CSotD: Swamping the Drains
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The jokes write themselves, and the cartoons likewise. I’ve lost track of how many candidates have promised to drain the swamp only to find, once in office, that they kinda like it, but this is the first time I remember one of them building an actual swamp.
This is a bookends juxtaposition: Venables posted his piece a week ago, and Whamond’s was new this morning, and in between the two we’ve had an outpouring of merriment, not so much because the pool had an algae bloom but because Dear Leader had made such a big deal over his renovation only to have it blow up in his face.
The controversy over the pool and its algae is not all that complex, though it does require a good explainer.
And the explanation for both the algae bloom and the peeling paint can be analyzed without sarcasm, but not without finger-pointing. It didn’t “just happen.”
And it’s sure not just being shrugged off.
Telnaes creates her own juxtaposition, first commenting on the grumpy guy at the bottom of that algae bloom, and then mocking the ridiculous claim that, oh, no, he didn’t screw up: It was those vandals who snuck in and sabotaged his beautiful, perfect project.
And while Whamond simply references that the MAGA faithful have accepted Dear Leader’s farcical accusation, Telnaes adds the pool to a list of Trump innovations nobody wanted and only his most devoted followers praise, and adds a visual reference to Judge Pirro’s apparently cocktail-enhanced TV appearance.
Schadenfreude is a form of vengeance and thus best served cold.
Blitt takes pity on Dear Leader and offers several helpful suggestions on how he might remedy the situation. Perhaps they should be put up for a vote by fans as part of Trump’s personal approach to America’s 250th Anniversary, given that painting the pool was intended as such.
Wexler probes a major factor in the bathos of what might otherwise have been a trivial news item: The algae bloom coincided with the opening of Obama’s Presidential Center, which not only got some very positive coverage but attracted a list of performers far more popular and significant than the ones who had bailed out on Dear Leader’s proposed birthday bash.
Trump has long dwelt on the perceived shortcomings of Obama and Biden, but had particularly ratcheted things up with boasts about how his renovation of the Reflecting Pool would outdo the fixes Obama had overseen.
I’m not sure many people were even aware of Obama’s repairs, but they’re sure aware of how badly cattywampus Trump’s self-publicized attempt has gone.
Juxtaposition of the Day
As it is written in Proverbs 16:18, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall, and had Dear Leader not put so much effort into making himself famous, he might have avoided making himself ridiculous.
Again, the problems with the pool might have gone unremarked, had he not made such a big deal about it, and had it not, as Anderson notes, been part and parcel of a series of major vanity projects, most of which, as Sack suggests, have gone astray.
The latest uproar has been from a photo of how the South Lawn of the White House emerged following the UFC cage match of June 14.
MAGA loyalists on Facebook were quick to say that the lawn will heal, but while the event garnered huge numbers for Paramount+, those figures were undercut by pre-match boasting that it couldn’t possibly have lived up to.
Another case where defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory by clumsy, unnecessary hype, though not as substantial as the revelation that, despite assurances that the ballroom would be paid for by private donations, $351 million in public funding is going into the project.
Oliver offers an explanation for the burst of fury with which Trump has greeted both the algae itself and the mockery surrounding it.
Rall takes a less humorous view and emphasizes not just Trump’s vanity but growing questions about his stability, which Adam Kinzinger has addressed with deep concern and some detail. His furious hissyfit over the pool may seem funny, but his bizarre misidentification of his own daughter should be troubling.
Still, if Dear Leader is going to insist there are vandals, and is placing National Guard troops around the pool to arrest anyone dipping a finger into the water, there remains reason to make fun of his outrageous theories.
One advantage of this controversy is that it is so foolish and devoid of any genuine significance that it may penetrate the protective shell loyalists have maintained around Trump. If they begin to laugh at his nonsensical vandalism theory and the utterly bogus arrests at the pool, perhaps they will begin to ask questions about the other things he has put forward.
Toward that end, Davies links the Reflecting Pool disaster to the more significant clean-up efforts in attempting to extricate ourselves from the Iran War, which was entered into with a similar level of optimistic boasting and has resulted in a similar level of failure.
Luckovich also drags in the alleged/proposed $350 billion in reparations to Iran, which could be a powerful tool for Trump opponents, despite the fact that the funds are intended to mostly be paid by Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors, not American taxpayers.
But since sanctioned Iranian funds returned to them at the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action were weaponized effectively as “pallets of cash” to disparage the agreement, if people want to similarly misunderstand the $350 billion, correcting them may seem equally unnecessary.
James Carville was not the first to suggest “When your opponent’s drowning, throw him an anvil,” and, while there are more ethical responses, there may not be any more practical ones.
To cite one of my favorite Samuel Johnson quotes:
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
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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