CSotD: Nine More Days of Two Minutes Hate
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The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. — 1984
Manipulation includes false claims like “We’ve always been at war with Eurasia,” although, Orwell tells us, “as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.”
Similarly, people should well know that the offer of $5,000 is nonsense, given the likelihood of the GOP holding their majority in both houses. But the money that pours into lotteries is proof that either people can’t figure odds or that odds don’t matter.
The charge that protesters are being paid is even harder to counter, because it’s hard to disprove a negative, and paid protesters are an old chestnut only now being actualized by the rightwing, in the form of an offer of $200 by the University of Michigan’s College Republicans for students to travel to appearances by Abdul El-Sayed and heckle him.
There may be a connection between a fund for disruption and the young man who tried, unsuccessfully, to challenge El-Sayed. There are many connections between the kid and a PAC rumored to have paid for “influencer marketing.”
Dear Leader accused hecklers at his speeches of being paid a similar amount, although there’s no proof of how he came up with that figure as the going rate.
Furthermore, I was told I’d get $90 from Dear Leader to help offset the cost of Medicare, but somehow it doesn’t seem to have happened. But no surprise: I knew who I was dealing with.
What I’ve also seen before is the religious bigotry being dished out against El-Sayed, Omar, Mamdani and other Muslims. As Auchter notes, it’s similar to the anti-Catholic rhetoric John Kennedy faced in 1960.
I was too young then to hear what was being said in political speeches, but old enough to get anti-Catholic quarters when I went to the market. Living in a largely French-Canadian community, I hadn’t known people hated Catholics, but once I was old enough to learn about the Klan and study Thomas Nast, I learned that it was an old story.
Not to say that Trump has not been the target of laughing contempt, but he’s largely earned it. Speaking of gas prices at a rally in Michigan, he said
“We’re making money like we’ve never made before. They’ll say: ‘Trump is bragging about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ I don’t give a damn. We’re making a freaking fortune.”
That’s not the way I’d address a crowd of voters, given current anxiety over the cost of living, but that’s not the unguarded observation that has cartoonists leaping to their drawing boards. It is a repeated discussion of candidates’ backsides, especially his praise of candidate Jon Husted (R-OH)’s badonkadonk.
“I looked at his ass, and I’ve never done that with a man before. By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before: Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.”
It’s an odd observation to air from the platform, given how his party has been using homophobia and transphobia in attacks on opposing candidates who have given no reason why either would apply to them.
McKee picked up on it as a way to criticize Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine and his embrace of Vladimir Putin, despite all of his previous denials and denunciations of the “Russia Russia Russia hoax.”
Juxtaposition of the Day
Overseas, political cartoonists are permitted to be more rude than editors in this country could stomach, but a protruding tie is a most effective way of illustrating that Trump is extremely subservient to Putin.
And why not? We’re now seeing American cartoonists toss F-bombs into their cartoons and spoiling their chances of being picked up by the mainstream press without making nearly as compelling a point.
It’s not the only place where campaign rhetoric is challenging the public’s sense of decency, and Jones here manages to blend Trump’s repeated, misogynistic insults of women reporters with his openly expressed support of Vivek Ramaswami’s ad accusing Amy Acton of lying about having been raped by her stepfather.
If you’re looking for a parallel to Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate,” it’s hard to find a better example than the contempt being showered on Acton, whose history of being repeatedly raped between the ages of 9 and 12 is being challenged despite confirmation by her brother and the indictment of her stepfather, who then fled the state rather than stand trial.
The Two Minutes of Hate were mandatory, while Bramhall riffs on the fact that several Republicans were shocked and horrified by Ramaswami’s ad and the fact that he responded to criticism by promising to run it more often. That dissension within the formerly solid ranks might have softened public disgust, but then Vice-President Vance stepped in to praise the ad and criticize those who found it objectionable.
This effectively makes November 3 a referendum on whether Big Brother and the Two Minutes of Hate will continue to hold sway, both within the Republican Party and throughout the nation.
Margulies illustrates the state of affairs, with Republican candidates insisting on their independence, but still leashed to Dear Leader by access to campaign funding and by their previous loyalty to the party. Given the harsh tone of the current campaign, it may take more than polite denials to demonstrate that the leash has truly been snapped.
But if things go as predicted, Ramaswami’s ad might spark the shift in power that would open the Epstein files, stop sheltering the child molesters and rapists named there, and then try to end the rest of the hate and fear we’ve lived under.
Election Day being a more constructive cure than Dog Day.
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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