CSotD: Repeat as needed
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Several cartoonists posted work from the past on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, and I began collecting it on the assumption that few would move quickly to address the Vegas shootings.
In fact, quite a few did, but I'm leading with this John Cole 2015 piece because it's an excellent summary of a common thread, and it's not fair to keep doing the same thing over and over and demand that cartoonists come up with a fresh take on it.
However, Cole's 2017 version does blend Las Vegas with the overall theme of public helplessness.
There was a lot of Death doing this or that, some Satans and so forth, together with several riffs on "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas," mostly pointing out that it doesn't, but Cole's conceit of giving Death the winning hand, and specifying the cards in that hand, is head and shoulders above the rest in tying in the location to the overall problem.
David Fitzsimmons scores with this well-grounded explanation of the eternal cycle, geared for this particular event.
That is, you could apply this to any mass shooting, but Fitzsimmons individualizes it with specific elements. I heard on NPR, for instance, that they were turning away blood donors and asking them to make appointments because the lines at hospital blood banks were out the doors with wait times of more than an hour.
And I can't begin to process Trump's latest empty, idiotic gesture of donating a golf trophy to the hurricane victims, but apparently his point is that going golfing is not goofing off on the job but making a serious contribution to the effort.
The man has gone from being beyond belief to being beneath contempt and Fitz captures it.
Then, as a plus, he points out that the Republicans are on the verge of overturning a ban on gun silencers, which is being sold — I'm not making this up — as a safety measure to help protect the hearing of gun owners, who otherwise would have to wear something over their ears.
I forget what the justification was for legalizing bullets that would pierce Kevlar vests, but, as RJ Matson points out, we're offering our thanks and prayers and praise to the first responders who put their lives on the line, while doing nothing to keep them or anyone else from being slaughtered by heavily armed psychopaths.
With silencers to make them harder to find and stop.
I use that term "psychopaths" advisedly, because one of our copouts is that, as long as the shooter is white and crazy, we can just shrug it off, while, if he is black or Muslim, then the greater issue becomes not that of controlling access to firearms, goodness knows, but of shutting down our borders and searching our citizens on the streets, sometimes with extreme prejudice beyond the basic prejudice with which it begins.
I was a member of the NRA as a kid, by the way, back when it was a gun safety group, before it became a terrorist organization.
Today, in light of the reach and power of that organization, inaction is the safest choice, as Jimmy Margulies suggests.
As long as we offer thoughts and prayers in place of legislation, everyone can stay safe in the shelter of same-old-same-old and prevent fundraising and organized opposition from becoming a re-election problem.
Granted, it's not a "cartoon," but several people posted this cavalcade of re-used headlines from the Onion, which simply changes the location and republishes the same piece because, what the hell, it's not like anything but the location ever changes.
The best part being the ad which popped up in my feed, no doubt triggered (heh) by the gun-related words in the story.
This was actually the second Remington ad that I saw on the site; the first offered a rebate on shotguns but rotated out while I was still gobsmacked.
And, while birdshot is not so deadly an offer, we can still appreciate their giving me an opportunity to kill doves, which seems right in the spirit of the moment.
The dove has torn her wings so no more songs of love
We are not here to sing, we're here to kill the dove
– Jacques Brel
Jeff Koterba reposted this 2016 cartoon, which struck me not simply for his point that these things happen over and over, but for my own continuing dismay over the way we violate the Flag Code by lowering the flag on occasions which do not justify it.
The one part of the President's wooden address that struck me yesterday was his order to lower the flag to half-staff because this is when we used to do it, in times of national mourning, and that was how it was ordered, from the White House. There was a time when the flag went to half-staff only on the death of a former president or a justice of the Supreme Court or a major national disaster.
These days, it seems the flag is at half-staff more often than at full, not simply because of repeated mass-shootings but because localities take it upon themselves to lower the national flag any time anything remotely sad happens and also on the anniversary of anything remotely sad.
It cheapens the gesture and makes it all but meaningless, leaving us no way to properly mourn events like the Las Vegas shootings that touch the whole nation.
And, to answer his question, it means the only reason to have the rest of the flagpole is because you are supposed to raise it sharply to the top and then lower it slowly to half-staff, which I'm sure is another bit of trivia only old people and Eagle Scouts know.
Etiquette aside, keeping the flag perpetually at half-staff helps to build the atmosphere of continuous fear, sorrow and needless paranoia that makes us vulnerable to Big Brotherism.
Thus, as David Rowe points out, allowing our leaders to focus on other priorities.
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