CSotD: Who cares? (With an answer!)
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There is a “Why all the surprise?” element to our current situation.
A large part of it has to do with siloing, with the fact that, in today’s media market, there are a good number of people who only take their information from partisan sites, and I’ll admit that most of what I see from Fox is excerpts of particularly stupid things said there, posted elsewhere to discredit them.
I would assume that people who only watch Fox and Newsmax similarly only see MSNBC excerpts when someone there says something particularly stupid.
However, when someone says something particularly stupid on MSNBC, it reminds me that the service does skew seriously left, and I’m not sure Fox watchers have a similar self-critical way of watching their news.
There is also the Leopards Eating People’s Faces element, particularly among those who heard the warnings, discredited them and decided to record a protest vote.
I hear that about 11% of Trump voters are available if the Democrats make the right appeal, and it wouldn’t take nearly that many to swing things back. Despite Dear Leader’s claims, he didn’t win a landslide victory.
But there are also those who approve of what’s going on, and news that ICE has seized a Cuban refugee makes me wonder how that is going down among Florida’s hard-right Cubano population, while the imprisoning of an Afghan who acted as a translator with the US Army makes me hope veterans will be appalled.
However, that assumes that news of those events even gets into their chosen silos.
Excerpts of the South Park episode skewering Trump have gotten a lot of play on social media, which may make them more available to the MAGA crowd, but it was far more geared to comforting the afflicted than to afflicting the comfortable and I assume would be dismissed as more liberal insults.
As for the political cartoons making hay from it, there aren’t many newspapers running a point/counterpoint selection of conservative and liberal cartoons anymore, so I’d assume that if your local paper leans right, the editor won’t run anything on the topic.
There is apparently a wide difference between the amount of coverage being devoted to the Epstein files in conservative and liberal media, but however much conservatives may be hearing about the questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell, they may not realize the person doing the interviews has served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
Just as they may not realize that the trip to Scotland they’re paying for seems to contain a large element of promoting Trump golf courses and a smaller element of conducting presidential business.
Benton’s cartoon assumes we’re all hearing the same news and analysis. That’s only true of a swath in the middle — neither end is hearing everything.
The term “true believer” is almost always used disparagingly, to describe those whose unthinking faith is based on neither logic nor decency.
Duginski’s cartoon makes the point that there should be a difference between loyalty to the Word and loyalty to any man, and that Mike Johnson, for all his Christian posturing, is willing to put religion in his back pocket if it advances his career to do so.
Again, however, this cartoon seems to do more to reassure liberals that the leopards are indeed eating faces — not theirs, someone else’s — than it would to convert any conservatives to rethinking their own stance and religious values.
Still, let’s not pretend our current situation is just a result of siloing.
Juxtaposition of the Day
There is a level at which lack of mercy comes across as strength, but even that requires that the strong leader have a sense of empathy and compassion and that he then makes the conscious, painful decision that a particular case requires a more strict and merciless decision.
That’s not the same as lacking empathy in the first place, which is a defining element of a sociopath.
Lack of empathy is an argument against the death penalty, that only a sociopath would commit murder and therefore, as an insane person, should not be excessively punished.
It’s also an argument against the idea that exercising the death penalty makes other people less likely to commit murder, because that’s a logical thought process beyond the capacity of an insane person.
But not every sociopath kills people, or, at least, not directly. Sometimes they join in a lynch mob, but often they just endorse policies and decisions that harm others, under the satisfied feeling that, by putting aside personal issues, they are being decisive and strong.
The images of Abu Ghraib shocked American consciences, but if it had been going to lead to a rebirth of national empathy, it would have by now. Instead, we’re hearing reports of treatment of imprisoned immigrants that threaten to rival what happened in Iraq more than 20 years ago.
Perhaps if actual photographs emerge again, our sense of empathy will be engaged once more, at least until the next news cycle.
And perhaps not, but we must try.
Speaking of Empathy …
I’ve often said that political cartoonists need to be journalists. I’ve also said a few times that Ella Baron’s art is so attractive that I sometimes fall in love with one of her pieces before even considering its viewpoint. (Though I usually agree with that, too.)
Here, for example, are two Ukrainian women, Inna and Tetiana, who have found comfort in their friendship not as an end to their grief but as a way of sharing, and thus surviving it.
Inna’s husband, and Tetiana’s son, are POWs in Russia, and the women are just two of the people that Baron met, and sat with, and talked to, and sketched, as she visited Ukraine in her role as a journalist and artist.
Her account, and artwork, are offered as an alternative to our usual musical selection. It will be the most worthwhile thing you read this week, or perhaps this month, or more.
She’s done this sort of thing before. Here is some of her other graphic journalism.
Her work is an oasis in a vast desert of uncaring.
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