CSotD: What’s up with DACA?
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As I expected, there have been a lot of DACA cartoons landing in the past 24 hours, though there are also a lot of cartoons about the approaching hurricane, which make the courageous, controversial editorial point "Here comes a hurricane."
David Horsey gets to represent all the Dream/Nightmare cartoons because he puts it in such stark, straightforward terms. It's entirely carried by the dialogue, but I think this is a time when his more detailed, less cartoony, style creates an atmosphere in which words and graphics are well in synch.
What I mean is that it may be more poignant to depict Dreamers as children having nightmares in bed, and easier to eliminate dialogue that way, but their minimum age is 15 and it's important to emphasize the contributions these young adults make to our nation.
It's not matter of a pity-party for cute little kids but of avoiding a self-damaging blow to both our economy and our national image.
There is also value in not using the now common Keebler Elf caricature of Sessions or to draw him with fangs and claws, because the false rationality of his stance is more chilling, a factor upon which Vincent Price built an entire career.
As I noted yesterday, the spin, distortions and lies in which Trump and Sessions couched the move to end DACA are a poison that will allow cruel legislation to move forward under a cloak of just such feigned reasonableness.
In his essay, Horsey makes several good points, but two stand out to me:
One is that those of us whose families have been here awhile got in with few restrictions, with the exception of the Chinese, and noting, as Ladainian Tomlinson did in his bravura NFL Hall of Fame speech, that his great-great-great-grandfather had no choice in the matter.
One-hundred-and-seventy years ago, George was brought here in chains on a slave ship from west Africa. His last name Tomlinson was given to him by the man who owned him. Tomlinson was the slave owner's last name. What extraordinary courage it must have taken for him to rebuild his life after the life he was born to was stolen.
And the Dreamers, in another era and under other conditions, are working to do much the same, given how little personal choice they had in the matter.
The other point Horsey makes is that DACA protection was not handed out willy-nilly. Dreamers were carefully vetted, so any fears of them anyone has are groundless.
Though they aren't as carefully vetted as Syrian refugees, and the Deplorables are scared to death of refugees.
Gee, you have to wonder what's so frightening?
Matt Wuerker is only one of several cartoonists who answers the question by including tiki torches in his cartoon and, man, I'm glad I don't make tiki torches, because they sure have exploded as a symbol of racism. (Somewhere, a tiki torch is sitting in a bar, pouring out his woes to a sympathetic Sanskrit swastika.)
Brown skin is the issue, and that's another reason not to show Dreamers as little children, because the Deplorables have already established their hatred of illegals and their anchor babies, and it's important that we're not talking about families of recently-arrived, impoverished, rootless braceros.
They're a different issue.
These are established, mostly middleclass young adults.
David Fitzsimmons makes the point by depicting Dreamers as attractive, accomplished young brown people, and doubles down on their question by making them bigger than Trump and far bigger than his rabid racist followers.
The mortarboard and flag may be a little over the top, but it's a good move, because we've seen recently how readily people misinterpret cartoons. Given that he's cartooning primarily for an audience in Arizona, the obvious symbols and direct exposition are wise.
He'll get plenty of hate mail anyway, but that only shows what we're all up against.
Clay Bennett raises an issue that particularly bothers me, in that the Dreamers were trusting enough to sign up for the program and expose themselves.
There are 800,000 Dreamers, but you have to wonder how many others hung back for fear of exactly what is happening now, and, as one Dreamer said on NPR last night, all the vetting they went through means that, if anyone wants to comb through their applications, there is all sorts of data in there about other family members who don't qualify for DACA and can be deported immediately.
My guess is that those who trusted our government, who believed in the USA enough to come out of the shadows, are more patriotic and, likely, more conservative, than most who held back, which makes it that much more unacceptable that they are being targeted by the superpatriots.
And that much more obvious why.
Steve Sack brings up the point raised yesterday by Gary Varvel and Bob Gorrell, that Trump is not calling for their expulsion directly, but, rather, for legislation to establish their status one way or the other, and, presumably, that of future Dreamers.
So it will be the fault of Congress, not of Captain Tinyhook and Smee, if the prisoner gets to the end of that winding plank and goes into the ocean. And other cartoonists have made the point Gorrell made yesterday, that expecting Democrats and Republicans to take action on this is indeed dreaming.
It's possible Trump thought the bipartisan scenario he staged yesterday would make cooperation more likely, but, as I have for the past seven months, I'm reluctant to ascribe motivation to anything he does, and I'm not alone in doubting he has the wherewithall to carry out anything approaching a cunning plan.
In fact, when it comes to sorting out motivations and intentions and cunning plans, I think Kevin Siers has done about as good a job as anyone possibly could.
Is there such a word as "nincompoopacracy"?
On accounta I think we're living in one.
No te vayas
(Freddy was born in Texas, if it's anybody's business)
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