MONKEY ON A DOG

Violence, and the gratification it brings, is rooted in the DNA of the human species. Initially it was a tool of survival, resorted to only when the well-being of the individual was threatened or the interests of the group was put in peril.

But evolution has its own peculiar way of upending things. Violence moved from the survival gene to the feel good gene.

And look at the world that evolutionary change has given us.

A monkey on a dog.

Across this country during the 7^th inning stretch in minor league baseball parks or at rodeos (even prison rodeos like the Angola Prison Rodeo), a terrified Capuchin monkey is tied to the back of a border collie dog as the herding collie chases sheep around with the monkey being slung in one direction only to be snapped back in the opposition direction at speeds up to 30 MPH.

The terrified monkey, who is known as “Monkey Cowboy” or “Rodeo Monkey,” was separated from its mother at an early age to allow for better training. A normal mom would never let an offspring engage in such stupid bullshit.

But it is star-spangled comedy for crowds of people, especially the children (some of whom with inclinations to mistreat little puppies or be mean to small kitties), as they laugh at the monkey being whiplashed about just to please them and gratify their need to enjoy the cruelty embedded in violence.

Folks, we are living in a monkey-on-a-dog society today in this country.

It is a society where a 37-year-old mom is shot in the face and killed with her blood splashed on the stuffed animals in the vehicle next to her because she pissed off a number of ICE law enforcement masked agents headed for a local school to terrorize some little kids—maybe at the school where the mom had just dropped off her child.

She was killed because she supposedly “interfered” with “lawful ICE operations” that included raids on school houses. For this fabricated crime, this mom, whose only “crime” in this world was to express displeasure with ICE’s operations, has been labeled a “domestic terrorist” by the highest government officials in this country who have given us the “monkey-on-a-dog” society.

These are the same officials who either granted or supported the granting of a pardon to a former Honduran president who smuggled over 400 tons of cocaine into America between 2004 and 2022. Roughly 15,000 people died each year from cocaine overdoses during that 18-year time frame. That now pardoned and free to go former president/drug trafficker was directly or indirectly responsible for those 170,000 American deaths—including some who laughed and clapped as the terrified Capuchin monkey was whiplashed about on the innocent border collie.

37-year-old Renee Nicole Good has been made into a “domestic terrorist” because she spoke unkindly to ICE agents while a murderous drug smuggling thug—a former president no less—responsible for some or most of the 170,000 Americans he promised to “stuff cocaine up their noses” was pardoned because the criminal justice system treated him “unfairly.”

So, do you know where this monkey-on-a-dog society is going?

Either the border collie will stop in the middle of the rodeo arena, the monkey will dismount, the sheep will join them as they all stand facing the bewildered crowd, and just as one fat beer guzzling red hat wearing motherfucker utters “what the fuck,” the monkey tells his following, “let’s roll” before charging the spectators because they decided a kick in the face is better than a boot in the ass.

Or the King will declare martial law, instruct the military and secret ICE agents to “kill all the goddamn monkeys,” and the DumbRoe Doctrine will replace democracy.

I’ve gotten told old to worry very much about either outcome. I’ve got my dogs, a front porch, ice tea, and a wonderful wife. We will all just let life run its course.

But I am pulling for the monkey.