This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your own lying eyes? The President defect now claims vandals cut a 250 – foot gash in the liner of the Reflecting Pool. That’s it! It was vandals with box cutters. Vandals everyone! Invisible vandals! Funny thing, though, this liner wasn’t a pool liner at all. It’s a paint on, pickup truck bed liner. You can’t make this stuff up. Will it work on a national monument reflecting pool in time for our 250^th birthday party? I don’t know. It’s never been tried, but…sure! I bet it’ll work!

Why wouldn’t it work? Pickup truck bed / reflecting pool, same, same. While one is painted steel or aluminum, the other is underwater stone. Their chemistry is almost identical! Why wouldn’t it work? It’s worth a shot! My nascent knowledge of chemistry couldn’t teach me what rear-view mirror adhesive taught me. Chemistry is tricky. Chemistry is demanding. If the instructions say not to apply if over eighty degrees, and it’s only eighty-two, and you think that’s close enough, it’s not.

Funny story; some of you late night infomercial watchers might already be familiar with this product. You can fix your roof with it! You can fix your leaking gutter! You can even fix your bass boat with it! It’s Flex Seal! [As Seen on TV] That miracle product from down under. But gee, it worked on TV! Flex Seal, $79.99 a gallon. Truck paint on bed liner $79.99 per gallon. Top quality, epoxy pool paint and sealant $269.95 per gallon. Any questions? With that kind of price difference, the outcome was preordained.

First, algae, because they just pumped raw water into a shallow pool painted dark blue on a hot day. Then they just left it. Treat the water? What for? Then, after the algae takes hold, it’s too late to begin. Then, according to Mr. Trump, the park police and National Guard stood idly by while unknown vandals poured “dangerous “ chemicals into the pool. Strange men with hoses stood in the pool for hours, unquestioned and unhampered by security. Meanwhile, unknown vandals with box cutters attacked the pool’s bottom. Nobody saw it. Nobody heard it, nobody saw nothing, but Mr. Trump knows it.

But the more I thought about Donald Trump’s explanation. The dumber the explanation seemed to become. Does he really think we will believe in such utter nonsense? How stupid would you have to be to believe this? Ahh! Donald Trump! This is the explanation the underlings are feeding to the king. “It was Vandals, sir! These vandals ripped a 250 gash in the pool liner!” We must declare war on Vandalia, immediately! Wait! Do they have any oil? We must declare war on Vandalia! Cancel their visas! Put Vandalians on the terrorist watch list!

I, Donald Trump, am all-powerful! I’m more powerful than Hitler, Stalin or Oprah. “If ever oh ever a wiz there was, the wizard of Oz is one because.” Mr. Trump seems to be losing touch with whatever slight grip on reality remains. (again) A guy who works at the White House told the Don he was the most powerful world leader ever. This is not a good thing to say, and you shouldn’t ever tell that to a malignant narcissist. It’s like inviting Charlie Sheen to a high school girl’s sleepover.

I don’t believe vandals cut that gash in the reflecting pool. But I believe Donald Trump believes invisible and stealthy vandals tore up his reflecting pool. It is a known superpower of the mentally unwell to alter their reality to fit the vision they desire. It’s a form of denial. The king can pronounce sentence on the vandals. His fault? A big time screw up? Crooked politics! Impossible! Off with their heads! Watch me! I’ll make the tides come in!

A cadre of corrupt criminal corporate cronies surrounding a decrepit, deceitful, degenerate, decomposing octogenarian. Led around by the nose. Told what he’s told. Believing whatever he’s told. Living inside a presidential bubble of insulated and isolated, artificially created reality. I hereby declare a 25% tariff on all automobiles imported from Vandalia!

I’m as concerned about overpopulation as anyone. And I had this million-dollar idea. Condom packages with Eric Trump’s picture printed on every package. With the slogan; “Some mistakes can last a lifetime.” I haven’t checked with Eric yet, but I feel certain we can reach an accommodation. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know. The All-American Trump phone turns out to be a Chinese knockoff of a ten-year-old -phone. It’s not made in America! It’s not assembled in America! They just lied to you! You look surprised!

God Damn it! Give the devil his due. The agreement for your Trump phone clearly states that your deposit is no guarantee you will ever receive a Trump phone. Genius! Pure genius. They sucked in $59 million in deposits from Trump suckers everywhere. No storefronts or employees. No rent and not even any cell phones! “You are my mindless slaves! Go get your credit card and order right now! I command it!” Please allow four to six weeks for the letter explaining the extended delivery delay.

Without a doubt, the reflecting pool scandal is the luckiest thing to happen yet for the Trump misadministration. It’s perfect! As long as we’re fighting our war on the vandals, no one will notice the horrid performance of JD Vance. “I just flew in from Washington, and boy, are my arms tired! Hello? Is this thing on?” How bad could it be? Well, you know how in boxing matches the champion always comes in last and humiliates the challenger by making them wait? Like that, the Iranians kept JD waiting around twenty minutes. Just standing in the atrium and looking around the room waiting for the Iranians. A better man would have walked out at that insult. Unfortunately, we didn’t have one available.

JD says the Iranian oil sanctions are all gone! The White House is asking for an additional eighty billion dollars to cover funding the war. 300 billion dollars from the “Gulf-States.” Got it? Not us! The Gulf-States fund. Of course, we might still make a “small” private donation to the fund. Say? $100 billion? Donald Trump is the greatest thing ever to happen to Iran. It’s Trump Christmas! Sanctions lifted! Assets unfrozen! Billions in new gratuities flowing in. And without that reflecting pool scandal to fall back on, the American people might notice the public humiliation of the United States by Iran.

“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn