CSotD: Rally Trump and Teleprompter Trump
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This Kal cartoon isn't his most recent, but I'm breaking my own rule to feature it here because I'm getting whiplash trying to keep up with Dear Leader's back-and-forth on how he feels about white supremacists.
And I don't think cartoonists should have to come up with new cartoons every time the President simply circles around to the same position he abandoned a day or two ago.
I've said before that I don't think we're dealing with 25th Amendment insanity, just hypocrisy merged with an inability to focus, but if he goes from loony speeches to actually acting on his bizarre, contradictory positions, I might change my mind on that.
Over at CNN, Gregory Krieg has a good analysis of Rally Trump vs Teleprompter Trump, contrasting things he says when his handlers have control of him and things he says when he's once more off the rails and dwelling in his own universe.
The question, really, is how much the divide is between his role as President and his private life: Bill Clinton isn't the only President to have cheated on his wife while in office (though perhaps while in the office), but those peccadilloes didn't inflame armed anarchists and white supremacists.
Last night's screwball performance places us in a tough position, and Kreig's analysis only describes, does not prescribe.
However, here's a pretty good …
Juxtaposition of the Day
The difference in perspective here is wonderfully apt: In Siers' piece, we see Teleprompter Trump under the control of his handlers, while Beeler shows Rally Trump from the point-of-view of his supporters, who must surely be starting to focus on the promises they had expected him to fulfill.
Here's a Juxtaposition about fresh perspectives:
First Part: Michael Cavna suggests that cartoonists need to give up the "Baby Trump" image and find new ways to depict him.
I don't entirely disagree, but I think there are two sides, one being that repeatedly using the same imagery is lazy and the other being that there's no point in giving up something that works.
I do think that showing him as a willful baby rejecting the advice of the grown-ups around him is a less fraught image than, for instance, depicting him as an idiot, because, while Gomer Pyle was a delightful fool, he was such a good-natured nitwit that the question of his mental capability didn't send up flags.
Depict a fool whose instincts make him irrascible and unpleasant and the mental illness issues will quickly supplant the image of the clowning, classical fool.
Cavna says the image brings nothing new to the conversation, but, again, the way Trump whipsaws back and forth between Rally Trump and Teleprompter Trump keeps refreshing these things.
And, much as I hate "So what would you do?" as an argument, I wish Cavna had suggested an alternative.
Second Part: Scott Simon took a fresh look at Dr. Strangelove this past weekend, by having NPR weekend anchor Lulu Garcia-Navarra watch the movie for the first time.
Having a bright young person bring a first-impression to this classic quickly erased the notion that it's all about Slim Pickens riding the bomb down, and refreshed the chilling central message of Kubrick's classic, which is becoming more relevant as we sit here, and not simply because of North Korea, but because of the entire idea of generals being in charge, whether it involves nuclear weapons or simply lining up cannon fodder.
You can listen to their conversation or read the transcript here. It's a smart, entertaining, illuminating conversation well worth your time.
David Horsey has an intelligent discussion of the topic of Afghanistan in his column, in which he acknowledges that Trump is not the first President to have been dealt a losing hand in an unwinnable war, and suggests that maybe the definition of war has changed such that "winning" and "losing" are no longer endpoints.
Not that we had to wait until now to get that message: Bob Englehart made the point back in 2001, when the Cheney Administration was first launching the adventure.
The difference between our invasion of Afghanistan and our invasion of Iraq was that we actually had a clear goal in Afghanistan, that of toppling the Taliban government and punishing al Qaeda.
If only we'd had a clear sense of regional history.
Oh well. Too late now.
The man who promised to drain the swamp is, instead, blundering into one, and however Rally Trump and Teleprompter Trump work out their split personality, it is, as Jim Morin notes, a case of same-old same-old.
And, much as I dislike dragging poor little Barron into things, Clay Jones is right that he isn't going to be one of the kids who will have to cash the checks his daddy is writing.
Maybe we need to bring back the draft, and eliminate the deferrals that allowed too many in my generation to be so freakin' philosophical about it, including the deferral for having two X-chromosomes. Even without putting women in combat, there are plenty of jobs in the military they could be doing and no reason they should be any more exempt than their brothers.
Which, by the way, brings me back to Rally Trump and his efforts to tear the country apart:
At my recent high-school reunion, I was talking to a classmate who, as we were going through some chronology, remarked that he'd been drafted and went to Vietnam.
I hadn't realized it because I'd left town by then and, like most Vietnam vets, he had never brought it up in our conversations since.
"I missed that party," I said.
"You didn't miss a thing," he replied.
And then we went back to figuring out when he and his wife had bought the house down the street from my folks, because we were friends and Rally Trump wasn't there to try to make us hate each other.
We can be better
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