CSotD: Ignorance is Strength
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Happy Labor Day. Things aren’t quite as grim as Sheneman paints them, but cartoonists and other satirists are supposed to exaggerate to make their points.
Presidents are expected to put a bright face on things, as Jimmy Carter learned when he explained things frankly in what came to be known as “the Malaise Speech,” outlining the problems we faced and asking Americans to pitch in and help improve things. As this analysis puts it:
It was remarkably honest and direct and attacked the “self-indulgence” and “consumption” of Americans while asking for individual and collective sacrifices to help solve America’s problems.
Fat chance, pal. America’s ultimate response was Ronald Reagan, who specialized not in what Americans needed to hear but in what they wanted to hear. Still, there is a difference between “spinning” matters to create a positive image and outright lying.
Trump’s claim to have created jobs goes beyond spin, though less clearly than some of the other non-factual tales he has spun, like the story of his uncle remembering the Unabomber as an undergraduate at MIT.
But whether or not his uncle knew an MIT student who never attended MIT hardly matters, except as another example of Trump making things up. By contrast, his bizarre, counterfactual ideas about trade imbalance and tariffs have significant impact on both our economy and that of other nations.
Even a reliably conservative cartoonist like Bok sees through administration claims that exporting nations pay tariffs, rather than importers and American consumers. To brag about revenues from tariffs without recognition that they are coming from inside our own economy is too absurd a “mistake” to be dismissed as spin.
If they believe it, they are incompetent. If they’re not incompetent, they are deliberately lying. Karoline Leavitt said this is the most transparent administration in history, and she’s right: We can see through them.
When a federal judge declared most of his tariffs illegal Friday, Trump declared that halting them “would literally destroy the United States of America,” handing Jennings a punch line and an opportunity to graphically show who the ruling could destroy.
If it’s that obvious to an observer in the UK, why does it seem less so up close?
One reason is the steady stream of silly distractions that keep more substantive matters out of the national conversation. The dust-up over a restaurant chain changing its logo is no more important than previous controversies over commercials for blue jeans and Bud Light, but these artificially-amplified uproars provide a way to keep the rubes occupied while they’re having their pockets picked.
As Auchter notes, the current administration’s turn towards government ownership of the means of production is perfectly acceptable to those who once went ballistic over the temporary bail-out of General Motors and Chrysler.
Those companies repaid the loans and the government divested itself of Chrysler stock in 2011 and GM stock in 2013.
By contrast, nothing about “temporary” was said when the government acquired stock in US Steel or Intel, and nothing seems to have been said about how the central government owning private industry sounds a lot more like Karl Marx than Adam Smith.
Though Body suggests it sounds even more like Mario Puzo or Francis Ford Coppola.
If by some chance an honest man like yourself made enemies they would become my enemies. And then, they would fear you.
Be my friend … Godfather.
Good. Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.
It’s important to bear in mind that Vito Corleone was the hero of that movie, just as Henry Hill was the hero of Goodfellas and Harry Callaghan became the hero of the Dirty Harry movies by being a crooked cop who denied suspects their rights.
While those who admired the ax-handle justice handed out by Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall may be distressed to learn that he is a suspect in the real-life murder of his wife.
Or they may not.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Rogers aims to inspire horror at the seizure of power plainly seen in Trump’s program of revenge, an approach Rogers remembers having read about in history class.
By contrast, Bramhall cites what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil,” the calm way in which fascism inserts itself.
As for the question the woman asks, Arendt wrote
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
It’s hard for people to know what’s going on, and becoming harder, as Trump fires statisticians whose numbers fail to advance his policies and wishes.
Nor is that his only weapon against disclosures: For decades, the White House Correspondents Association rotated the selection of reporters at White House briefings, but the Trump administration has taken over the job, enabling it to select reporters who will ask politically correct questions, report politically correct statistics, and write politically correct news stories.
Or did you think “political correctness” was an exclusively liberal device?
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
There’s something appealing to MAGA hardliners about Trump’s promise to be their “retribution” for imagined Deep State plotting, but Zyglis gives the game away with those tiny hands, exposing a little man reaching for big power.
Meanwhile, Matson deals in specifics, offering a vision of Justice having slipped her blindfold in pursuit of a preselected list of who is to be found guilty and punished.
Luckovich joins a chorus of progressives tired of polite, ineffectual responses from across the aisle.
Smith, meanwhile, joins the rising chorus of those who may not back Newsom for president in 2028 but admire his willingness to go toe-to-toe with the bully.
But Varvel makes the important point that standing up to Dear Leader is cheating.
Never mind, then. Somebody else will fix things.
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