CSotD: Par For The Course
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The countermeasures indeed do not seem to be working, though a cynic would suggest that the whole matter might fade and become yesterday’s news if Dear Leader would stop saying things that keep it front and center.
After all, we saw a gunman kill a Minnesota legislator and her husband and shoot another legislator and something that should have chilled us to the bone has drifted off into oblivion.
And I’m not sure people see those political assassinations as any different than the random murder of two people on a hiking trail in Arkansas.
But perhaps there’s this: I suspect that, if the Epstein matter were about illegal stock trading or attempts to bribe judges, it would also have faded into nothingness.
But we hate pederasty and are hoping they will release the files and include color photos.
We sneer when self-righteous prigs get caught abusing children or accidentally have their porn show up on a photo array during a public meeting, but, then again, moral as we are, the void does indeed seem to be gazing back at us.
We might have stopped gazing into the void if Dear Leader didn’t do things like admitting that Epstein and Maxwell trolled for victims at Mar A Lago, and reveal that one of Epstein’s best known victims was recruited at his resort a couple of years before he broke off with his good friend.
If the surviving victims ever get a chance to tell their stories, the idea now being promoted on Newsmax that Maxwell is an innocent scapegoat should disappear, and I doubt it’s going to take root anyway, except among the most dedicated MAGA diehards. Even Q-Anon loonies want to see those files.
BTW: I like the cartoon overall, but De Adder shouldn’t have labeled her. If people don’t recognize her face, they won’t understand his point anyway.
The issue of Trump cheating at golf came up when a video emerged showing his caddy not-so-subtly dropping a ball near the green as a substitute for the one Dear Leader had shot into the tall grass.
Sportswriter Rick Reilly wrote a whole book called Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, and was on Jim Acosta’s podcast Monday with some outrageous examples of how Trump blatantly cheats in the game and also proclaims himself champion of his own tournaments, including some in which he didn’t play.
The “How Golf Explains Trump” part being that he cheats and lies in everything, not just golf, but golf is where you can see his personality laid out in ways so basic that his most loyal acolytes can’t deny it. He needs to win, and doesn’t care how.
That’s a valuable insight, but we should also recognize an element of hypocrisy in that we readily believe the reports of Trump’s fellow golfers but wonder if sexual victims are making things up.
Reilly, BTW, tells of Trump paying off a $20 bet, but ripping the bill in half over his fury in losing.
Seems E. Jean Carroll would appreciate the anecdote.
Marlette provides a segue into another oddity, given that Trump hasn’t pledged to stop extorting colleges whose students question American support for Netanyahu’s war, but has recently stated that starvation in Gaza is real.
He also said we’d given $60 million in food aid to Gaza and was upset because he hadn’t been thanked.
He pulled that number out of his golf slacks, because, in fact, the US has pledged $30 million per month, but perhaps he hasn’t been thanked because it hasn’t happened yet.
Nor was he correct in saying the US was the only country that had given anything.
Granlund suggests that the aid is window-dressing as long as there is no peace and so long as attempts to feed Gazans seem performatory and ineffective.
We won’t really know how effective the measures are, because Netanyahu continues to attempt to block news from coming out of Gaza. The press was allowed to ride along on planes bring food, but was told not to photograph the ground, which they said has been pounded into rubble.
The press generally is barred from Gaza, though there are freelancers operating there, trying to get reports out and avoid being accidentally shot despite being clearly identifiable as press. It’s a dangerous profession.
Juxtaposition of the Day
There are two kinds of loyalty: The kind that goes along with the leader regardless of what is being said and done, and the kind that stands up to the leader when correction is necessay.
Both cartoons deal with that first kind: Wilcox depicts a man who does not want to know uncomfortable truths because it would force him to question policies, while Varvel flips roles and mocks the person who listens to independent experts rather than political leaders, and is thus “disloyal” for refusing to believe unlikely partisan predictions.
Confucius asked how a leader could be said to love his subordinates if he made no demands of them, and how subordinates could be said to be loyal if they hesitated to criticize the object of their loyalty.
It’s an approach more often agreed to than put into action.
MacKay notes the tariffs being put on Canadian goods, but notes as well that Trump continues to either lie or reveal his own ignorance by suggesting that tariffs are paid by exporting countries rather than importing businesses.
I’m hearing analysts pose the asinine question of whether importing companies will pass these increased costs along to consumers or simply swallow the tariffs themselves.
I’ve never heard anyone ask if businesses will eat increases in fuel costs or damage to produce from freezing weather, but apparently these tariff experts believe companies work on such generous profit-levels that they can shrug off a 30% surcharge.
Whether their uncertainty is the result of ignorance or misplaced loyalties hardly matters. The point of journalism is to provide information. What you provide depends on whether you’re loyal to the authorities or to your audience.
Bennett provides an analysis Confucius would appreciate: Honest and to the point.
It would be dismissed as liberal propaganda by those who most need to hear its message.
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