OPINION

The Cotton Candy Presidency

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Editor's Note: This piece was co-authored by Loyd Pettegrew.

In a few short months the United States of America has been sucked into a growing tornado-like vortex of destructive change ordered by the political left and duly executed by their puppet president--Joseph Robinette Biden. Tax dollars trapped in this whirlwind, flap and spin wildly with increasing centrifugal force. Bloated pork filled congressional bills oink not in protest as they rotate above the capital but in deep ecstasy as the paper proclamations block the sunlight with a hemispheric opacity. Their shadows cast a pall over America’s Capital as our rule of law is subjugated to the will of the most progressive leftists. Our system’s integrity, checks and balances, have been replaced by monetary checks which will never bounce but inflate on worthless promises of vacuous equity.

You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see this coming. Promises made, promises kept was a slogan President Trump espoused, mostly correct and certainly far above the average career politician’s credibility threshold. Now the promise gestated from a conveniently timed pandemic from the left’s new-found ideological friend--China, election shenanigans, and a woke media class has become the perfect super storm with its spun information maelstroms and fake news.

As an independent candidate for president in 1992, Ross Perot warned that we could expect a “Giant Sucking Sound” if the deficit spending continued at the rate it was under the presidency of Bush 41. Bill Clinton then went on to defeat the incumbent 41 and the billionaire industrialist Perot, garnering only 43% of the popular vote. Deficits became a contemporary political focal point, then diminished during the dot com bubble with an expanding economy but increased taxation.

We now face third world socialist style spending with the increased likelihood of a weakened dollar followed by massively increased taxation to finance out of control, agenda driven deficits. That giant sucking sound signals a clear and present danger to our nation’s well being and prominence on the world stage.

Politicians of all stripes have basically become addicts, driven by the lucre of power and money. What better job to peddle your influence than the place that creates money and delegates power. It’s a win-win for the corrupt and a seductive lure for the true heart. Many candidates campaign in favor of term limits, only to then cloud their support after their induction into the caste of the political elite. Mitt Romney is but an exemplar of this pervasive transformation of power over principle. 

Everybody knows what cotton candy is. It is a focal point of many children’s and adult’s sweet tooth addiction to sugar and rarely is a purer form of sucrose available to be mainlined into our digestive tracts and causing an unsuspecting pancreas to hick-up and run out of insulin. That is the reason you see most of it being championed at carnivals, fairs and other public fetes where the vendors disappear after a few days, at just about the same time you or your child is being released from the hospital by your endocrinologist.

There are politicians, particularly President 46, whom we could describe as cotton candy leaders. Here is why. Think about cotton candy and how it affects humans. You see it twirled up, spun onto a paper stick, almost sparkling, pastel blue, pink or yellow, looking innocent enough and inviting, calling out your name seductively to just take a taste, a tiny bite. You know it is the forbidden fruit, and the worst possible thing you could sample. But you also remember your childhood when sugar drove your existence. This is Eve’s Apple on steroids and while you know you are going to regret your choice, you put down your hard-earned money, salivate and walk away pretending to be looking for your imaginary child. The first bite is wonderful but at the second, you are overwhelmed with shame as the

stickiness permeates your lips, face, hands and hair. You have become marked, melted pink sugar in syrupy streaks running down over your chin—your sugar rush! You wipe the residue off with a paper towel, but it sticks unrelentingly to your face. You are now tar and feathered for all to see, your shame public. This is the same feeling many now as the Biden rush of free stuff melts away our national identity

Perhaps this is the way it has always been with corrupt politicians—those who give America’s assets for free—legislative cotton candy—to the great unwashed. They smile their mouth platitudes seductively, enticing all of us to take a bite of their legislative cotton candy. If you fall into their trap, taste from their tree of socialist anarchy, you will have sold your freedom, our national soul, for the price of a sugar-high moment. The problem becomes that once you fall for that exchange, you are ideologically indentured and with enough time and free stuff, the majority of the nation may follow this low spark of high-heeled politicians (apologies to Traffic). 

Our current place-holder in the White House is our new cotton candy President—-corrupt, beholding to the progressive puppet masters, a sugary politician denying any nutritional value to feed those who are hungry for constitutional rule of law and federalism. Instead, Cotton Candy Biden offers sustenance as a political sugar daddy for wokesters who seek social justice for all the wrong causes. Causes that look good on cardboard placards but just aren’t real, just like the effect of cotton candy. Under the illusion that they are winning, these losers put down other people’s money and make us party to an agenda with no hope for freedom lovers. “Build Back Better and Unite for a Better America” becomes just another sugary lie.

Mark Twain was prophetic more than 130 years ago when he said, “We have the best government (our) money can buy.” Now we are faced with a political class of progressives that first will try to own us at any price and in the process run over our constitutional integrity. Our county is not perfect, but most of the world sees us as the Garden of Eden of nations. Sadly, our cotton candy political serpents lay in wait for us to take that little taste and the price for that act could be the soul of our country. In the end we will all wake up with sticky woke on our faces.