CSotD: Breakfast with the White Queen
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The observation in this Jeff Stahler cartoon would be obvious any other time, but it’s important at the moment.
Evaluating it depends on whether you consider everyone having a voice an example of equality or one of leveling, because when the greatest wisdom is placed next to the greatest folly, it puts quite a burden on the observer to sort them out.
Specific to political cartooning, there was a time not so long ago that you had to made a significant effort to hear more than one or two voices. Before World War II, most towns of any size had two newspapers, which you could generally categorize either as liberal and conservative or as white collar and working class or along party lines.
In cities, this continued for a generation or two after the war. In the 70s, I was getting four newspapers a day: Two from Colorado Springs, where I lived, and two from Denver, an hour away but the region’s metro hub. That gave me a wide range of coverage and opinions, but not many people had my appetite for journalism and most got one paper.
Though most people did indeed get one: If you drove down a country road, you’d see a tube at nearly every driveway. Today, they are far more scattered.
That could mean that some people aren’t getting any news, but it more likely means that whatever they get is either broadcast or on-line and likely not as strictly curated as in the days of print, except in the case of people who either rely entirely on Fox and talk radio or on various liberal outlets.
Those folks are spared from confusion, but not in a good way.
Clay Bennett (CTFP) sets out one form of the choice voters face, and it is more neutral than saying “Democracy/Fascism” though your mileage may indeed vary.
Project 2025 lays out a radical departure from our current form of government, but few people have even read round-ups explaining what it contains, much less plowed through the roughly 900 pages of the document itself.
It has, however, generated enough chatter that Donald Trump, who has advanced policies contained in it, and whose former White House staff was deeply involved in its writing, now claims that he knows nothing about it, has no idea who is behind it, and doesn’t agree with what he knows nothing about.
Another statement to be taken neither literally nor seriously.
While those who encounter more than one point of view have entered a land of confusion in which, like the White Queen, they are expected to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
Australian Juxtaposition of the Day
Apparently even viewing things from a distance doesn’t provide clarity: Wilcox declares Trump to be a threat to democracy, while Hudson riffs on Biden’s saying he would drop out only if the Lord Almighty told him to by suggesting that God is a Trump supporter, or at least that He’d be revealing such if he made the call.
Wilcox offers more clarity, while, if Biden does start hearing messages from God, I’d just as soon he stepped aside regardless of whatever Divine Advice he gets.
Viewpoints are no more synchronized in our own country.
Chip Bok (Creators) offers a confusing take. He’s right that Biden is strongly rejecting pressure to drop his re-election campaign, but, then again, if Trump gets in, his supporters are hoping to extend his tenure beyond constitutional limits.
It seems strange to see Bok, a noted conservative, advancing the best possible reason to keep the Biden/Harris ticket intact.
Dana Summers (Tribune) provides a more consistent viewpoint, in suggesting a conspiracy to jail Trump throughout the month of July over his fraud conviction.
It’s a bit paranoid, since, first of all, it assumes a conspiracy rather than the carrying out of justice, and, second, it’s highly unlikely Trump will be ordered to jail at all, and even more unlikely that he wouldn’t mount appeals to delay the court system.
More delays, that is, as Ed Wexler points out.
But let’s wait and see the reaction from conservatives if Hunter Biden escapes jail time, since neither would likely face incarceration if they weren’t at the center of political attention.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the flood of prosecutions of gun owners who have smoked grass, but I digress.
Juxtaposition of Sleepy Joe
If you only read the NYTimes, you might believe that Biden admitted to falling asleep on stage at the debate, but every other source quoted the pool reporter that Biden said he “almost fell asleep” in the same joking remark in which he said he’d crossed 100 time zones (There are only 24).
Still, it seems odd to see progressives adopting the “Sleepy Joe” slur, given that we haven’t seen Biden doze off in public and Trump did so several times during his fraud trial.
Daniel Boris adopts the Newsmax approach to a comment Biden made to Democratic governors, in which he said he would stop scheduling events past eight p.m., and suggests that he would be unable to respond to emergencies after that hour.
The report originally came from the NYTimes, which also reported that several who heard his remarks didn’t take him seriously, while adding this softener:
Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said of the president’s comments about more sleep and less late work: “President Bush went to bed at 9, and President Obama made dinner at 6:30. Normal presidents strike a balance, and so does Joe Biden.
The NYTimes is hardly an apologist for Biden. Not only did they call for his withdrawal within 24 hours of the debate, and misquote him about falling asleep, but their splash page has been dominated by articles about his incapacity and the pressure for him to step down.
Their latest contribution is an article explaining that being a felon isn’t really so bad after all and probably won’t keep voters from supporting Donald Trump.
The optimistic view is to disagree with Gary Markstein (Creators)’s suggestion that confused undecideds will vote for Trump, and to suspect that they may respond by not voting at all.
Helluva situation where that’s the upbeat theory.
Mais plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
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