CSotD: Some Innocent Chit-Chat
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Margulies makes an excellent connection between people exiled to countries with which they have no connection and people who are experiencing the same disorienting thing without having to move at all.
He and I are of an age where we had seen this country, if only in propaganda films and, in my case, a live presentation by a team from the John Birch Society who spoke at my school.
We were warned that there were communists among us and that, if they were allowed to take power, we’d have armed police on the streets demanding to see our identification and hauling us away to concentration camps if we didn’t comply. Imagine that!
In later years, my mother told me how frightening the McCarthy Era was, because a lot of people, particularly college students, had gone to meetings of groups to talk about doing good work but were now being hauled up for what had just been innocent chit-chat.
These anti-communist zealots even made sure textbooks and library books weren’t spreading communist propaganda.
Which reminds me: Happy Banned Book Week!
Well, as they say, everything old is new again. Little Donald may have caught a few of those propaganda films, but, what may have been more important, he later hired McCarthy’s attorney, Roy Cohn, to represent him when he was charged with racial discrimination in his rentals, and made Cohn his mentor thereafter.
Kirk Anderson had joked about W’s administration resembling Soviet propaganda posters, and his satire rang true at the time, but only as satire. The “Busheviks” may have pushed the limits of a democracy, but mostly to the point of worrying those more dedicated to freedom.
Juxtaposition of the Day
But here we are, the latest version of those scary films being the fraudulent “public service announcements” that are thinly disguised political advertisements boosting the Trump administration, illegally paid for by taxpayers.
As noted before, TV stations run PSA’s at no cost, in order to fill unsold advertising space. When makers of a 30-second promotional video pay to have it shown at a certain time, it’s an ad. And if propaganda is being mislabeled as public service, that’s autocracy.
Trump may fool the MAGA crowd by leading the faithful in a hunt for commies under their beds, despite their having no idea how to define the ideology, but he’s hardly fooling any real communists as he buddies up to them or gathers shares in private industry for the Central Government.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
He’s also not fooling our allies, or, perhaps, our former allies. The Trump administration has succeeded in lowering America’s reputation in the Western world, such that Canada is seeking associate status with the European Union and Body hopes Australia and New Zealand can also gain secure footing there.
America First has become America Only, and Georgetown professor Matthew Kroenig notes that the State Department once displayed 200 flags of the countries of the world with whom we have diplomatic relations, but has now changed it to 200 American flags, in order, as he says, “to remind State Department employees who they work for.”
That depressing tidbit was included in a more expansive article by Melissa Toufanian that outlines how our official attitude towards other nations has changed since she spent nearly a decade working at the State Department.
Nor is this overall attitude confined to how we see other countries. We have the highest proportion of prisoners per population in the world, and are one of a limited and declining number of nations that have the death penalty.
The recent bungled attempt to kill a woman in Tennessee has put the matter back on the table for discussion. Cousineau notes the apparent contradiction between people who are adamantly pro-life and openly devoted to Christian beliefs but who believe in killing “bad” people.
The trick — and it is a trick — is the usual practice of believing the parts of the Bible that support your opinions and ignoring those that don’t, and there are people on Xitter declaring that Christ was in favor of the death penalty. Perhaps they consider themselves to be without sin.
This topic has brought out hostility towards the Catholic Church, as can be seen in condemnation of Pope Leo for having said that support of the death penalty is morally inconsistent with a religious opposition to abortion.
I’m not sure that beheading is any more inhumane than death by lethal injection, which has the highest failure rate of methods used in the United States. When states have discussed bringing back firing squads, the objection is that it is cruel, but it has a 100% success rate.
Someone noted on social media that we are more humane in euthanizing our pets than we are about (legally) killing each other and I would agree. In recent years, veterinarians have begun the process by putting the animal to sleep as if it were going to have an operation, only delivering the fatal drug after the dog or cat has become unconscious.
The only reason not to do the same for prisoners is that the point of execution is punishment and we want them to suffer. If we weren’t such hypocrites, we’d go back to the method used in the era of William “Braveheart” Wallace.
No worries of anybody accidentally surviving that.
It’s not necessarily a depraved indifference to human life. As Pett suggests, it may be a broader indifference that allows people to encapsulate their own experience such that large matters in the outside world have little impact on them, while personal issues and inconveniences rule their attitudes.
That is, the covid pandemic is not remembered for the 1.1 million Americans who died but for the inconvenience of wearing masks and having plans canceled because of it. Similarly, today people aren’t concerned with the war in Iran but with the price of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Well, the price of eggs brought Trump back into office and it seems likely the price of petroleum may drive his gang out.
As long as the holes get patched, I don’t mind.
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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