CSotD: Our Story So Far
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Bennett commented that this cartoon is based on an old joke; I assume it’s the one about the fellow who fell 14 stories and fortunately survived, but, unfortunately, had fallen from15.
I have no idea how many stories we’ve fallen so far, but I know it’s going to be a mess when we hit the ground.
I don’t see a way this adventure ends well. I have to have faith that we will recapture the government and restore democracy, but, unlike the last civil war, there won’t be a formal surrender.
In the first Civil War, the Union wanted the defeated rebels to go home and work their land and so did not extract harsh penalties. Instead, the Confederate powers went home, overturned Reconstruction and set up Jim Crow.
If the current crop of rebels, turncoats and traitors lose, there won’t be a treaty for them to ignore. They will be with us always, pushing back against the reforms that ended the Depression and then toppled Jim Crow, and obstructing what they cannot prevent.
The critical question is, if the current crop of rebels, turncoats and traitors win, will the remaining opposition be as persistent a thorn in their sides, or will we, like the tattered survivors in Fahrenheit 451, carry out our resistance by memorizing books and wandering in the forest?
Survival is not enough. Wringing your hands while you watch videos of people being dragged away is not enough. Even if they never come for you, they’ve dragged you away, too, simply by virtue of having silenced you.
No need for internment camps if nobody is apt to raise hell.
That’s why the scariest dystopic movie is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Sitting back and going with the flow makes life seem calm, comfortable and civilized.
Telnaes takes us for a wander down the path that got us here, though it stretches all the way back at least to Nixon and Reagan, who exploited divisions in society rather than working to heal them.
As Telnaes says, Trump has carried out an egocentric series of petty cheating, empty boasting and toxic lies, but none of that would matter if he were scorned and rejected for it like George Santos.
But he was, instead, embraced, not just by gullible MAGA fans but by Republicans happy to rally to his powerful flag.
The plight of people who can’t heat their houses, purchase groceries or obtain health care is of little matter to Dear Leader, who slashes funding for the less wealthy in order to cater to the uber-wealthy, and surrounds himself with the trappings of an emperor, including gilded trappings in a previously dignified, restrained White House.
He’s adding a ballroom because while we got through nearly 250 years of history without our chief executive having such a place in the executive mansion, we have a different kind of president now, who has transformed the White House into a model of Byzantine Bordello style.
What does he want, besides gilt decorations, a spacious ballroom and a paved-over rose garden?
Power, and the prestige that comes with it.
Every president has had prestige; it comes with the office. But most have found quiet ways to assert that prestige, through Reagan’s genial humor or JFK’s quick wit and general elegance or LBJ’s sometimes alarming folksiness.
Those elements of prestige were personal, and colored by policy but exhibited by style. By contrast, Trump’s bullying, power-based charisma needs to be continually reinforced with yet another fatwa against liberals, yet another call for punishing laws.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Bullying bravado is bound to bite you on the backside. Summers compares Trump’s embarrassment at missing his jobs goal to the classic Coppertone ad, suggesting that the failure is exposing him.
Ramirez suggests a more painful bite, though his “Conspiracies” label requires interpretation, since the only conspiracies surrounding the Epstein case were planted by Trump’s own supporters in an attempt to attack and embarrass powerful Democrats.
Attempts to distract, as Weyant says, may keep him afloat but are also slowing him down, and the Epstein issue is not going to go away because people haven’t been compelled by his desire to return racist names to sports teams.
It seems odd that Trump’s camp whipped up so much froth and fury over the Epstein case, given that the Democrats they hoped to disgrace were people like Bill Clinton whose time in politics was over, and that one of the few active figures embroiled in the horrors was their hero.
His fans forgave his adultery, his sex-for-money couplings and his misogynistic vulgarity about sexual assault, but the pederasty thing isn’t going away, and if he didn’t direct QAnon to make it a major cause, he certainly didn’t discourage them, either.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
There have been a lot of sweeping changes in America lately. Granlund specifically calls out Mike Johnson, who shut down the House early to avoid a vote on releasing the files, in a gesture reminiscent of the kinniggets of the Holy Grail shouting “Run away!” as their giant Trojan rabbit was flung back at them.
Rogers adds more swept under the carpet, not just the Epstein files, which Trump had promised to release, but several other things he promised and has failed to deliver.
There is a hierarchy to these, given that failure to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are causes more championed by people who didn’t like him to begin with. His deportations are more controversial, and beginning to weaken his support. They are almost universally disliked, if not condemned, by voters on both sides.
But the cost of living issue is a live wire, and the Epstein files even moreso. Firefighters caution people against putting wires under carpeting, and Trump seems likely to find out why.
It’s not that the entire MAGA base will turn against him, but margins are tight enough that, even with Texas gerrymandering to find extra House seats, he can’t lose a lot of support without losing his crown.
The midterms will tell us a lot, though not if we sit idly by waiting for them to resolve things on their own.
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