. Two days after the failed Trump summit in Alaska, it appears in the news blurbs. Two oil company executives accompanied Mr. Trump to Alaska.

As the order of presentation goes, it was decided the oil executives would give their presentation first. The oil execs thought it would be good for all concerned, and further the cause of peace. If Russia would just quietly sign over a part of their oil industry to Exxon. Nothing changes really, except you mail us checks every month from now on. Clearly extortion, clearly quid pro quo. Do you want us to help you or not? International criminal villainy on a Superman movie villain level and it barely registers a blip on the Trump-o-meter outrage scale. President Vito Corleone, “I understand you have a problem with your neighbors. Maybe I can help you. But first! My friends here have a nice proposition for you.”

European countries (Our Friends) are issuing travel warnings about coming to the United States. Why would anyone in their right mind ever want to come here now? When you could wind up in some fetid, festering, humid gow, wishing you were South Korean. Outlandish fees for tourist visas shout STAY AWAY! Don’t come here anymore!

And it’s working! Tourist venues from coast-to-coast report slowing sales and an absence of international visitors. And next year is only going to be worse. Trump is breaking the American brand. Visions of Hollywood signs, Levi’s blue jeans, Disney World, the Grand Canyon. Corvettes and pretty girls in bikinis at the beach. The Jukebox and a milkshake at the drive in. All of these American tattletales are coming undone and replaced by ominous threats, fear, chains, handcuffs, and soldiers in the streets. Such behavior ruined the North Korean tourist industry, and I bet it will do the same to ours.

It is a dystopian novel, only it’s real and you are in it. The authoritarian dictatorship of the United States. How ironic, after the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet bloc, they can’t understand authoritarianism is bad for business. Strangling the golden goose in a Ludwig Von Mises postindustrial, feudal society where some live inside the castle in comfort, while most sleep outdoors beyond the gate. Education, healthcare and food are for the privileged, so watch your mouth.

In an effort to save Wall Street hedge fund investors. The Trump Junta offered Argentina $20 billion dollars to Make Argentina Great Again! To help stabilize and grow the Argentine economy. Argentina then lowered their export tariffs undercutting American farmers. But Trump has a bailout plan and wants to give American farmers ten billion dollars. Let me check my math here. Argentina got twenty billion and American farmers get ten? And the Argentines got to sell the soybeans to boot!

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.” ― Thomas Paine

Thank you for Reading and supporting “This Carbon-Based Life.”

“You do not become a ”dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”
― Vaclav Havel