CSotD: Desolation Strikes the Cult
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I don’t know that things seem quite as grim from the inside as Wuerker suggests, though those on the outside have long questioned whether Dear Leader was genuinely accomplishing anything.
A Cult of Personality, on the other hand, tends to be fairly steadfast and myopic. The term originated with Stalin and while the Hungarians and Czechs weren’t thrilled with the way things went, it’s not clear that people within the USSR were disillusioned.
The question before us in this case is how many people are true MAGAs and how many are simply following along because they’d rather be thought conservative than liberal.
In that regard, polling about the BBB and the deportation of immigrants indicates that most Americans seriously question Trump’s policies.
And while it’s hard to quantify its actual relative impact, Trump’s wonderful fabulous triumphant July 4 parade certainly didn’t appear to live up to the glories of May 1 in Red Square.
(Update: Turns out Wuerker’s cartoon is five years old. I think that makes the accusation even more pointed.)
Juxtaposition of the Day
Huck makes a valid point in contrasting the sudden fall of Joe McCarthy with the apparent acceptance of Donald Trump’s assault on innocent victims, but you have to be either extremely old or a history buff to appreciate the impact of McCarthyism.
To have been even 10 years old when McCarthy’s crusade collapsed would make you 81 today, and while George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck was well done, I don’t know how many people have seen it or how much it captures the spirit of those times.
As for Harry Bliss’s sentiment, I agree and I have a personal stake in the matter: My mother had said she wanted to live long enough to see Trump out of power, and she did, but he’s back, and the comforting factor is that, though currently alive at 100 years old, she managed to retain her wits long enough to see him defeated but had outlived them before he returned.
Cold comfort indeed.
And I’d add along those lines that the turnout here for the Hands Off demonstrations skewed old, with those who remembered the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements greatly outnumbering Gen Z’s and X’s on the sidewalks.
That shifted somewhat for the No Kings turnout, but it seems the much-despised Boomers are carrying the weight of open defiance.
That may change as an increasing number of college students and recent grads are being picked off by the secret police for having expressed disloyalty. I wouldn’t wish such misery on anyone in particular, but I’m aware of how assaults by firehoses and police dogs elevated the Civil Rights movement and how the actions of the Chicago police in 1968 made the antiwar movement seem cool.
The most promising development at the moment is the rightwing fury over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
It’s ironic that the right stirred up fury over the case and then Dear Leader filled his cabinet and intelligence services with some of the most devout conspiracy theorists on the case, only to have the whole thing turn into a nothingburger.
As I’ve said before, it does not seem, replaying what remains of her interviews on Fox News with John Roberts and Jesse Watters, that Pam Bondi ever actually said that there was a client list. Rather, she appeared to be saying that “it” was on her desk, meaning the Epstein files as a whole, along with the files of the JFK and MLK assassinations, and that she had not yet reviewed them.
Neither Roberts nor Watters pressed her to be more precise, though Roberts asked if she’d seen anything that made her say “Oh my god” and she said she hadn’t. I would suggest that a client list would indeed have done that.
Mox nix. You might as well explain why Neil Armstrong’s flag appeared to be waving in a breeze. It is accepted as an article of faith even by people who think Elvis is truly dead that the “it” Bondi referred to was a client list, and given her history of clumsy, evasive and patently dishonest statements, there’s plenty of reason to question what she meant by what she said.
Even if she’d said “There is no client list,” people on both sides of the aisle would have assumed she was lying.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
The True Believers aren’t believing Bondi, and the fact that her back-up consists of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino– two of the most rabid conspiracy theorists — is laughable. Black Adder was better served by Lord Percy and Baldrick.
As said, conspiracy theories exist on both sides of the aisle, and the less frantic take on the whole thing is that Bondi should be releasing something, and certainly something more than the vague, already-revealed files she handed over several months ago.
To the extent that she’s claiming anything, she’s saying the remaining files consist of pornographic videos and names of victims, neither of which should be made public. Even to someone not consumed by conspiracy theories, that seems ridiculous.
But then we have to remember that Pam Bondi came to Dear Leader’s attention when, as Florida’s Attorney General, she dropped investigation of Trump University following her receipt of a $25,000 campaign contribution from Donald Trump.
Everyone in his cabinet seems to have a price, but in her case we know the precise figure.
Speaking of Florida, I’m very reluctant to feature political cartoons that include alligators, even disapprovingly, since I think it trivializes the horrific cruelty involved, but given that Anderson labels this alligator “Gratuitous Cruelty” and does not draw it in a humorous style, I’ll make an exception.
This was posted on Facebook yesterday and I think it is absolutely accurate.
As it happens, I quoted Dylan recently on the line “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” which referred to a lynching in Duluth and was not an exaggeration: They really did make souvenir postcards and here we are again.
At least the Germans were able to claim ignorance of the horrific cruelty their government was carrying out.
Or, perhaps, like a lot of us, they made a significant effort to not know what has happening.
“It takes one to know one,” we smile.
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