CSotD: The Emperor’s Nude Clothes
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The latest chapter in the ongoing farce does not reflect well on Dear Leader, but Anderson should have flipped this one, because the clown is what everyone else sees, while how he sees himself is not just as a normal man but as a hero.
Seriously. He posted this on his Truth Social page. The man lives on his own planet.
From the beginning of his first presidency, critics have cited The Emperor’s New Clothes, but the core of Hans Christian Andersen’s story is that the clothing was said to be invisible to people who were incompetent or stupid, and so everyone pretended to see the emperor’s outfit for fear of having their incapacity revealed.
The twist in the story now is that everybody knows he’s naked, but they pretend to believe in the clothing for fear of having their disloyalty revealed.
In his first administration, he visited Pearl Harbor and his chief of staff, John Kelly, had to explain to him why there was a memorial there and what had happened.
The lesson does not appear to have sunk in. He cited the attack in a light-hearted remark to Japan’s prime minister that would have been a deliberate insult from anyone else, and he recently declared communism to be “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding. That includes World War I, World War II, September 11. It includes the Pearl Harbor attack,” as if Pearl Harbor were a separate thing from the Second World War.
Now there’s trouble in the White House, because the Department of Justice withdrew a ridiculous criminal charge against a man who examined some of the peeled-off paint in the Reflecting Pool, and Justice Jeanine Pirro admitted that the story of vandals damaging the pond had no factual basis, that the damage was the result of hasty, incompetent attempts to renovate the pool.
Someone else might have quietly swept this revelation under the carpet, but, instead, Trump posted a denial, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department had first posted the vandalism fantasy, backed up Trump’s denial and repeated the claim that there is video evidence of vandals damaging the pool.
Those who have seen the video say it is indistinct but appears to show people dipping their hands in the water while security guards stand by without attempting to stop them.
In the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, the spell is broken when a small child declares the emperor naked and people realize they’ve all been faking it. We’ll see how things shake out now that two prominent Trump appointees are publicly disputing the obvious facts.
Though, of course, facts have not convinced some people that Elvis is dead or that Neil Armstrong really walked on the Moon.
It doesn’t help the cause of truth for people to see a cartoon claiming that Trump has the Iranians cornered while they continue to rain missiles and drones on ships in the Gulf and on American military bases in neighboring Arab countries. This is the dark side of Boss Tweed’s famous complaint that his followers can’t read but can be influenced by “those damned pictures.”
Although at least now loyalists may have to dig deeper to find confirmation of their opinions. Rightwingers have started turning against the war, while conservative bloggers are losing audience. Even Fox has begun reporting discouraging poll numbers, to Dear Leader’s anger.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The whole world is watching, and they’re not seeing any clothes.
From his perch in Canada, de Adder mocks Dear Leader’s warlike boasting, putting it in what seems a more realistic setting, and it’s not simply a matter of the Iranians continuing to hit ships and military bases, but their ability, as in the old cowboy game depicted, to direct things in a humiliating fashion. Or what would be humiliating if Dear Leader had the self-awareness necessary to recognize the situation.
Meanwhile, Australian cartoonist Broelman goes straight for humor, combining the disaster unfolding in the Persian Gulf with the utter nonsense of the Reflecting Pool imbroglio. There’s really no point in attempting to analyze what’s gone wrong when nothing at all has gone right.
And another Aussie, David Rowe, offers an Odyssey reference, but shows the stable genius revealing his cunning plan instead of enacting it, and doing so from under the tail instead of straight from the horse’s mouth, the implication being that empty threats repeated, denied, and repeated again are more appropriately classed as coming from that end.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, Luckovich touches on a disquieting element that even the Happy Talk Administration isn’t bothering to cover up, which is that we’ve expended a lot of expensive equipment in this misadventure, and while we’re not running out of missiles, we’re drawing the supply down near the point where we’d be underequipped and vulnerable if a genuine threat — as opposed to this manufactured, voluntary one — were to emerge.
The main problem appears to be that Trump expected his attack on Iran to go like his Venezuelan coup, a quick in-and-out with few casualties. Obviously, that didn’t happen, which not only has resulted in our being tied up in a war very few Americans want us to be fighting, but is such a good example of willful blindness that we’re now beating war drums in apparent preparation to launch a similar adventure in Cuba.
The other issue in our depletion of armaments stems from the problems that crop up when generals try to fight a new war with the tactics of the last. Iran has entered the same world of drone warfare that keeps Ukraine competitive. We have not.
Drone warfare is cheap and effective, and leaves us swatting down dime-store, interchangeable weapons with very expensive missiles that can’t be produced in the same numbers. We crow over the destruction of the Iranian navy when they depend, rather, on small, fast craft, and, similarly, knocking down a drone is a small triumph when it was part of a swarm.
The critical step now is for the naked emperor to recognize the difference between lying about the damage to the Reflecting Pool and failing to be honest about our damages in the Middle East.
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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