CSotD: Juxtaposition of Tomorrow’s Topic
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These two conservatives were fast out of the gate with a pair of cartoons that seem to go deeper into the DACA issue than the more liberal response so far, much of which has been plays on "dreams" and "nightmares."
Pointing out that Dreamers are in a tough spot is like pointing out that Houston is under water. It doesn't suggest any plan and, as commentary goes, is kind of the equivalent of sending hopes and prayers in place of actual help.
Varvel and Gorrell lay out the situation in a way that tells you where the next move has to be, if you want to have an impact on the outcome.
I'm not letting Trump off the hook, mind you.
But we knew who we were putting in the White House: The man ran, in part, on a platform of murdering families, as he explained in a Fox interview in 2015:
We're fighting a very politically correct war. The other thing with these terrorists, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself, but they say they don't don't care about their lives. You have to take out their families.
So the idea of punishing children for the sins of their fathers — even to the extent of committing deliberate atrocities — is not only not foreign to Trump but something he actively advocates.
It's also relevant and necessary to point out that his more restrained proposal that we leave the fate of the Dreamers in the hands of Congress was delivered with an announcement that was larded with distortions and outright lies, providing his Congressional collaborators supporters with a nativist smoke screen behind which to operate.
Still, while Trump tied these kids to stakes and offered them their blindfolds, he left it up to Congress to pull the trigger.
It doesn't matter whether that was an acknowledgement of the Republican debating position, such that you can't override one unconstitutional executive order with another, or simply a cowardly abdication of responsibility: The next move is Congress's to make.
I've seen some DACA cartoons lurking in the pipeline and, while I have always placed a strong value on jumping on a topic immediately, I'm going to wait a day on this, because it's more complex than some of the early commentaries suggest.
As today's Prickly City suggests, we already know who is sitting in the Oval Office.
I want to see who's sitting in Congress these days.
Meanwhile, let's see what other commentary shakes out in the next 24.
Elsewhere in the universe:
I had an appointment yesterday with one of the two men who saved my life last year (a much more routine encounter than that one, thanks), and short-circuited the mandatory Medicare questions at the front desk by saying, "And I haven't been mining coal, though he keeps promising to bring back those jobs."
It got a laugh from the receptionist, who would otherwise have been obligated to ask me if I were getting Black Lung benefits.
Today's Piranha Club is a reminder that it often seems like the next move for the rightwing industrialists is to bring back those deadly industries and stop paying for the inevitable results.
As it happened, on my way home, New Hampshire Public Radio was airing a piece about toxic hazards for our loon population, and mentioned that, a few decades ago, we spread PCBs regularly by recycling used oil as a spray to cut down dust on dirt roads, a practice I remember quite well.
Like changing the oil in the Eucs by draining it into a sand pit at the mines, we had no idea the harm we were doing, which doesn't change the results or who needs to pay for them, but most of those ghastly catastrophes were unintentional blunders.
Today, however, pretending there's such a thing as "clean coal" and stripping down the EPA is catastrophic, but not unintentional.
And as long as I'm playing The Old Man Who Remembers Things, today's Pajama Diaries coincides nicely with Sunday's airing on Turner Classic Movies of "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," which is about a troubled World War II veteran trying to fit into a soulless corporate world and is one of the few movies from the 1950s that holds up really well.
I've noted for a quarter century that media is separating families, that we only gathered around the hearth in the 19th century because that was where we had light and heat, but that we continued to gather when we only had one TV and shows like "Ed Sullivan" featured something for everyone.
Those days are over and the kids are up in their rooms, not only set apart from their families but linked in to such demographically microtomed entertainment that they're set apart from anyone who isn't exactly their age with exactly their interests.
The movie saw it coming, with a recurring scene of Gregory Peck coming home and his kids zoned out in front of the TV, which foreshadowed the climactic scene in which his boss, Frederic March, warns him to kick in that TV and thank god that he's not cut out to be a mover-and-shaker:
Big successful businesses are not built by men like you. 9 to 5 and home and family. You live on them but you never built one. Big successful businesses are built by men like me. They give everything they've got to it. Live it body and soul. Lift it up regardless of anybody or anything else. Without men like me there wouldn't be big and successful businesses. My mistake was in being one of those men.
Every family should unplug on a regular basis.
Yes, easier said from a distance. And Jill and Rob are trying.
We banned TVs in the bedroom and regulated use of Walkmen, but it keeps growing harder.
However, it's still worthwhile.
(need help with that Aussie accent?)
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