The Real Thing

 I suppose I could use this moment to be grateful. There was a time when I held one particular vice above all others: My addiction to Coca-Cola. Not just the idea of having a soda. Or any particular cola product. After I had given up adult beverages and other illicit substances, my drug of choice became The Real Thing. Happily for me, I had lived through the "New Coke" debacle of 1985 while consuming mass amounts of Lite Beer from Miller. I hardly noticed. 

Had the Coca-Cola company tried something like that just ten years later, I would have been at the gates in Atlanta, calling for someone's head. Happily enough for me, by the time I had become first and foremost A Coke Drinker exclusively, Old Coke had been restored as the rule. When I popped the tab on a can and poured it over ice, I knew what I was getting. 

Or did I?

In 1984, Coca-Cola had fully transitioned from making their traditional recipe with high fructose corn syrup instead of the more expensive alternative of sugar. As it turns out, I was living, or rather drinking, a lie. It wasn't until much later that I discovered that there were still ways to get The Real Real Thing. Mexican bottlers of Coke were still using sugar, and after some research so were certain bottlers in the United States during Passover. 

As it turns out. I wasn't quite the loyalist I had imagined myself to be. 

Now, decades later, a twice-impeached former game show host is having his way with the world's favorite soft drink. “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” the orange bloviator wrote in a social media post last week. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

While it pains me to agree even tangentially to anything the slides out of the slit below this man's nose, he may be on to something. I won't be finding out for a couple of reasons: Buying a Coke now would be surrender to the chief MAGAt. I would also be inviting my body to rebel by returning to an age when I used to generate kidney stones with a like clockwork due to the phosphoric acid and other poisons found in every bottle and can. 

This is yet another version of the unhealthy hyperbole that issues forth from a man who only consumes Diet Coke, sweetened with aspertame. This is the same guy who has recently insisted that the Cleveland Major League Baseball team and the Washington National Football League team go back to their "original names." The ones he says Native Americans are "clamoring for." Not really.  And he wants you to believe that he's the reason that Stephen Colbert lost his show. It's just more nonsense to obfuscate the reality of what is really happening outside our carefully managed media bubble. The guy whose brain was partially consumed by a worm who was put in charge of America's health would like us to believe that this switch to sugar will make us all healthier. 

Of course it will. 

Wars continue to rage on. ICE continues to kidnap people and send them to concentration camps. Prices continue to climb. 

Even on that six pack of Coke. 

Time to wake up, America. This is the real thing.