CSotD: Laugh in lieu of Justice
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A bit of odd timing at work here: Tank McNamara offered a gag about Trump clapping yesterday, and, by yomping yiminey, we got an example as he applauded an arriving Vladimir Putin in Alaska. There was not so much applause later, as they cancelled today’s luncheon and ended things early with nothing to show for it.
I’ve seen a few cartoons on the summit, but we’ll give it another 24 to see what else surfaces. Meanwhile, here’s evidence that Dear Leader didn’t even impress his fans, much less his critics.
Also in the serendipitous timing category, the Flying McCoys joked about someone being sentenced for apparently throwing a book. Or bashing someone over the head with it. In any case, a gag about what constitutes assault.
The Hurled Sandwich issue will also be featured in more cartoons in a day or two, but Duquette has covered it and I’m not sure anyone has anything else to say that matters.
Granted, there was more meat in that Subway sandwich than there was in the Alaska Summit, but it’s another distraction from the Epstein files, so it raises the question of whether it should get coverage or be ignored in favor of focusing on the president’s attempt to change the subject.
We’ll see what comes up, but it’s gaining enough attention that it’s worth keeping track of, because it points out the combination of Keystone Kops and Gestapo — “clowns with flamethrowers” — that is currently running the country: Hurl a sandwich and you get fired from DOJ and charged with a felony. Encourage rioters to kill police officers and you’ll be pardoned and DOJ will hire you.
Maybe repetition of a stupid story will get through to people who won’t read well-reasoned discussions of political theory.
Prickly City was originally marketed as a more thoughtful conservative strip than Mallard Fillmore, but Scott Stantis has been flailing lately as it becomes harder and harder to defend the administration.
Arresting people and deporting them without trials or hearings is far more ghastly an insult to the Constitution, the rule of law and the nation than hurling sandwiches, but the problem is that the MAGA corps doesn’t consider brown and black folks to be “people” and sees nothing wrong will scooping them up and throwing them out without due process.
But I’m not sure there’s much point in trying to get through to the MAGA faithful: They’re locked in to the cult.
There are, however, others who once supported Trump but can see what’s happening, and they only need a little reinforcement to shake off their fading loyalty.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Stokoe is British, so his cartoon is likely more about reception in general, while Fell focuses on the DOGE attempt to cut programs that would extend high-speed Internet service to rural areas.
Access to phone service and the Internet are two different things, but the distinction has been fading, since, if you have good Internet access, you can add in a phone, and if you live in a place with good phone service, you can add Internet that relies on cell towers rather than wires.
But there are places where phones are wired and the Internet doesn’t reach, and lack of connectivity is both an economic and a safety issue. I don’t know how many people in remote areas count on being able to clamber onto the Internet through dial-up, but AOL is ending its dial-up service at the end of September.
We lived in a nicer world before connectivity arrived, and this fellow has things pretty well figured out: The “Angernet” is where you go to bathe in a dysfunctional sewer of bad vibes.
As this article points out, the rot comes from a minority of users, but there they are anyway, ruining it for everyone.
It’s like being in a restaurant where there is a table of obnoxious drunks whooping it up while you try to have a quiet dinner. It’s not much comfort to know there are 50 people in the restaurant and only four of them are shouting, cursing and raising hell.
In the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ken Kesey asks a particularly difficult Prankster, “Why should I take your bad trip?” But that was in the days before the Internet, when you could avoid the bad vibes by closing the bus door and driving away, declaring that people are “either on the bus or off the bus.”
Today, the way to avoid bad vibes is to get off the bus yourself, which is not terribly practical in an interconnected world.
Benton has fun with the way Artificial Intelligence clashes with Genuine Foolishness, and I suspect he’s right that something which would have been important in certain contexts is being used by silly, lazy people who don’t want to enhance their intelligence but replace it entirely.
And if that’s too exaggerated a fantasy setting, here’s a more practical discussion of AI from the very Intertubes it inhabits:
It’s not really “intelligent.” It’s just wonderfully well-organized and eager to please. Which sounds like someone I would hire but would not want to marry.
I think that’s a reasonable distinction, if you can stick to it. But it’s too late, not because AI is here but because we’ve spent a century or so getting prepared for it.
The fact that most people don’t know a lot of phone numbers is evidence of how badly this could go wrong. We used to have to know them, but now we just hit a button on our phone to call the people listed, and we can poke around on the Internet for numbers we don’t have stored on our phones.
My grandfather told me that, when he was young, they’d go to a vaudeville and come out singing the songs from the show, because, in those pre-Edison days, their audial memories were much more finely tuned.
The smarter our machines get, the stupider we become and unless you want to live in a cave, I don’t think there’s much of an answer except to stay alert and try to do a little of your own thinking.
Or you could just go ask the President:
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