We Shall Rebuild This Country One Cheeto at a Time!

Remember the glorious days of the 1990s? A child, innocent and pure, pulls a Pringle out of a cardboard tube and inspects both sides. After a quick glance, the child drags the chip against their tongue, licking every dust particle of flavor before munching the sogged thing whole. I hate to alarm you, America, but in the “modern” days of a “globalization” many of our country’s fine citizens do not participate in this activity. In fact, many find it disgusting!

What has happened? Look at us, friends. Go to a mirror or a calm lake or a shiny surface and really look. Clap your hands if you’re happy, America!

I hear no claps! We’ve lost the ability to manufacture our cars, our computers, our whatever-else-we-own. We cannot let that happen to the snack industry. We cannot let the world economy of snackification pull us down. Remember, people, that we pretty much invented the snack, and, pushing technology even further, created Fun Size packaging to deliver our creations to every boy and girl in this lovely nation.

When was the last time you cool ranched? Do you still have what it takes to be nacho cheesier? People, now is the time. Time for us to become, once again, a nation of Cheeto Eaters. We need to return to those wonderful days of neon colors and Starter jackets. When every PB&J was paired with a sack of four or five crushed chips and a Fruitopia. When they clapped their hands, a cloud of flavor dust sprinkled down on their day-glo shorts, and they liked it that way. It wasn’t easy being cheesy, but damn it, we tried the best we could. We’re a nation of industry, of prideful disregard for our physical presence. We create crunch. We manufactured monosodium glutamate. We must not, under any circumstances, become fruit eaters lest we lose our way entirely.

And, by embracing our love of fried corn and potato crisps, we shall rise again! Let us crunch numbers. This country has 308,745,538 people, many of which are not rocking a snack pack! If we put one Fun Size, government subsidized bag of chips in each hand for lunch and diner, we are guaranteed at least some sort of rise in chip consumption, and, therefore, somehow, money. Now, if we were to invent some sort of breakfast chip, we could add a whole other dimension to this formula!

But why stop at breakfast chips? We invented the atom bomb, we made cancer cool, why limit ourselves to the cheese poof? I see a new America, when I close my eyes, with Doritos in every flavor. Corn chip after corn chip dusted in a rainbow of powders, perfectly sprinkled with every artificially infused sodium byproduct known to man. We need a think tank creating a banana flavor that actually tastes like banana. But we need to think outside the box, too. We need chips for every situation, every condition. We need chips that taste like other chips. I’m no scientist, but the options are guaranteed to be pretty much limitless.

The only thing stopping us, America, is ourselves. And your state representatives. Let your local elected official know that you will eat more snacks and hope they will enact the Cheeto Redevelopment Act. If congress can decide that a slice of pizza counts as a vegetable in a school lunch, then what’s stopping the noble Funion? Roads will be here in five years, so will the arts and education. For now, Frito-Lay is the key to success! For Industry! Buy Frito, buy freedom.

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)