CSotD: Snakes in the Snow
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I think I’ve seen just about enough cartoons that play upon the I.C.E./ice coincidence. We’re having an exceptionally tough winter and facing an exceptionally draconian private army. But neither will be resolved by a pun.
But here’s an exception to my word-weariness: Wolterink gets excellent mileage out of the two meanings, since the US announced that they were sending ICE to the Winter Olympics and the Italians responded “Like hell you are.”
It’s not just a minor issue to be resolved, but a symptom of our fading national status and our increasingly unwelcomed international image, and there’s talk of boycotting our World Cup, both out of genuine fear of being harassed, arrested or turned back at customs, and out of general disdain for our new, brutal image.
I lived in Colorado Springs when the US led a 60-nation boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over their invasion of Afghanistan. The boycott was a very big deal, particularly in the Springs, where USOC is headquartered, and so where they met to make the final decision to support Carter’s proposal.
And it was only a proposal, not an order. Back in those days, O Best Beloved, the president was first among equals, not the emperor. Meanwhile, that world was more likely to respond to bad behavior.
Trust me, it was a different world.
There had been a debate about boycotting the 1936 Olympics, but it failed and the show went on, the theory being that it was better to beat Hitler’s athletes, and we did, but Hitler didn’t really snub Jesse Owens and it never put much of a dent in what followed.
On the other hand, boycotts can have impact, and as Bramhall suggests, the boycott of the Trump/Kennedy Memorial Center by both artists and patrons has one root cause, who has worked his marketing genius there as he has worked it on casinos and universities and airlines and steaks for decades.
But all is not lost.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I really liked Zyglis’s parody of Rockwell’s self-portrait, but I’m even more pleased that it went out of date and was replaced with the gentle celebration Alcaraz offers.
It’s only a small victory in the wider war. There are still children confined in the concentration camps, including some who, like Liam, entered the country legally and have the papers to prove it, and some who were born here and await the Supreme Court’s decision on whether or not the Constitution means what its words plainly say.
But let’s take whatever wins we can get. Our fathers’ version of Antifa took some hard hits at Dieppe and Dunkirk, and in the Philippines, but they kept on keepin’ on, and so should we.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
It helps to throw the lies back in the liars’ faces. Sutton takes on the nonsensical claims that protesters are organized and paid, a preposterous lie that never comes with receipts and is leftover propaganda from the Antiwar Movement of the 60s, when it was said the Soviets were paying demonstrators. Today, the liars are less specific, though the antisemites traditionally blame George Soros.
And Zapiro, having lived and cartooned through the days of apartheid in his own country, recognizes who are the peaceful demonstrators and who are the “domestic terrorists.”
I see a sort of victory when loyalist cartoons resort to foolish smears like this, in which we’re told that if only Pretti had been arrested by local police for vandalism, the Border Patrol wouldn’t have encountered the villain in the streets of Minneapolis 11 days later, where they had no choice but to gun him down for helping a woman they were assaulting for blowing a whistle. Clearly, then, a righteous hit.
Loyalists don’t believe breaking a tail light ought to be a capital offense, but rather that defiance calls for extreme punishment. Not the defiance of trying to overturn an election by force and violence, but the defiance of gathering to protest masked thuggery.
The defiance of being on the wrong side.
I read a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer a while back and was struck, in the recounting of the early days of the war, by the fact that defeated Polish soldiers were shot and killed after they’d surrendered, not by SS hardliners but by average German soldiers.
Demonizing those who commit atrocities makes for good propaganda, but the true threat lies in what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” If they were truly devils, they’d stand out and be knocked down. But as our neighbors, our co-workers, our relatives, their normality provides cover.
While failing to criticize those who justify, and even celebrate, atrocities turns other normal people into silent co-conspirators.
We could wish Congress would awaken, though unless either the midterms reverse the balance of power or more Republicans break away from lockstep party loyalty, it may be that budget shutdowns are the best we can hope for. The consolation at the moment is that we face a targeted shutdown with real goals, not just a general refusal to cooperate.
But the system of checks and balances is wildly out of whack. We’ve not only got a Congress dominated by party hacks who won’t break stride with their leadership, but a SCOTUS packed with political partisans whose sense of personal ethics is as polluted and perverted as is that of the Executive.
Take a good look in the mirror, because this is the face the rest of the world sees.
Another of the many things we learned in high school was that, during our Revolution, some people were Patriots and some people were Loyalists, but a very great number of people tilled their fields and ignored politics entirely.
During the Vietnam War, I met a Vietnamese student in Toronto who said most of her countrymen were neither North nor South but just wanted the tanks to stop collapsing the dykes of their rice paddies.
We need to accept that Congress can’t save us and that too many people won’t help, won’t even vote, and don’t respond to nagging.
Guess it’s up to you, then, innit?
Somebody mentioned this Donovan song in comments the other day. Yes, an excellent fit:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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