CSotD: If only things were that simple …
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I'll start with Non Sequitur, with which I have no argument except that I wish it were that simple. That's gonna be today's theme.
There are two sides to this cartoon, starting with the pun and the misheard promise. Well, something's coming in, anyway, and will be dumped on your doorstep.
The other interpretation is that they sure aren't getting much, and I can accept that more innocent one, too.
Either way, it's related to the post-election notion of "Wait until they realize what they've done …" which almost never works out.
The time-worn joke, of course, is "They told me if I voted for (losing candidate), we'd get (current situation winning candidate promised would not happen)," and the sardonic laugh is based on futility.
Futility, unfortunately, is at the heart of why good and decent people cast a vote for someone who is neither: He acknowledged their sense of futility.
And so, whether it's the inadequacy of having an outhouse instead of running water or actually getting a bunch of "ship" delivered to your doorstep, it will be same-old-same-old and whatever disillusionment may happen will be muted by low expectations.
Meanwhile, I'm seeing demonstrations on Facebook of, at best, the arrogance of city people who want tyranny of the majority, as long as it's their own, and, at worst, expressions of contempt for rural people that are outright bigotry.
First of all, a lot of my very rural friends were not Trump supporters, and it reminds me of "Sweet Home Alabama," where Lynyrd Skynyrd objected to being lumped in with the white supremacists of the south and challenged the selective perception of the sneering elite:
In Birmingham they love the Gov'nor, boo-hoo-hoo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth
Thing is, those supporters of racist governors existed then and hard-hearted Trump supporters exist now.
As for my Trump-supporting friends, damn, we all grew up with the same people in the same small town, and if I had friends on welfare, they had not only friends but relatives who needed help to get by.
There is a sad complexity in how they turn their backs on people they should at least pity and understand, if not love.
And I wish I thought a trail of broken promises would get the vast majority of rural people into action, but the vast majority of urban people aren't any easier to motivate, so why would it be different in the heartland?
In any case, I promise you, they won't be won back by "Deliverance" insults and impassioned essays about how unfair the Founders were to balance democracy and federalism through things like the Senate and the Electoral College.
Perhaps a clean-up of your own house would be a good start, and I don't mean "House," though some laws against gerrymandering would be a major reform.
The clean-up I'm talking about is the burst of "Oh, no — Not Pelosi!" that hit social media as she was once more chosen to lead the Democrats. Clay Jones accompanies this cartoon with a good essay on the ambivalence.
My issue is that, while there is some value in the "new broom sweeps clean" approach, it sure feels like a lot of liberals have accepted the unending abuse Pelosi suffered from right-wingers.
So how come they were willing to nominate a presidential candidate who'd been repeatedly run through the same partisan slime-machine?
It does feel that people are getting wise to Trump and his Twitter explosions, as Mike Luckovich points out, though it doesn't seem to increase their ability to ignore the chaff and focus on the bombers.
Both social media and editorial cartoons are full of "You can't do that!" ripostes to the flag-burning decoy, when, of course, the real question is, "What is he trying to distract us from?"
Robert Ariail suggests that we might better brace ourselves.
Not that Obama has inundated reporters with formal press conferences, but he's certainly been available, occasionally to the level of "Ask him what time it is and he'll tell you how to build a watch."
By contrast, Trump set a pattern of duck-and-dodge throughout the campaign and you have to wonder if he would actually answer a policy question if he had formal press conferences.
I guess we'll see, but it's not promising.
And, finally, this over-simplified complex situation, as depicted — and discussed — by David Horsey.
I don't know if this could be any more frantically reported if the pipeline were a joint project of Nestle and Monsanto, but the gut-reaction factor is enormous and it's hard to know whose version of reality to accept.
I wish it weren't being built, but, even more, I wish people were being less dramatic and more analytical about what's going on.
Here's what I know: I've dealt with tribal historians at Standing Rock on a couple of occasions and they are bright, capable people.
They certainly didn't seem like po' primitive Noble Savages who needed SJW tourists to come straighten things out for them, and I can't imagine that the Tribal Council is any less than competent to deal with the situation.
And a visit to the tribe's website is instructive:
There is a page for donations to help fund their fight against the pipeline. It's tucked just under the tribal logo on the splash page or you'll find it under "News."
However, if you go to the "Visit Us" page, it's about casinos and pow wows.
I didn't find anything there about "Please come out here unprepared for a Dakota winter, create a drain on our resources and stir up problems we're attempting to deal with on our own."
My opinion is that respect for tribal sovereignty, in which I am a firm believer, includes using that donations page and assuming that the Lakota are intelligent, capable human beings.
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