This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Anyone surprised? Come on, raise your hand if you’re surprised someone took a shot at the old duffer. The media is playing it up to the hilt. SHOTS FIRED AT CORRESPONDENT’S DINNER!! Shots fired outside (outside the building) at correspondent’s dinner. The suspect was shot “Outside” the building. He was armed with a shotgun, a pistol, and many knives. There’s your tip-off, right there. Bringing knives to an attempted presidential assassination is a clear sign of “not” a criminal mastermind at work.

This was a romantic at work who thought up a devious and sinister master plan. Just run past thirty- or forty-well-armed security agents and, with a single shotgun, assassinate the president. And if they tried to stop you, you had knives. This is not to discount the severity of the event. Only to point out that this event has mental illness written all over it. A shotgun and knives against the Secret Service? It doesn’t sound like the work of Al Qaeda.

But this is a dark time here in Never, Never Land. The king has no friends and is all alone. The king has stirred the pot. Ambitious men surround the king. The world is filled with crazies; may they never meet. I don’t wish to inject conspiracy into this but. It was very unusual for the king to attend the Correspondent’s dinner. Mr. Trump had never attended before, due to Mr. Trump’s famously thin skin. Why did he attend this time? Mr. Trump knows he’s not popular here and knows he will be the butt of all their jokes.

Or not, Mr. Trump becoming the wet blanket at the party, putting a lid on everyone’s fun. It’s like inviting Will Smith to a “Your wife is so fat” joke contest. Why would Trump attend? His relationship with the press is contentious at best. So, it just doesn’t make sense; it’s like George Bush reading to school children on 9-11. Why was he doing that, besides establishing an alibi? The president wasn’t pushing any literacy initiatives at the time. Just reading to a random classroom of students with the cameras rolling.  

I can’t really imagine a dinner celebrating America’s semi-free press, celebrating each other, hosted by a tyrannical fascist madman. Go ahead, tell your jokes. Perhaps Chairman Stalin will find them amusing. I can’t imagine correspondents doing their “A” material with the big goof sitting right there at the table. This isn’t a Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast where Lucille Ball makes a crack about your shoes or Dean Martin talks about your hometown. This is personal. This is about lives and careers. And the subject of the hour is?

Past presidential attendees have been able to pretend the lampooning remarks don’t hurt, but laughter is the cruelest cut without a salve. From my knowledge of Mr. Trump. I question his ability to pretend an Epstein zinger didn’t hit home. Go ahead, tell the Epstein jokes. I’m sure Trump will like those fine. See the quandary? The jokes become more pointed and personal, and less funny with the big goof sitting there at the table stupidly smiling back.

But I guess now we will never know how Mr. Trump would have handled this scene. Perhaps, putting his hand over his mouth and pretending to be shocked, or a feigned chuckle. Smiling and chuckling, saying, “It’s true, it’s true, my dad was a filthy racist who discriminated.” I would wager Mr. Trump won’t be attending next year’s dinner for various reasons.  Either Impeached admitted to a hospital or deceased. At eighty years old, you don’t buy any green bananas.

There’s never a dull moment. You turn on one “I Love Lucy” rerun and the next thing you know. Somebody’s taken a shot at the President or started a war. Closed the Straits of Hormuz or invaded Venezuela. You can’t take your eye off the ball for a second! To hear the paid media tell it; they were moving through Dallas in an open car when shots rang out! Instead of brain-dead Fred charging the security detail outside the building armed with a shotgun. An unsophisticated Squeaky Fromme-style attack. But the media knows, sneaky bastards they are. They know the headline “Shots fired!” in connection with Donald Trump’s name will sell newspapers or internet subscriptions galore.

Come on, admit it! How many of you heard “Shots fired!” and got all excited and hopeful for a second? During WWII, the Allies contemplated assassinating the German Fuhrer. The plan was abandoned when it was determined that any replacement for Hitler would make fewer mistakes, and would be more difficult to defeat. Ditto: Trump. Harry Truman once said, “I’m not the smartest man in the room, but I know the men who are.” Donald Trump doesn’t.

Hitler didn’t like experts. He didn’t like anyone showing off their education or appearing smarter than him. He didn’t like experts who contradicted his gut feelings. “England and France won’t go to war over Poland, I’m sure of it.” But this king, like most kings, has that little questioning voice inside them. Who can you trust? No one!

The king finds himself in a precarious position on the throne. The point in the game where the disappearance of the King becomes advantageous. A clean sheet of paper, and we can start over. Epstein? What Epstein? Congressional hearings. Forget em! Trump and Trump baggage forgotten. Maybe he can become a martyr like Charlie Kirk, and we can name things after him! He’d like that.

I suspect Donald Trump is probably one of the most vulnerable men on the planet. The list of potential suspects is long and growing. But most everyone understands the futility of a direct frontal assault on an American president. When I saw Ronald Reagan, the car behind him had half a dozen men armed with Uzis. The greatest threat to Donald Trump comes from the other side of the security cordon. Beware the Ides of March!  

“Let me have men about me that are fat,
…Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
― William Shakespeare,

The old Roman maxim asks, who gains from this? Who would gain from Trump’s sudden departure? Okay, put your hands down. I meant better politically. Look at the cast of characters. The king surrounds himself with men just like himself. That might not be such a wise choice. Ask yourself; based on what you’ve already seen the Trump administration do so far. What then are they really capable of doing? We’re talking about the most powerful office in the world. And only one person, one heartbeat stands in your way.

President Vance and Vice-President Hegseth.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
― William Shakespeare