CSotD: Politics and Pigeon Drops
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I’m not nearly as worried about mice and rats as I am of the looney in charge of Health and Human Services.
Hantaviruses are spread in rodent droppings, which is why they’re a greater threat out West where desert climates suit rodent life and their droppings don’t return to the earth quickly. And how better could Deering arouse public awareness than with mice and rats, though these particular ones seem kind of cute?
There’s a lot of commentary about our lack of cruise ship inspectors, but the ship in question wasn’t one of ours and wouldn’t have been inspected by the US, plus the Andean strain of the hantavirus likely emerged on one of its stops, not on the ship itself, since it carried a group of nature lovers to some off the beaten path places, where they poked around in odd corners.
All of which puts cartoonists in a position where they need to polish their journalism chops and dig into the details, not to explain it all in a graphic but to avoid going off in irrelevant directions.
It’s not about cruise ships, but now that a number of Americans who were on that nature trip are back in the US, it’s very much about our ability to handle a health crisis after laying off experts, motivating others to resign, and putting ourselves in the hands of a man whose beliefs on how diseases spread and how to avoid them consist of medieval quackery.
The potential good news being that some people who understand this stuff have a completely other opinion than the government’s official “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” guidance.
Bottom line is that Deering nailed it: It’s not that mice or rats are the problem, but RFK Jr and his enablers certainly are.
We need to stop blaming the ship and focus on the incompetents who may turn this into a much larger problem than it needed to be. Raise awareness, of this, of measles outbreaks, and of other clear dangers to the public of science denialism.
I will give Whamond a C rather than an A for this one, because, while it rightfully criticizes the astonishing vanity of Dear Leader and his desire to have his name and face on everything, we aren’t all condemned to carry passports with his (genuine police) mug shot, because Trump Vanity passports are kind of hard to get.
You have to go to DC and to a particular outlet and request one. Everybody else gets a regular sensible passport.
The difference between a Trump Vanity Passport and a Trump Vanity Phone is that apparently the passports are really going to happen, while the phones apparently never will. Nor will the suckers who made a down payment on the non-existent telephones be getting refunds.
Details on the scam are at Popular Information, whose report encapsulates a bizarre variation on unilateral contracts, in which deposits were solicited under one offer but are now subject to a new set of rules:
According to the new terms, the $100 deposit was not actually a pre-order but “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.”
Popular Information also reports the claim that, while Don Jr and Eric have been hawking the phones, they really have nothing to do with it and, heavens, certainly aren’t making any money from it.
You may recall that, at the start of Dear Leader’s first administration, there was a press conference in which he pledged that he would make no money during his presidency, a claim they backed with a stack of manila folders that some reporters said were filled with blank paper.
Blank paper being what you get in an envelope should you find yourself participating in a pigeon drop.
And speaking of gullible pigeons …
One major element in a con game is making the mark feel he’s smart, and it seemed that the most obvious marks have been those Trump fans who bought golden sneakers and cryptocoins that cratered in value, and those who believed QAnon conspiracy theories, or were happy that Trump isn’t accepting his $400,000 annual salary but don’t realize he’s spending far more than that golfing in Florida weekends instead of, like other presidents, playing at Andrews Air Force Base.
However, the Anti-Trump crowd should not take too much pride in having greater intelligence, since, as Reality Check reports, an embarrassingly large percentage of them believe that Dear Leader is staging bogus assassination attempts on himself.
These illogical conspiracy theories flourish in both political parties and among all age groups, seemingly confirming Hannah Arendt’s theory:
This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.
Not only can a lie travel halfway around the world while truth is putting on its shoes, but once misinformation is out there, it never seems to go away.
As an example, the new war on Iran has re-invigorated the old, readily disproven canard that the US paid Iran pallets of cash as a sort of bribe.
The fact is, that money belonged to Iran and had been frozen as part of the sanctions against it. It was returned when the multi-nation agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program was signed.
The agreement Trump tore up.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The fact that the stock market appears more resilient than gas prices and cost-of-living seems confusing, but, as Bramhall says, it may also be irrelevant if people have to raid their nest eggs to get through the double whammy Rico describes.
Rico’s South Africans have no power over our government, but Americans do, and kitchen-table issues seem likely to impact our midterms.
Neither of these cartoonists is telling people anything they don’t already know.
Sometimes it’s not necessary to convert, only to remind.
Reminding people helped FDR defeat Hoover.
And Betty, somehow.
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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