This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Sometimes I wonder and I imagine waking up and it’s all been a dream. A bad, bad, terrible, terrible dream. I must have fallen asleep in the Lay-Z-boy chair on election night, and I was having this bad dream. And when I tell you all about this bad dream of mine, you’re all going to laugh and think less of me. In fits and starts, every day is becoming a surreal nightmare world.

It’s now against the law to disagree with the king. If the king says it, you go with it! Reality starts right here! The king has always had the bad habit of being a congenital liar and teller of falsehoods and tall tales. That’s fine; we’ve come to accept that. But now! Now, he insists that you believe it too! If you disagree at any level of rational thought and you don’t have a penis, your administration job is in peril. Ask Pam Bondi, if you don’t believe me.

I always get distracted when talking about Jim Pirro, I mean Jeanene. You see, we had this guy back in our high school. Jim Pirro was his name and he’s a near dead ringer for Jeanene. It’s like watching Jim in a wig and a dress. Jim had this kind of high-pitched nasal twang in his voice, and some of the guys would make fun of Jim in P.E. So Jim used to talk with this forced gruff speech pattern, like a Marine drill sergeant. But it’s so confounding because I can’t help it. I look at Jeanene, but I see Jim. And maybe the marvels of modern surgery.

Anyway, we’re all familiar with the king’s deflecting pool fiasco. Despite the best quality Flex-seal being applied to the deflecting pool bottom, the uncured rubber liner detached almost immediately. We all saw it happen! And we, the public, were left unsure. Was this just another Trump no-bid contract destined from the start to end in fiasco? Or could it be the gallon jugs of hydrogen peroxide dumped into the deflecting pool to kill the algae bloom causing the delamination? But the king, like detective Columbo, had his own theory. It was caused by terrorist’s everyone! Terrorists!

Vandals seeking to damage the Untied Snakes using box cutters to cut a three hundred and fifty foot or three hundred and fifty mile gash in the innocent, unsuspecting, and god-fearing Flex-seal pool liner. [As Seen on TV!] Now, Mr. Trump’s perfect repair job has been ruined! Silent, invisible helicopters dropped tiny stealth terrorist frogmen into the deflecting pool. And despite a 24-hour armed guard and the National Guard being present. The tiny terrorists were successful in their awful mission. The absurd part isn’t that Donald Trump will reach past juvenile lengths to prove that somehow it wasn’t his fault. “Yeah! It was the terrorists! That’s what it was!”

There are no virgin ears here burning at hearing their first coarse falsehoods. This is Donald’s mantra. “If at first you don’t succeed…lie.” And that’s fine, like I say, Trump’s lies are nothing new to our ears. But this time, something has changed. In the past, Mr. Trump would lie or make up some outlandish fabrication, and we would all chuckle or shake our heads disapprovingly, but you weren’t required to actually believe his lie. Days later, the king would be fact-checked and the king’s lie would be exposed as a fabrication. Reality would return to reclaim its rightful dominance. “He’s not really going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.”

Like a toddler, Mr. Trump’s fancies and belligerencies would be allowed to pass with little serious comment, never lasting more than a week or so before Mr. Trump would be off on some new goose hunt or folly. “Canada’s going to be our fifty-first state! Iceland is going to be our fifty-second.” Yeah, you know that’s right, don’t you? Anyway, the king now demands his eccentricity and mental illness be honored and respected at all locations. He demands the stealth terrorist’s be rounded up and charged, even if they never existed!

Jim Pirro nodded and winked. I mean, Jeanene knew exactly what Mr. Trump was asking for. Arrest me some warm bodies! Some jail dummies! You see! Donald Trump the almighty can’t ever, ever be wrong! He’s never ever wrong about anything! We now have the true stealth villains under arrest! You see? Mr. Trump was right all along, as always.

Jim, I mean Jeanene, was never any good at sports, but he was no dummy. That nod and wink was administration code for “Make it look good! Make me some arrests!” Then later, after everyone has forgotten all about the Flex-seal deflecting pool fiasco, we can quietly drop the charges. Maybe convict them for littering or something and fine them fifty dollars and community service.

So Jeanene did what she was told and drew up the paperwork to dismiss the indictments. Remember how certain Jim was? Jeanene, Jenene! He was damn certain that they did it! He had evidence and concrete proof. Just you wait until we get you into court motherfucker! Come watch! Jim always had a mean streak when he got riled and thought he was right about something!

So, Jim followed orders and drew up the papers to dismiss but inadvertently included the truth about the whole deflecting pool affair. It was a warranty issue! Jim/Jenene even said so! Okay, so here’s the rub. Mr. Trump heard about it. What are the chances of that ever happening? Mr. Trump was furious with Jim/Jeanene. He said they were terrorists and now, Jim’s letting them all go! We have arrived! “That’s one small step for Trump, and one giant leap for absurdity.

If Mr. Trump says they’re terrorists, facts and reality must not be allowed to interfere. But there is another magic word at work here besides terrorist. It’s warranty! If the issue was caused by defects in materials and workmanship; they do it over for free. If terrorists caused the damage the American taxpayer is on the hook for the do over. It’s a warranty, not terrorism.

But now, the king is really pissed off. How dare Jim contradict the king’s reality? The king said it was terrorism, and Jim said, it’s not? Which is it Jim? (Jetson! You’re fired!)

Mr. Trump’s lies have become his storyboard fantasy. Mr. Trump used to just make things up in passing. “Everybody, says so!” But now, something new; now it seems he really believes his imaginings and brain poops and insists that we do too.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll,