CSotD: If only things were that simple
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Let's start today with the fact that you can't expect the mass of people to follow the scientific process, by which I mean going where the evidence leads rather than interpreting the evidence in terms of their predisposed assumptions.
In "La Cucaracha," Lalo Alcaraz notes today that Trump is getting a lot of support from the Russians, and then, in his current editorial cartoon, creates his own Juxtaposition of the Day by mocking Trump's denial of the fact.
Personally, I'm amused by remembering that conservatives used to shout, "If you don't like it here, why don't you move to Russia?"
I guess having Russia move here is okay, though, because they have no problem with Putin helping his chosen candidate in the campaign.
But I'm kidding: They don't like Russia but they aren't listening, they won't listen and they can't hear, and, as Trump has gleefully said, he "could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
And they didn't hear him say that, either.
Which brings us to the confluence of the demonstrations in North Dakota and Oregon, with demonstrators being forcefully removed in the former and surprisingly acquitted in the latter.
I like Clay Jones' cartoon because he does note that there is a parallel to be drawn, though it isn't the one rampaging around Facebook.
And I'm not sure it's a red/white issue or how many of the demonstrators forcing a confrontation in North Dakota were Indians anyway. I think it was more of a "hellraisers vs compliant citizens" issue and race-neutral.
But the Bundys were permitted to hold off Federal officers indefinitely on the range in Nevada, and nearly so in Oregon, had one fellow not insisted on martyrdom, and even that involved a jurisdictional disconnect, as State Police were crediting with the shooting but FBI appeared to perhaps been involved.
The confrontation in North Dakota is between state authorities and protestors. Obama had even stepped in to stop construction temporarily, so it's hard to blame the feds except if you want to make the point that the feds should handle relations between sovereign nations and I'd back that argument to the hilt.
Except nobody was making it.
I don't see a parallel between the trial over the Oregon standoff and the actions of North Dakota authorities in clearing the pipeline protestors.
What I see in Oregon is a potential parallel with another conspiracy trial back in 1970, in which federal overreach resulted in a shameful spectacle and, as here, an acquittal of the accused conspirators.
And, by the way, the oddest dropped ball of the week occurred when Tom Hayden died the other day and NPR correspondent Ina Jaffe had the story.
She did a good job of summing up his life, but interviewed Bobby Seale (who is easy to find because he's got a new book out), without making the connection that Seale was one of the original defendants in the conspiracy trial that, once he was kicked out for wanting his own attorney, became the "Chicago Seven" trial.
It's like interviewing Neil Young about Crosby, Stills & Nash without mentioning that he occasionally sat in with them.
However, back at the Rez, NPR had the decency to quote the tribal chairman at Standing Rock instead of whatever hell-raising white kids had dropped by to help the poor noble Injuns find justice.
I'm tired of having to search to find out what the people whose competence and leadership should be respected think about it all.
And in any case, here's the deal: It's not fair to compare what the feds did over here with what state officials did over there.
You might have to be older than Ina Jaffe to remember when Mississippi and Alabama authorities handled demonstrations differently than the feds wanted them to, but you don't have to be a genius to have read about it, do you?
Do you?
Which, with the help of Mike Smith, brings us to the most convoluted mess of all, the Affordable Care Act, which has become a favorite target of conservative cartoonists since it was announced that rates were going up.
I sat in department head meetings well before the ACA existed and heard about rising health insurance costs, and the debate over switching companies and how much of the increase to swallow and how much we'd have to pass along to employees, so don't hand me a line about Obamacare being the only place, and only reason, insurance companies jack up the price.
I also very likely owe my life to Obamacare, which makes me somewhat prejudiced.
I went without coverage between the time my last employer folded and the passage of the ACA, and it was only the relationship with a doctor I had thanks to coverage that allowed me to mention a painless, temporary symptom that led to the discovery of cancer.
So you can sue me, and not my estate. Fair enough?
In any case, I agree with Tim Eagan that the tool we really need is single-payer, but, boy, between the massive insurance industry and the solidly-grounded medical establishment, you'd have to unravel a tangled mess to make that change.
When you talk about banks being "too big to fail," you're arguing about breaking up megabanks into smaller entities.
But a switch to single payer would mean re-casting the entire system, and, if nothing else, the corporate tentacles of the insurance behemoth reach into so many other businesses that disrupting one piece of the card house would rattle pieces that, from the outside, seem completely unrelated.
And there might also be a need for serious claw-back of the rock-star wages we pay our doctors, which is a magnet for foreign doctors but makes going to the system they left behind not as simple as flipping a switch, or even as simple as that chart might suggest.
Better read the article it goes with, or maybe you shouldn't, since, if you try to use the knowledge, nobody's going to want to hear you.
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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