by Steve Corbett – GonzoToday contributor
We build bombs in Joe Biden’s birthplace.
And we’re proud of it.
Made-in-Scranton 155 mm artillery shells target all you borscht-sucking Russians we can kill in Ukraine.
Scranton defense contractors and political profiteers like my money-grubbing Congressman Matt Cartwright and mild-mannered U.S. Senator Bobby Casey (my dull neighbor who lives down the street from me in the Hill Section of the city) want to punch your ticket, Russkies. Beware if you’re an imperialist Kremlin-inspired goon in what aspiring NATO Ukrainians call their sovereign land.
Biden, Cartwright, Casey and other privileged plutocrats vow you’re a dead, dirty Russian if we Scrantonians can help it. We offer cold death stares through those star-spangled eyes Credence warned us about. And we’re Democrats! Liberals, for Christ’s sake! Our working class heroes on the bomb assembly line are finally the fortunate sons and fortunate ones.
We point the cannon at you!
We don’t build the whole bomb like a fat hoagie with extra prosciutto at the La Festa Italiana festival on Courthouse Square. Our unionized labor force at the downtown Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, run by corporate giant General Dynamics, just constructs heavy metal artillery shells to send to another All-American city where their clone workers fill casings with enough explosives to destroy Ukraine while we’re trying to save it. Burning the village to save it always makes sense to US! With a little luck and a kickback here or there, Scranton hard laborers will build complete bombs when we go to war with Russia!
USA!!! USA!!!
All Russians “bear” responsibility for raving Red Commie evil empire oppression no matter how many times those Cossack devils kneel in an Orthodox cathedral and slobber vodka drool at the Savior’s feet.
You can’t fool us.
Don’t screw with us.
We’re from Scranton, PA.
That’s why we’re so proud of our killer war machine work, says a male Scranton resident on the NBC television news after General Dynamics corporate executives recently invited the mainstream puppy dog press into their bomb-making factory as part of a renewed public relations action to give “glory to Ukraine,” an old-fashioned fascist slogan some credit to the Nazis and Ukrainian nationalist militias accused of war crimes in World War II.
Wunderbar!
It doesn’t matter if most Scranton residents even know we’re building bombs here. Most people living here also can’t tell you why they don’t vote, stop smoking or call a time out from nurturing full-blown cirrhosis of the liver by guzzling Yuengling lager at countless church bazaar beer booths.
We’re so enamored with Joe Biden that Scranton city officials actually named a street and expressway after our hometown wax dummy-in-chief. But life on Biden Street isn’t all white Chiclet-sized capped teeth and greasy gray thinning hair plugs. We don’t even have a public swimming pool in our premier public park for kids of any color while “our Joey” still reminisces about working as a lifeguard and befriending a real jive Black fella he called Corn Pop.
As a descendant of an Irish immigrant coal miner, I’m a Scranton resident with five generations in this city that now or once called this hard town home. But no matter what Biden and his lackey Democratic Party elitist apologists whine about our duty to arm Ukrainians in the so-called fight for democracy, I don’t want my neighbors or relatives making any bombs in my hometown.
For now I’m still a Democrat who voted for Biden.
For now.
As a veteran Northeastern Pennsylvania journalist I’ve observed, written and commented publicly for years about my goofy shirttail cousin, meaning we’re related by our Rust Belt roots. I once caught him in a whopper of a lie in a one-on-one radio interview and met him face-to-face in 2011 when I stood in the flood-ravaged home of a desperate man as then Vice President Biden tried and failed to bully the tortured soul into rebuilding his house like his forefathers would have done. Wearing muddy steel-toed boots, a watch cap and a black fatigue jacket, I glared at Biden for acting like such an idiot. He looked at me, picked up my bad vibe, grinned and said, “You can smile, Dr. Death.”
Today Joe Biden is President of the United States.
The dude is Dr. Death.
Biden continues to give away for free – yet paid with public funds – weapons of mass destruction to Ukraine with the glee of a punchy hard coal country prizefighter piling spicy chicken wings on his paper plate at a VFW buffet. Although we don’t yet make cluster bombs at the Scranton General Dynamics factory, there’s still hope. As it is, our workers exhibit great pleasure producing regular kill-em-all-let God-sort-em-out bomb shells headed to Ukraine. Think how satisfied our sweaty drudges would be if they could build the whole enchilada to drop on crusty poor kiddos’ heads in a faraway land!
Such macho military madness drove me to protest in July outside the General Dynamics gate.
Joining about 85 anti-war activists, mostly Baby Boomers from all over the eastern seaboard, some of whom were Vietnam veterans who resisted as well as fought that war, I stood in opposition to arming Ukraine. Almost nobody from Scranton showed up. Cartwright, Casey and even Scranton’s hip, progressive first-woman-ever-mayor from Oregon shunned us peacemakers in favor of supporting Biden’s re-election bid. To them, any Biden criticism is worse than finding an Oval Office desk drawer loaded with cocaine pure enough to power an Amtrak express to Delaware.
Life is still hard for many regular people living in Scranton. Food is expensive no matter what Biden’s well-fed Scranton campaign donors say. Child care is costly, too. Republican maniacs swarm adjacent counties like fire ants gorging themselves at a coal fields’ clam bake. Trump is capable of anything even in prison or calling the shots from Moscow. We can’t trust our own elected representatives or the system. Lobbyists support profiting from global boiling and risk losing the planet in the process. America the dutiful, once a morally respectful oasis from authoritarianism, no longer exists.
Protesting is the least we patriots can do. I respect the woman who burns the flag far more than the man who wears one on the lapel of his Brooks Brothers suit. Defiance is the truest power to the people.
So what if an ex-convict Trump fanatic illegally pulled his 18-wheeler festooned with hate slogans to park at the curb for the duration of the rally? “PeaceMaker” security called 911 to report a serious safety hazard on a dangerous turn and single traffic lane, but a Scranton police SUV cruised on by without so much as a warning to the truck driver. Scranton cops now officially join the negligent and the suspect in our quest to know who’s on whose side and why.
My radical feminist Ph.D. political scientist wife, Stephanie, and I helped stop traffic on Cedar Avenue to allow two protest leaders in their 80s – one wearing a Pope Francis mask, the other wearing a Joe Biden mask – to cross the street and stretch out on their backs on the sweltering black asphalt right outside the General Dynamics gate.
Beneath the spacious heavens, good Catholic and “pro-life” President Joe Biden confessed to his sins of murder. I don’t know if the Pope forgave our warmonger leader because even as false face Joe Biden whispered pious pleas for absolution, the Scranton assembly line continued cranking out artillery shells for new and improved barbaric bombs to rain down on Ukrainian children’s playgrounds and other places where innocence congregates.
So, on this eve of destruction, as Scranton natives get more and more agitated to kill for peace, we bow our heads and pray.
Like a celebrity actor might say on a future sequel to “The Office,” that silly revered TV rerun set in our rusty little coal town but filmed in Los Angeles, California:
“Ain’t no bombing like a Scranton bombing!”
