CSotD: Midweek Short Takes
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I don't have writer's block today, but do I have a ridiculously early doctor's appointment, so I'll be brief.
Fortunately, Boulet is not brief — the above is but a snippet — and following his advice will get you through any lapses in creative energy. Go read the rest and take careful notes.
Tom Tomorrow pours on the insightful ridicule, and while depicting Trump as a temperamental toddler is nothing new, using the metaphor with specific examples makes it worthwhile.
I don't know how much good it does to ridicule the president in terms of changing what's going on, but it gives comfort to those of us who may have been scratching our heads and wondering if we were the only ones who were aghast.
I'm losing patience with the "bland restatement" cartoons, mostly altie comics that basically consist of people staring out of the panel saying things that real people have been saying that should horrify us, or amuse us, or whathaveyou. That is, in my view, simply reminding people who already believe of things they should believe.
By contrast, this cartoon takes the familiar baby-Trump concept and points out what has been in the news, that his staff spends way too much time tending him and keeping him comfortable and trying to minimize his tantrums and off-topic hijinks.
His True Believers won't be persuaded of anything, in part because they are True Believers and in part because I doubt Rush Limbaugh or Breibart are covering the chaos in the White House and I doubt even more that the Deplorables are checking out the Atlantic or Washington Post or other places that do practice the art of journalism.
And, by the way, if you've been passing on things from Occupy Democrats and similar lefty partisan sites, don't be too smug, because they're just as prone to loosely sourced wiseass comments as ol' Rushbo. They just feed a different corps of True Believers.
I generally laugh at their material, then do a quick Google and find out they're exaggerating at best and willfully misinterpreting at worst.
If Tom Tomorrow can make his point with sharp satire that checks out, I'd think they could do the same.
And, good lord, it's not like the Trump administration isn't full of straight lines. Jimmy Margulies didn't have to work hard to make Ben Carson look like a nitwit. He simply had to employ a little imagination to point out the obvious.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Banx depicts a conversation that may well be taking place in reality, though it probably isn't anything anyone in the intelligence agencies has to say aloud.
Trump has managed to pick enough fights with those folks that they are apparently not having a lot of trouble figuring out where loyalty to country and loyalty to the boss diverge, which may help keep a lid on some of the more outrageous instincts of Dear Leader, either through what favors they refuse him or through the leaks that will surely follow.
After all, Nixon only pissed off one highly-placed FBI administrator who became Deep Throat. Trump is pissing them all off, wholesale.
However, in the wake of yesterday's Wikileaks dump, a couple of things occur to me about all this wire-tapping and so forth, mostly based on my frequent assertion that their enthusiasm is our best protection and that the more they collect, the less they are able to process it.
Last night's news began with the Wikileaks story and dire warnings that your home appliances can be used to spy on you.
Anything connected to the Internet — your smart TV, your cell phone, I suppose your smart refrigerator — can be hacked by the FBI or the CIA or whoever, they warn.
And, Wikileaks warns, the spies can even defeat the apps you add to your email to encrypt and anonymize your personal communications.
There is no privacy anymore, we're told: No place to hide, no way to keep them from monitoring everything you do.
Pretty scary.
The next story was about the bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centers, which are coming in by phone and email but which authorities are having trouble tracking.
I rest my case.
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