This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Is Cankles, the copper-colored clown having (tia) ministrokes? If so, don’t bother sending him any Christmas cards. Ministrokes are nature’s way of saying two-minute warning – time to get your affairs in order. Part of me thinks they want to twist his rubber band until it pops and they don’t give a damn about his health. But considering the tenor of this tea pot dictator, his ego pushes him onwards towards Valhalla. Like Fred Sanford, “I’m coming to see you Ivanka, honey! I’m coming to see you real soon!”

Limited videos all about three minutes in length. Leaning against the doorframe of the Dictator One aircraft. All freshly painted up in his bronze bullshit like a chubby whore on Saturday night. Like Pink, give him the shot so he can make it through the show. How do I know? He texts, “South Caredddd” Explain that one McFly? That’s it! That’s the whole message from the corruption in chief. Now, everyone, take out your decoder rings.  “Orphan Annie’s secret message says, Eat more Adderall!”

There has to be a reason for Jekyll and Dyed. Eight miles high and when you touch down. One minute he’s up and the next he droops and shuffles, slouch shouldered like he’s looking for his walker. In a sad way, but not too sad, he is to be pitied. He rules in a snake pit with a nest of vipers he calls friends when he hasn’t had a real friend since the fourth grade. “Everyman’s death diminishes me.” But some less than others. He surrounds himself with people much like himself. Sleep well!

The more I learn about South Korea, the more I like them. Now, whenever one country gives a gift to the leader of another country. It has to be approved in advance. So as to avoid any diplomatic faux pas. In the wake of the “No kings” protest, those sly Korean bastards gave the dipstick a crown. And he accepted it! Oh. my god, that’s so funny. Very subtle Korea, very subtle! Remember, this is in the wake of the Hyundai battery disaster. Of the Georgia hospitality variety.

The Korean people are still quite angry and the battery factory fiasco is far from over, and the building stands idle still. So they present Big Bother with a crown and I bet you could hear the Korean laughter clear up in outer space. The doofus and his corrupt chrome cronies never caught on. “Oh, thank you! A crown! For me? How nice!”

There is a fund set aside for emergencies with billions and billions of dollars in it. The choice to suspend SNAP benefits is the choice that the little orange punkin headed Hitler made. Tell me again, who is responsible for the government shutdown? Who chooses to let the children and the elderly go hungry? Who doesn’t give a shit if faithful government employees lose their savings, their credit ratings or their homes? There is a growing concern about air traffic controllers who can’t get to work because they can’t pay the bridge tolls or have enough gas in their cars to get work and back home again. Poverty is doing the work of proper politics.

I recently read a report explaining the top third of American income earners are largely unaffected by inflation or the government shutdown. The middle third of Americans are beginning to feel the pinch and the bottom third are just fucked entirely. Under attack from all sides and priced out of everything. The new ACA insurance prices are now published and it is murderous. The Republicans are basically saying to Americans, “You just need to go ahead and die! We can’t afford you anymore! We can’t give insane tax cuts to our contributors, billionaires and corporations and keep you alive too! So, Hasti La Vista granny!

What is a government exactly? If it can’t provide simple healthcare? If the majority of its citizens are priced out of a decent life. Why are so many Americans on SNAP benefits? Because wages for working people haven’t kept up with inflation and corporate profits since 1975. They need to feed you just enough so you have the strength to work your shift in at Walmart or Amazon. It’s no secret, and it’s no accident. The middle class has been strangled out of existence by corporate puppy Republicans and complicit “me too” Democrats. What exactly do you owe a government which so callously paints a target on your back? You owe it nothing! Not Jack Shit! It’s not a government at all, it’s a concentration camp administration. Slowly letting the air out of the shower room until it begins to kill off all the useless eaters.

But the fleecing of the flock is reaching a terminal velocity. The subprime auto loan scandal grows like a hurricane in the Gulf of MEXICO! From regional banks now to HSBC. They’ve decided to check their portfolios to see if they too are exposed. Remember 2008? This is four times larger. You can repossess a home and resell it, even at a loss. But you can’t resell a used car when there are ten million other repossessed used cars already waiting at the auction. Their value is effectively ZERO. And the loans are a total loss.

Consumers pushed to the edge have no interest in buying anything at any price. Let alone at loan shark interest rates. Walmart advertises toys for Christmas under $25. And so it begins. Sanders trucking shut down permanently with over 500 trucks and truckers no longer needed. Fewer imports, means fewer trucks. So just suppose for a minute you’re playing poker on Wall Street. And you have ten million dollars in real estate holdings. Then nine million and then eight, seven, six. Suddenly, you’re underwater. That’s what’s going on right now!

Farming has tanked, the real estate market is trembling. Tourism is gone; Health insurance gone! Trucking is fucked, Medicaid stripped; public education hollowed out. Food prices soaring, auto manufacturing screwed! Property values stagnate and falling. Rent prices stagnant and falling. A third of Americans are price out of a decent life. But one third of Americans don’t feel any pain at all…yet. And they answer, “let them eat cake!”

“But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.” -Mother Jones

“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Thank you for reading “This Carbon-Based Life.”