CSotD: Once More Before Decision Day
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“The whole world is watching” can be a bland cliché if you toss it out too casually, but the whole world really is watching to see what happens here tomorrow, and it’s not just curiosity.
When students first chanted it in 1968 in the streets of Chicago, it was a call to shame, pointing out that the brutal actions of the Chicago police in the streets there — as well as inside the hall where Daley’s thugs beat CBS reporter Dan Rather on camera — told the world that the US was not a bastion of free speech, freedom of assembly and the free press.
It was an opening salvo in exposing what was later seen in the Watergate hearings and in the opening of COINTELPRO files and more abuses that surfaced in the Church Committee’s investigations, so that by the time the Iran Contra scandal erupted, the whole world was well aware that “the shining city on the hill” had several dark alleys.
In case they hadn’t seen it in Watts and Detroit, or in the coup that put the Shah of Iran in charge, or at Wounded Knee or in Vietnam.
Our faults and flaws are fully visible, and Rowe points out the loss of credibility and list of grievances that make it seem likely that Trump’s power is about to be seriously challenged, and, if he can’t be set aside until 2028, he can be slowed, assuming the American electorate rises up tomorrow with a mandate too great to deny.
And the whole world is watching with more than idle curiosity. Whatever Vučić was doing in Serbia, and most of what Bolsonaro promised to do in Brazil, would be largely internal, but the American government is not only a keystone for the world economy, but the source of aid in many underdeveloped nations and a source of warfare and death in a few unhappy countries.
Which brings to mind this exchange from Cat Ballou:
- Jackson Two-Bears: Kid, Kid, what a time to fall off the wagon. Look at your eyes.
- Kid Shelleen: What’s wrong with my eyes?
- Jackson Two-Bears: Well they’re red, bloodshot.
- Kid Shelleen: You ought to see ’em from my side.
Indeed, the view from our side is pretty horrifying, and it’s becoming increasingly less unfair to make comparisons to a government that empowered special police to beat people in the street and put innocent people into concentration camps based on their race or ethnicity.
Everybody knew then, and there’s little excuse for not knowing today.
We were told that the purpose of rounding up and deporting aliens to foreign prisons and gulags was to protect our citizens from violent criminals, and the compliant conservative press has headlined cases in which non-citizens, especially undocumented non-citizens, committed violent crimes.
Example: Homeland Security put out this press release:
Note that it not only uses the incendiary term “illegal alien,” but adds a partisan attack on the Democratic governor whose state police do not cooperate by routinely sharing information about undocumented aliens with federal authorities.
The accident is serious, the death an unarguable tragedy, the issue of drunk driving critical. But there are an estimated 34 people killed in drunk driving accidents every day, and they aren’t all caused by undocumented aliens. You could run banner headlines each time a person with blue eyes caused a fatal accident, if your purpose were to criminalize people with blue eyes.
The whole world is watching, and they aren’t stupid. They were told that ICE arrests were to protect us from violent criminals. Violent criminals make up less than seven percent of those arrested, while nearly two-thirds have committed no crimes beyond the misdemeanor of illegal entry, and not all are guilty even of that. More than 500 legal US citizens have been arrested and detained by ICE.
We know, or at least we ought to know.
This chart, and the report it illustrates, were compiled by the CATO Institute, which is hardly a left-wing woke libtard organization.
Anyone who doesn’t know doesn’t want to know. But it’s not hard to avoid unwanted facts. You just have to be a true believer.
It can be fun to pretend to misunderstand a foolish point. For instance, I agree whole-heartedly with Varvel: Undocumented aliens who vote are such a ridiculously insignificant problem that they amount to being fictional characters. Excellent cartoon!
But not every dubious point of view can be so facetiously disposed of, as seen in this
Juxtaposition of the Day
Two political cartoons with which I happen to disagree, but their differences are critical to understanding our political system as it currently functions.
Ramirez suggests that Peltola’s senate campaign has been destroyed by the revelation that her party was involved in recruiting a bogus candidate with the same name as her opponent, with suggestions, though no hard evidence, that she knew of the prank.
If he’d drawn the car at the side of the road with a flat tire, I might agree: It’s a problem to be dealt with. But there’s nothing illegal in the relatively common strategy of “ballot stacking,” and to have it surface a week before the election certainly makes the car wreck depiction an exaggeration: Most voters have already made up their minds and 50,000 had already mailed in their ballots.
But spin is part of political cartooning.
By stark contrast, Stiglich’s take on Abdul El-Sayed is a racist lie. There’s no evidence that El-Sayed is connected with radical Islamists, which was why, confronted by a planted opposition player, he challenged him for demanding he renounce a Muslim group because he is Muslim. Nobody asks Christian candidates to denounce unaffiliated extremist Christian groups.
Then Stiglich throws in George Soros, to appeal to anti-Semitic voters. It’s not debate but an ugly, utterly dishonest argument with no place in decent society, though of course I’d defend to the death blah blah blah, which, by the way, Voltaire never said.
But let’s end with the reminder that editorial cartoons can be both serious and humorous. I can’t look at Baron’s piece without chuckling, but also without, like her, regretting the changes we’ve seen in this nation and its guiding principles.
Keep the faith.
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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