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The King’s Quandary or Anal Light Bulbs and Pipedreams [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-05

By David Glenn Cox

You can see the future. It’s not so hard really, and you don’t need a crystal ball to do it. The trouble comes in trying to figure out where all the pool balls will scatter once you witness the break. You can’t see the whole future just a part of it, and the rest is open to interpretation. Caligula once asked the Oracle of Delphi how long he would live. The Oracle said, “Beware the age of 73.” Being in his forties, he was overjoyed. Only, the man who murdered him was 73.

Sometimes, it’s just better not to know. Looking between your fingers and hearing the tires skidding. Terrorist attacks and nut ball a go, go. When are they going to arrest that guy who murdered that healthcare CEO? Boy! That story disappeared in a way that would make Houdini proud. Like D.B. Cooper…vanished! Any leads? Have you got your best men working on it? “Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan.”

This shall be our template for the future. Successes will be championed and proudly boasted about. Near successes will be claimed as successes and failures will be ignored or swept under the rug. Honduras is threatening to leave a cooperation agreement with the US due to the King’s threats of mass deportation. How is he gonna send em back if you can’t get across their border? Do you suppose other nations would follow suit? Wow, it’s just like actually being in the future, isn’t it?

I call this the King’s Quandary. The King in one of his fits and starts announced he would pardon the January 6th Insurrectionists. But now, he’s King and releasing these little shit heads into the general population can only cause trouble. This is what killed the ant farm. The fears of release. So now the King is stuck. Start your new Administration still fighting the battles of the old Administration. I’m sure that will lead to much productivity! But if the King ignores them, they won’t go away.

Years ago, Budweiser was the King of beers. Then they were bought out by an international beer conglomerate whose only concern was in making shekels, not beer. They were out to milk that cow until it dropped in its stall. Their Brew masters scoffed and quit their jobs over using cheaper ingredients and floor sweepings. And the product was soon relegated as a lesser “cheap shit” product category easily ignored. A Cartoonist just quit the Washington Post weeks after an editor quit over subject matter. Exactly the same thing!

The Washington Post is signaling to you, their audience, of their impending corruption. We don’t want to use the best ingredients anymore. We want to use what we want to use! You’ll like it! I’m sure. Who wants to see a cartoon of characterized billionaires (Including newspaper’s owner) as worshipping at the feet of the King anyway? What’s so funny about that?

Putting on our future goggles, we can see Tim Johnson. One of the most unsuccessful house Speakers in recent memory and a paragon of mediocrity. He’s just been elected to lead a tiny Republican majority mainly, because no one else wanted the job. Leading disparate whacky groups of Republicans all nursing vindictive petty grievances. Herding cats with a licorice whip. Now concentrate, what do you see in their future?

Now, pretend we were all drunk or on drugs or something and the King actually managed to pass his tariff law through Congress. What do you suppose would happen next? If you said, pandemonium; you’re getting pretty good at this future stuff. Of course, Japan and Germany and Korea, would likewise soon retaliate. In no time at all, the American car market would be tied in a knot.

We still have two weeks before the modern world ends. Don’t forget to take notes and maybe leave them deep in a cave in a clay jar, just in case. It’s like the parable of getting the goose, the fox and the grain across the river. If the King pardon’s the insurrectionists, it can only lead to problems and god only knows what else. If the King attempts his mass deportations, it can only lead to problems and god only knows what else. If the King tries to enact tariffs, it can only lead to problems and god only knows what else. Already, the Stock Market shows signs of buyer’s remorse. “He’s just crazy enough to try it!”

The Simians stew becoming fearful the King has chosen Elon over MAGA. Surprised? The King chose class over Klan. But calm yourselves, the King’s long-term friendships are measured in months, not years. Anybody want to buy a pillow? Meet me at the Four Seasons.

Maybe it’s just something about America that every billionaire wants to come here and minister to us and share their wisdom with us. Henry Ford did it and Howard Hughes too, but they soon tired of sparring with the world. After a while, they just wanted to be left alone. They had no more to say about anything. Elon will soon be dispatched from the King’s good graces either publicly or privately. After a few quarters of falling car sales, Elon is replaced on the board and advised to take a long vacation out of the public eye.

The more he talks the more he estranges. The more he talks the more animosity people begin to feel towards him. His only succor is soon from the crowd which surrounds feeds and agrees with everything. “You’re not getting fat Elvis; your clothes are shrinking. Have another Little Debby.” Not so much soothsaying really as a formula. Boy get’s rich. Boy thinks he knows everything about everything. Gets slapped down, embarrassed or indicted and drops out of sight generally forever. Living naked in a penthouse somewhere covered in Kleenex, pissing in milk bottles and watching “Ice Station Zebra” till dawn.

“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”

― John Steinbeck

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