CSotD: Battle of the Ages
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There’s an element of “So what?” that attaches to this cartoon, because people always want immediate solutions after every election, just as they want to come out of their first chiropractic session like Fred Astaire. The fact that it doesn’t work that way is unremarkable.
However, there are things that should happen quickly, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So it’s not only fair to demand action, but probably necessary, and it’s inevitable that some people will expect the impossible. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp and so on and so forth.
Telnaes notes an early dropped ball, when Thomas Massie got his Hegseth Impeachment measure in front of the House and it failed by a vote of 211-204. There were 11 Democrats who missed the vote, and they had excuses, but don’t we all?
Now, to be practical, even if the House had impeached him, there’s no way the Senate would have produced the two-thirds vote necessary to convict him. It was a performative move, and everything between now and Jan 3 when the new Congress convenes is going to be performative and futile.
But performance matters. Politics is largely a game of messaging, and “Whoops” is not a good message.
You win some, you lose some. I need to gas up the car this morning, and I’ll get it for $3.99 a gallon, because prices have begun to fall since the elections. “Since the elections,” that is, not “because of the elections,” but it feels like “because of” and explaining gas prices is as futile as explaining why a guy would have affairs with two employees plus a spy.
You don’t explain it. You just make what use of it you can. That’s how politics works. There really wasn’t a quarter in your nose, either, but if you love your uncle, you smile and take the quarter. And if you don’t love your uncle, you still take the damn quarter, unless you’re an idiot.
Anyway.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Anyway, there’s a whole passel of young’uns headed for Capitol Hill. Bramhall contends that they’ll be resented, while Sheneman suggests they’ll be delegated to low-level tasks.
I’ve said before that I was struck by the enormous number of Gen Z’s who showed up at our polling place, many of them needing to register, many of them using their passports for ID, since our legislature has banned the use of student ID’s, which may explain how the Democrats here ended up with both houses and the executive council. Don’t mess with these kids.
The nation seems to be welcoming them, and I’ve heard a lot of people quoting John Kennedy. There’s always friction between generations, but maybe the sneering at “Boomers” will be softened by the Gen Z’s, many of whom look back at the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements as models, though they may believe the Women’s Movement was natural evolution.
In any case, they seem willing and eager to take up the torch, and if their parents and grandparents aren’t ready to pass it along, well, I’ll bet we’re gonna find out how much that matters.
Morland sums up the all-too-common situation in which everybody wants a revolution until they have the opportunity to touch one off, and then it all dissolves in a meltdown of caution, fear and we’ve-always-done-it-this-way. We all want to change the world, but if you talk about destruction, well, don’t you know that you can count me out.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
It seems at the moment that, while getting rid of Hegseth and Blanche and maybe Kennedy are attractive goals, the Democrats are currently more involved in getting rid of each other.
The most often-heard gripe is that their leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies, kept writing letters of concern instead of … and that’s where the gripes end, because they don’t explain what action would be more effective, given Republican majorities in both houses and a Republican president who is not just uncooperative but openly hostile to compromise.
Obama’s frequent warning that the perfect is the enemy of the good has been falling on the deaf ears of those who insist on dynamic action, however futile it was likely to turn out.
Wuerker portrays Schumer as Don Quixote, a romantic figure known in pop culture for dreaming the impossible dream. Wuerker shows him hesitating to face a real dragon, but Hamlet is the tradition icon of delay and indecision. The Quixote of the novel was famous for boldly, rashly attacking imaginary foes and being severely thumped in the process: seeking the romantic perfect and thus falling short of achieving the good.
Zyglis seems to capture the situation in sharper focus: Schumer’s leadership tactics have him riding that blue wave of triumph, which seems like the good, perhaps even the perfect, but that wave contains a predator determined to attack and destroy him.
I’m a non-combatant in this struggle. Unless the Democrats decide to put John Fetterman in the driver’s seat, I expect things to move forward as well as the president’s veto powers allow over the next two years. And I suspect that the tattered remains of the Republican Party will spend that time poisoning their own wells with annoying but ineffective performative acts.
What’s likely to happen over the next two years is that Dear Leader’s lack of empathy and compassion will continue and will stand out in stark contrast as the Democrats work to undo as much of the corruption and mean-spiritedness of these past years as possible.
His insensitive recommendation in Slyngstad’s cartoon is from his 60 Minutes interview, and yet another example of how little Trump knows of real life. He apparently thinks if struggling people had just bought stock they could now be wealthy.
He also thinks people have to show identification to buy groceries, “groceries” being an old-fashioned word for “a bag with different things in it.”
Even people who dream of living in a golden mansion with a ballroom know they don’t show ID at the grocery store, and they know they can’t afford to be players on Wall Street.
At least not until they hit the lottery, which should be soon.
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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