This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Illinois Governor and eternal optimist JB Pritzker says the orange apocalypse’s game plan is to sow enough chaos in American cities that he can send in more troops and seize the ballot boxes during the 2026 elections. It’s an interesting and plausible scenario. But it presupposes a lot of things. First, what makes him think we get that far before the wheels fall off?

An elderly, drug assisted chief executive who becomes more extreme and bellicose by the day. A man who vents cruelty from every pore. Angry and threatening, mean spirited. When you hint to Federal Workers maybe you’ll get your back pay and then again, maybe you won’t. That’s terrorism! Threatening and using people as pawns to try to get your way. So, he can hurt more Americans by making their healthcare unaffordable.

Of all the great dictator’s negative personality traits, his rising cruelty and meanness of spirit unhinge the economy. The more he blusters, the more Americans stop buying. Perhaps now isn’t the right time to buy a house or a new car? Perhaps now isn’t the time to plan an overseas vacation. The government shutdown drags down profits and snarls airports and port facilities. It slows freight movement both in and out of the country. The first ballot box seized will send the economy and Wall Street into a spiraling freefall. But we have to get to those elections first!

The predicted farm crisis has now arrived and is rapidly growing worse. As news of a large successful harvest arrives and prices sink further. A record harvest they can’t sell and all because of Trump. Not because of the wind or insects, hail damage, blight or high fertilizers costs, but Trump, just Trump! With the stroke of a pen,(Sharpie) he wiped out an industry.  With the stroke of a pen, (Sharpie) he wipes out the auto industry. With a stroke of a pen, he wipes out the tourism industry.

The number which keeps bouncing around is 30%. Canadian tourism, off by 30%. Hotels and restaurants, off by 30%. And 30% is bad, but it doesn’t sound catastrophic, like 40 or 50%. But most businesses operate on margins near that. So, a 30% decline in business is like the building burning down. You won’t be there long working for free! I can feel it in my bones. This has a 2008 reprise written all over it, only on steroids. Auto loan delinquencies and home foreclosures are all heading back toward record levels. Home prices are teetering and about to take the plunge.

Watch this! The US government under Trump authorizes a $20 billion dollar farm bailout to Brazil. Brazil then lifts its export tariffs and undercuts US farmers. How does our media report this? It doesn’t! Instead, from the headlines of New York Crimes, “Trump to Unveil Farmer Aid as China Shuns US Crops.” Oh, I see. This is all China’s fault! Damn their stubbornness! Why won’t they just pay out the extra millions and millions of dollars in tariffs? Why must they go purchase their soybeans from the lowest priced supplier? Don’t they want to be our friend?

How about this one? Try not to laugh. CNN, the Conservatively Neutered Network. “Trump Considers Massive Bailout of at Least $10 Billion for American Farmers Hurt by Tariffs.” Told you. If ten billion is massive. What’s twenty billion? Ten billion is a pittance. A spit in the ocean. It’s wishful thinking. A drop in an ocean of red ink. If Brazil needs $20 billion, the United States will need at least a $100 billion. Trump tunes up his violin and begins to fiddle while Rome burns.

A lot of voices out there are saying, “Fuck em! Fuck the farmers! They voted for Trump, let em rot!” But we are all in their sinking boat. If you think an $8 hamburger is obscene, wait till it’s $15. We all eat what they grow. So as tempting and entertaining as the “Fuck em” strategy sounds. It’s really not viable. We must try to attract them to our side once again. And we must bail them out once again. They are us and we are they.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a political lesson to be learned here. Perhaps focusing on bread-and-butter issues is preferable to social engineering in winning elections. Everybody eats. Everybody needs money to survive.

It has been a fortunate byproduct of the government shutdown the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been unable to publish last month’s economic data. The payroll company, ADP, says the economy lost 32,000 jobs last month. It was just a month or so ago,  Trump was so angry at a + 75,000 jobs number, he fired the woman in charge. You don’t need the BLS report to know which way the wind blows.

Yesterday, Attorney General Kim Blondie attempted to prove to congress just how incompetent she really was. Asked a specific question about Trump and the Epstein files. Which she has seen and which she is covering up. Blondie explodes in personal attacks and invective. “Did you see the pictures of Trump with the half-naked under age teenage girls? Yes or no?” It was a pathetic display and a question she never answered. And one I’m sure angered the boss. 86 proof Pete Hegseth says Trump screams at him. Just you, Pete? Or does he scream at everyone? I’m guessing everyone! What do you think?

This is your president on drugs! Drugs or mental illness or both. The anger and the mood swings, the callous willingness to use and hurt others. The delusional belief that he could redesign the government in mid-flight without repercussions. This is the president the 25^th Amendment was originally written for.

Consider, if you will, Trump’s attempt to extort from Russia a part of its oil industry in exchange for help in Ukraine, designed and obscured as a peace summit. Now consider Trump offering Ukraine long-range cruise missiles. See the connection? German intelligence says Russia is preparing to strike NATO. Who really started World War 3?

Maybe Pritzker’s right. I hope not, be we shall just have to wait and see if we all survive until the 2026 elections. By then, the army might be busy elsewhere.

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – Harry Truman

Harry, we have arrived!

Thank you for reading and supporting this Carbon-Based life. “Come and get me Coppers! I’m on top of the world, Ma!”