Healthcare in America is fucked. One look around will confirm this to anyone with a functional cerebrum. What the cerebrally privileged disagree on is why it’s so fucked and how best to get it unfucked. Some blame corporate greed, others point to government interference in the free market and some blame our unhealthy lifestyles. Me, personally? I know what’s really causing all the trouble.

Carnivorous flying space monkeys.

Yeah, you read that right. Remember back in the late 1940s through the early 1960s when NASA launched a bunch of primates into space? It might have seemed like a cool idea at the time, but the monkeys eventually came home to roost.

I know what you’re thinking: Monkey’s don’t roost, that’s birds. Did you not see where I stipulated that these were “flying” monkeys? Try to pay attention. If they fly they can roost. I read that somewhere.

Those guys at NASA, I tell ya, a bunch of real rocket scientists over there. When they launched those cute, cuddly monkeys into orbit they had no plan to retrieve them. They just stayed up there, waiting for rescue that would never come.

You know how angry you get when your flight is delayed and you have to wait in an airport terminal for a few hours? Imagine how you’d feel after waiting there for several days. Imagine if you were also in space where you couldn’t even buy overpriced coffee. You might do just what those monkeys did, which was to organize and plot revenge. For over 50 years those monkeys have been up there, soaking up solar radiation, growing smarter and stronger by the day.

Why didn’t they die of suffocation? Simple: space gills. That’s right, they evolved gills that let them filter the oxygen out of the vacuum of space to fill their lungs. I know that sounds far fetched but trust me evolution is a real thing.

Oh, and they also evolved a taste for human flesh. You think the International Space Station was built for science? That’s what they want you to think. It’s real purpose is to satisfy a treaty the governments of the world reached with the space monkeys years ago. We keep sending up astronauts for them to eat so they won’t invade Earth and turn humanity into cattle.

What does all this have to do with American healthcare? Well, did you ever wonder why every other first world country has figured out how to provide universal healthcare to their citizens but we haven’t? It has nothing to do with a misguided fear of socialism or a fanatical devotion to the mythical “invisible hand” of the free market. Those are just the excuses politicians use to hide what’s really happening. The majority of Americans actually want a single-payer healthcare system. We simply can’t afford it because we’re spending all our money on this space monkey problem.

Our ridiculous, bloated defense budget is not the military industrial complex at work but a necessary expenditure to keep us safe from carnivorous, flying space monkeys. Those vicious primates will only honor the treaty so long as we have sufficient military strength to make an invasion too risky. The other countries are only responsible for a fraction of the planetary defense grid budget because they didn’t create this problem, the United States did. Keep that in mind the next time you start complaining about not being able to afford your cancer medication. It’s not always about you.

Monkey Photo from Liz Bridges

Monkeys