Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Tuesday Twosomes

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Mike Peterson Published: March 6, 2018 1 minute 4 comments

(Non Sequitur)

(Candorville)

We lead off today with a Juxtaposition, in which Danae and Susan explore the idea that you can relieve the stress by not focusing on all the depressing things going on around you.

Lemont provides the counterargument.

I'm not entirely against Danae's contention that you create a lot of stress by continually framing arguments. My recent road trip consisted of a day of airplanes on each end and a day of working with middle-school journalists in the center and not a whole lot of attention to national news, much less conversation about it.

It was pretty relaxing, which is funny, since the combination of dealing with airlines and standing in front of kids and parents for eight straight hours was pretty intense. But it was a different kind of intense, and, as they say, a change is as good as a rest.

Then again, there's a sort of sophomoric metaphysics — or stoned logic — that can intrude: Do trees lie down and sleep when we're not looking at them? Can you prove they don't?

Again, Candorville provides the metaphor and Susan voices the answer: A situation can, in fact, continue to deteriorate even if you ignore it, and something you might have fixed becomes something that will kill you.

This is why we have dogs, or small children, or both. They demand attention and invite distraction, but not to a level that keeps you from knowing what else is happening in the world.

And they repay attention with affection, which the world most certainly does not.

Juxtaposition #2

(Lio)

(Clay Bennett)

Lio explodes the assumption that compatibility is necessarily based on our predetermined heirarchies of worth, while Clay Bennett also spins the familiar fairytale so that the handsome prince loses his attractiveness.

As far as love goes, every pot has its lid, and there's someone out there who fits you, but perhaps you have to come down off your throne and become the frog you truly are.

There are many variations of the Frog Prince story, in which the unacceptable suitor is revealed to be worthy after all.

One of my favorites is "The Beggar-Man's Bride," which I encountered as retold by Katharine Lee Bates and illustrated by Margaret Evans Price, who were a bit of a supergroup.

Bates begins the tale:

Once upon a time there was an old king who had only one daughter. He was very anxious that his daughter should marry, but while she was more beautiful than words can tell, she was so proud and rude that no man who came to woo her was good enough for her. She sent away one after another, and even made fun of them to their faces.

The wise king finally pairs her off with a beggar, and she is forced to live as a poor housewife until her pride gives way, she learns to work and she comes to love her husband, at which point, of course, he is revealed to be a prince in disguise.

Bruno Bettelheim was more Freudian with "Beauty and the Beast," turning it into a metaphor for a young girl's fear of sex, but, in both cases, true love comes when she not simply accepts a less-than-princely mate but comes to truly love him in his disguised state.

The fact that he is then revealed to be noble is a cherry atop the sundae and a well-accepted metaphor for happiness.

It's pointless and rude to speculate about the fate of Jarvanka as a couple should he be fired, but it's worthwhile to ponder the idea that so many people have accepted Jared and his father-in-law as princes simply because they were born into the right families.

Which brings us to …

Juxtaposition #3

(Bill Sanders)

(Joe Heller)

While other cartoonists are predicting the dire global economic consequences of a trade war caused by Dear Leader's decision to impose tariffs, these two focus on the plain folks who, as Sanders says, are being led astray, and who, as Heller suggests, are going to pay a price not on the Dow but in the kitchen.

Here the impact on the Dow is irrelevant, except that Trump won't brag about it until it recovers. Although Joe Six Pack may have his 401k invested, it's more likely he's barely got a 401k or an IRA or, lord help us, a pension. 

Joe isn't prepared for retirement and chances are he's not preparing, as this Motley Fools article outlines, which means the Dow isn't of interest to him but, because he lives by cash flow, the price of beer and the cost of credit are.

Part of the strategy to keep Joe compliant is to push the idea that national economies and budgets work the same way his does, that when he and Mrs. Sixpack sit around the table and work out their family budget (though just under a third of people actually do), they're performing the same action Congress goes through.

Of course, if the Sixpacks ever did that and found they didn't have enough money to get by, he'd probably get a second job or try to find one that paid better long before they agreed to balance their budget by not feeding the children or taking them to the doctor.

So that's one difference.

And the government doesn't max out its credit cards the way Joe does because they have no max. They even get to set their own interest rates, which poor Joe does not.

If Dear Leader's promised tariffs actually happen — and, as this not entirely neutral piece explains, he may not need Congressional approval — Joe and his family will find they were, indeed, led off a cliff and, all that high talk about the Dow and the deficit doesn't matter, nor does it matter whether they're prepared for the future: They simply can't keep up with the cost of living here and now.

That's when they'll learn what MAGA is really bringing us back to.