“All over New York City, bagel makers say, a schmear shortage is threatening one of the most treasured local delicacies: a fresh bagel with cream cheese.”
—The New York Times, December 4, 2021
All national resources must be diverted to save America from cream cheese doomsday. As the cream specialist at the U.S. Department of Cheese, I can tell you for certain that a future without cream cheese is a future without American democracy and, worse, satiated brunchers.
Cream cheese doesn’t follow the principles of economics. People will keep buying it no matter how expensive it becomes. One study found that 80 percent of Americans would refinance their mortgage before going a week without the schmear. If supply stays low and demand high , prices will skyrocket, leaving millions of Americans in economic ruin, unable to temper their spending for the only thing that gives life purpose, meaning, and mild indigestion.
The lifeblood of American society, the oil that lubricates its gears and allows the cogs in its national wheel to turn, is cream cheese. I am calling on POTUS to declare a state of emergency, transitioning all manufacturing to the production of mother Earth’s sweetest nectar—let’s tell the cows to kick it into overdrive.
We're asking smaller dairy farmers to help meet demand, but that won’t be enough. Americans, we are asking that you start milking your pets. Allow the mammary glands of your dogs, cats, and goldfish to secrete the source of our nation’s vitality. Creamy spicy pepper jack spreadable cheese depends on it.
Okay, on second thought, don’t do that—everyone hated that idea. Apparently, pet-milking is a PR nightmare, and we need to look elsewhere for a solution. Who can save us from a future devoid of bagels smeared with milky tang?
America can survive without cars, lumber, medicine, and toilet paper, but we can’t go on without our holy sacrament. The federal government is officially doling out $1 billion in grants to whoever can figure out how to make vegan cream cheese not taste awful.
The truly harrowing news of a zero-cream cheese future has turned fixing the supply chain into an issue of national security. Violence is the inevitable outcome if cream cheese shortages persist. Bagel shop owners are already scavenging for cream cheese across state lines, taking dairy distributors hostage in cheesy hotbeds like Philadelphia. We’ve made the impossibly difficult decision to close state borders. We have to control this thing. We have to maintain order. We have to find more cream cheese before the shortage destroys the union.
Hoarding cream cheese is now a felony. Hoarding makes the problem worse and further exacerbates supply chain issues. If you’re caught hoarding, and we did not make this decision lightly, you will be sentenced to a lifetime of English muffins—no bagels whatsoever.
Does this reaction seem lopsided to you? You don’t get it. A bagel with no cream cheese is like a country without government—it’s chaos. American polarization was already at an all-time high, but the cream cheese bagel united us. Whether it be pumpernickel, sesame seed, or cinnamon raisin, it was always everything to us, even to our Founding Fathers. (The Constitution of the United States was signed at noon while every signatory held a poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese.) The threads of our national fabric are being unwoven. The supply chain has unleashed its full, tasteless wrath.
I am eating a bagel with cream cheese. Is this the Last Supper?
I hate to alarm everyone, but the cream cheese shortage has broader implications than we originally thought. Cheesecake is also at high-risk. With the holidays right around the corner, this may be the darkest hour in our nation’s history since the 2013 cronut craze.
The supply chain and shortages are the country’s fiercest adversaries, and we must go to battle. Every American must dedicate themselves to the manufacturing of wartime munitions. We must band together to support our bagel makers while they go overseas in search of whipped toppings.
Congress has declared war against Switzerland to raid their grocery stores for Swiss Valley cream cheese—we are officially making this someone else’s problem too.