CSotD: The No-Masks of the Red Death

Cartooning from across the ocean, Irish Times wag Martyn Turner sets the stage for today’s posting and tonight’s rally.

The inverted red triangles — signs of neo-Nazi sympathy that recently got some Trump Facebook postings banned — are a nice touch.

The T-shirt reading “White Lives Matter Most” is also relevant, particularly in light of the way VP Pence refused to say that Black lives matter in an interview yesterday.

It’s no longer a mistake or a misunderstanding. People have noted a kabillion times that, while all houses matter, the one that is on fire is the one we need to pay attention to.

Refusal to say the phrase has become a dividing line not between ignorance and understanding, but between inclusion and white supremacy. And here we thought Pence was simply biding his time and holding his tongue.

No, he’s one of them.

 

And by “them” I mean the people who knew and didn’t care, including the ringleader from Kentucky, as seen in this Kevin Siers cartoon.

I’ll admit to a bit of the same feeling about Bolton’s book, except for the not caring part. I care, but I don’t feel the need to shell out twenty bucks for yet another book about how Trump shuffles downstairs around noon, refuses to listen to his briefings, and explodes when advisors counter his errors.

 

What I care about is that they knew, and Pat Bagley has assembled a list of people who knew, who spoke out before the 2016 elections and whose voices have since been muffled by having their noses firmly planted in the Presidential Butt Cheeks.

Yesterday, Presidential Spokesmodel Kayleigh MagaNinny defended, or deflected, or denied, that Trump seems to have a long history of appointing people he later describes as incompetent, disloyal, stupid, etc., saying that Lincoln also appointed people who disagreed with him.

Skipping over the point that Lincoln didn’t throw shitfits and fire them when they spoke up. And that they didn’t quit in disgust.

 

 

Dear Leader has surrounded himself with lackeys and lickspittles, and Ann Telnaes has not only drawn them, but, if you go to her web page, you can scroll down for miniprofiles of each one.

It’s like the Olden Days when you’d look through the Wanted posters in the post office while your parents bought stamps.

Note, by the way, that these folks are wearing face shields, not to avoid infection but to ward off the stuff that isn’t tear gas but will make you tear up, vomit and generally act as if you’d been sprayed with tear gas.

 

Just as tear-inducing gas isn’t tear gas, the coronavirus isn’t contagious and Bagley returns to make the point that, according to the Deplorables, wearing a mask proves that you are a libtard who hates the Constitution.

All you really need is a little Clorox and you’ll be fine.

Conservatives only believe the science of contagion when it provides a way to attack those nasty people who keep wanting equality and justice and other stupid things, as seen in our

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Lisa Benson)

 

(Dana Summers)

 

(Scott Stantis)

Which brings us to the essential question of the Trump Presidency: Who are you going to believe, Dear Leader’s faithful supporters, or your own lying eyes?

 

The idea that the protesters are not masked is beyond nonsense and approaches an actual, obvious lie, moving those who promote it beyond spin and into outright counterfactual propaganda.

(I’ll apologize when tomorrow’s photos show an equal percentage of masks at the Tulsa rally.)

 

Granted, Lalo Alcaraz points out that, even with masks, social distancing matters.

But it’s a bit like that old joke about the child saved from drowning whose mother snaps at his rescuer, “He was wearing a hat!”

As Lalo points out, what they protest is also toxic and worth the risk, while some hand-washing and general caution, combined with masks, can reduce the risk, at which point you have to decide what matters.

Though, granted, if you stand on the shore and watch the kid drown, you won’t get your clothes wet.

 

Stephan Pastis notes that there’s a certain panic going around.

An overabundance of caution can be annoying, not just in Covid-19 issues but, for instance, in waiting to make a left turn behind someone who won’t go as long as there are any cars anywhere in sight. Or the world.

It may be stupidity, but it’s not fatal stupidity.

 

As opposed to people like the late True Believer in this Steve Sack cartoon, who signed a waiver promising to absolve Dear Leader of responsibility if science turned out to be more reliable than partisan dogma.

It truly is bizarre that Trump would term Covid-19 a libtard plot and a germ that doesn’t matter, won’t hurt you and will be gone last month sometime, but would then allow his campaign rally to insist on a disclaimer.

Particularly given how he has pressured Tulsa to not only withdraw their curfew for tonight but also to not press their social distancing rules for the rally.

 

One might point out the difference between our infection rates and those of nations of the European Union — which I would note are not only equally industrialized and developed, but are not shithole countries.

However, Dear Leader is already on record as disbelieving not just in science but in mathematics, having demanded an apology from CNN for publishing poll results that show him badly behind Joe Biden …

 

… and then trashed his ex-GF Fox News for having come up with roughly the same lying numbers.

His followers won’t remember that, in 2016, Fox gave Clinton a four-point lead the night before the election, with a 2.5 point margin of error.

And that she actually did end up getting more votes than he did.

But, hey, only because of millions of illegal voters from shithole countries brought in by alien spaceships.

 

Meanwhile, Wharton School’s super-secret valedictorian and unheralded honors graduate hasn’t quite grasped the fact that tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter.

It’s those damn numbers again.

They’re Islamic, you know.

 

3 thoughts on “CSotD: The No-Masks of the Red Death

  1. I’m not here to paint Romney as a hero, as there is plenty to dislike about him… but I think it’s unfair to paint him as having his nose planted in Trump’s pompous posterior. I may not agree with his principles, but I will give the man credit for having them, unlike the rest of the slime molds who call themselves the law and order party.

  2. “lackeys” and “lickspittles” are fine words, but I’m rather fond of “catchfarts”, which I found one day while browsing my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

    Yes, I’m that much of a nerd that I actually make a pastime of browsing through dictionaries. It’s defined there as a “…lackey or servant, so-called from customarily walking behind the master.”

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