CSotD: A Fair for All and no Fair to Anybody
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The future is fun! … The future is fair! … You may already have won! … You may already be there!
— I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus
What if they gave a Great American State Fair and nobody came? That was more or less the scenario on the National Mall this weekend, as President Donald Trump attempted to draw a crowd to the administration’s 250th Anniversary exhibition and it fell as flat as last year’s June 14 military parade.
The Daily Kos’s coverage is unfair, since they collect the worst moments and present them as constants in the event, but there really was a power failure, even if it didn’t last throughout the day. And other sources have confirmed that, as Horsey notes in his cartoon, several states failed to send delegations, so that their booths were not only unstaffed but largely unremarkable.
Those other reports also confirm that the above photo is a reasonable representation of the attendance, or lack thereof, although Trump did gather a crowd for his speech, which took the place of the music acts which canceled after learning that it was an administration political booster rather than a non-partisan celebration.
And although it promised to go on “rain or shine,” things were halted when an afternoon rain shower broke out.
The President attempted to reverse the flood of criticism, which largely increased the publicity for the debacle, and the loyal attempt by Fox to prop things up proved equally futile except, one assumes, among the ardently devoted.
All in all more farcical than fabulous, and, partisan schadenfreude aside, another example of the administration’s increasingly cloth-eared inability to connect with the nation as a whole.
It isn’t just the left wing that’s starting to feel disconnected.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Confusion particularly reigns over the fluctuating end of the war with Iran, which JD Vance has been tasked with explaining to the world, the difference between Whamond’s scenario and the original Warner Brothers cartoon being that it is Vance’s political career that may eventually be sealed back into a cornerstone.
His failure to sell the deal is being demonstrated by Ramirez’s insistence that, while Iran abandoned seeking nuclear weapons under the deal Obama crafted, and continues to insist they are only interested in peaceful use of nuclear power, he’s not buying it.
And if that’s not enough evidence of how poorly the MOU is playing among conservatives, Bok implies that he won’t be satisfied until Trump succeeds in overturning Iran’s government, which seems like a call for more bombing or perhaps for landing troops on Iranian soil and opening up the war into a more complete conflagration.
And if your response to that is “God Help Us,” bear in mind that Secretary of War and Hair Gel Pete Hegseth has ordered chaplains to remove their signs of rank because they are not, in his estimation, proper soldiers.
This despite the fact that, under Eisenhower’s presidency, the Four Chaplains who gave their lifejackets to sailors on their sinking ship were awarded medals and featured on a US postage stamp.
However, if recent convert JD Vance can correct the Pope on Catholic religious beliefs, there’s no reason Major Hegseth wouldn’t know more about military matters than the five-star general who directed the D-Day Invasion.
This fracturing society is not entirely American. Katauskas notes the rise of the One Nation political movement in Australia, and Britain, too, is seeing an increasingly popular movement of anti-immigrant white supremacist politics.
As Katauskas notes, it seems inconsistent to see these movements prosper while people are paying so much attention to the World Cup, which not only features teams from throughout the world, but teams in which members have been playing professional futbol in a variety of nations not those of their birth, such that players from two different national teams may be teammates on pro teams, while players who were born in one country but grew up in another can choose which of their nations they represent in the tournament.
The contradictions seem an odd curiosity in Australia, as they seem elsewhere in the world, but somehow politics and popularity appear to be independent of each other.
Ah, but only the Trump administration can turn this oddity into utter farce and a display of the self-centered lack of awareness at the heart of their jingoism.
This recruiting effort from the Department of Homeland Security — posted with the nativist, nationalist phrase “Our Soil” — drew both outrage and mockery, given that their call for homegrown pride features a team composed of varied non-native sources.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) was quick to point out the foolishness of the campaign:
Dear @DHSgov: Did you know our starting forward is a US citizen through birthright citizenship? You’re trying to strip away that right. Did you know an additional 6 Team USA players were born outside US soil? Did you know half the team are dual citizens?
And that was only the start of a flood of mockery over the absurd attempt to link an anti-immigrant political movement to a moment of joy very much based on acceptance of the world and celebration of the contributions of immigrants to our nation.
It must have drawn Homeland Security notice, because they first posted, but then quickly deleted an even more nonsensical nativist posting that put American futbol players before a goal over which Trump’s border wall had been superimposed.
The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision today on whether Folarin Balogun, who scored two goals in the US victory over Paraguay, can continue to be an American citizen.
As it happens, Balogun — who wears #20 in DHS’s recruiting poster — is a nativist racist’s worst nightmare of a birthright citizen: He grew up in England and is a birthright citizen because his Nigerian-born parents were studying in the US and, while they intended to return to Britain, his mother was too pregnant to fly home. Born here by happenstance!
But we’ll cheer USA! USA! and postpone the deportations until the tournament is over.
Let’s just erase the Iranian team’s parting thoughts from the lockerroom whiteboard, since they’ve gone back to being our enemies and have nothing valuable to say about sportsmanship, international friendship and such nonsense.
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