CSotD: Majoring in the Inhumanities
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We’ll start with the conclusion, which, as Chappatte explains it, is that we’re finally honest with each other, or at least that we’ve reached a point where things are becoming plain.
Of course, the empty rhetoric continues, explaining how this is such a wonderful deal for the average person and assuming that nobody will look behind the curtain.
Promises, for instance, that Medicaid would not be reduced are so empty that they finally qualify as lies rather than spin, and the obvious impact of tax cuts is that they benefit those at the top more than those further down the ladder.
After the Senate had made its changes but before the final vote, Jennifer Rubin dubbed it “the worst bill in modern history” and explained her reasoning.
But, of course, the number of people who read the Contrarian is a fraction of the number who watch Fox News and other administration boosters.
You would think that people would notice that groceries have not decreased in price. The rise in overall prices isn’t huge, but the promise was a decrease, so any increase makes the promise empty.
Specifically, that report says, the promised decrease in egg prices has not happened:
From April 2025 to May 2025, retail egg prices decreased for the second month in a row. Egg prices fell 7.5 percent after having fallen by 10.5 percent from March to April 2025. Egg prices in May 2025 were still 41.5 percent higher than in May 2024.
A certain graduate of the Wharton School of Business recently told Fox News that egg prices were “down 400%,” which is mathematically impossible, unless stores were paying people to take the eggs home.
But as the woman in Stahler’s cartoon says, Dear Leader seems more intent on belittling the mainstream media than in coming to grips with consumer needs.
And why not? An administration built on reality television and pro wrestling doesn’t have to reflect the real world.
Of course, Wiley is joking, because no politician is ever that frank about things, and, as said, there is an entire class of voters who never hear that kind of political analysis.
But cartoons like Non Sequitur can sneak topics into the funny pages that conservative editors wouldn’t allow in the editorial section.
Though that’s a knife that cuts both ways. This morning’s comics section not only includes Wiley’s attack on inattentive voters but also this dubious defense of Donald Trump.
Goat is correct that historians rank those presidents near the bottom of the list, though some lists don’t rank Harrison because he never did anything as president.
But what is more important than Harrison’s month-long non-legacy is that only one of the listings in that collection was taken following Trump’s first term and none evaluate his current administration.
And in the one listing that includes his first term, he’s ranked by historians as worst ever.
Goat is at best mistaken, if not deliberately wrong.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Sorensen and Knight both cite the very selective outrage being aimed at NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, by those who have no problem with a reality TV star with a criminal record and a penchant for outrageous lies.
Many of them attacked Joe Biden for his slipping mental capacities but have said nothing about the incomprehensible nonsense coming from Dear Leader.
Bearing in mind that he was a much younger man when his July 4, 2019 speech included this proud statement about the Continental Army in the American Revolution:
Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.
The part about colonial airports caught the lion’s share of publicity, but it’s worth pointing out that all that rockets’ red glare stuff happened in the War of 1812. Perhaps Goat could do a little history coaching.
But who cares? Those who felt Biden was senile happily gave Dear Leader another term.
The latest outrage is the joy with which Trump and his cohorts are greeting the cruelty of Ron DeSantis’s swampy prison camp, which they have cheerfully dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
And not just in some tasteless joke among themselves, but officially. They’re proud of themselves, and intent on celebrating their contempt for the people who will be confined there.
Huck captures that contempt, and the racist assumption that some are less human than others, and he should be praised for not featuring funny, comic alligators. Perpetuating the name and laughing at the image, even ironically, seems to take the edge off what should inspire nausea and despair.
OTOH, I’m not comfortable with invoking the slave ships. He’s completely correct that the brutal despots see migrants as their forebears once saw African captives, but that image is so fraught with anger and sorrow that I don’t think it’s effective even among those who would be expected to agree.
I don’t see any way to include the alligator factor that works.
Better, I think, to leave the reptiles out of it entirely, including using the nickname that sadistic racists have given the facility, and, rather than focusing on the lack of humanity they ascribe to detainees, focus, as Luckovich does, on the normal nature of the victims of this pogrom.
Yeah, I know, it’s insensitive to say “pogrom,” even though that’s what it is. I understand criticism of Trump for having used the term “shylock,” too, because, while its racial/ethnic origin seems distant, I still bristle at “paddy wagon,” which few people associate with Irish prisoners. I get it.
But don’t blame Dear Leader. He thinks the Merchant of Venice runs a bodega in Los Angeles.
Linus had it backwards. A lot of people are okay with rounding up anonymous “illegal aliens,” but become upset when a particular deportee is someone they’ve seen around their neighborhood.
Luckovich is right, but his point would be more effective if it ran in newspapers that were supporting this ghastly lack of human decency. You know it won’t be.
It’s easy enough to comfort the afflicted, but increasingly difficult to afflict the comfortable.
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