CSotD: Rumors of War
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Davies proves that there’s no situation so dire that you can’t wring a laugh out of it, so long as the laugh is dark and points out the overlying absurdity of things. In this case, he draws an obviously good-spirited, harmless alien, in conversation with an obviously good-spirited civilian, and a half-dozen large, masked men.
The bullying and abuse we already know about, and he puts it into a funny perspective to demonstrate the imbalance.
We might wish that, instead of that funny little green guy, our visitors were Klaatu and Gort, who wouldn’t stand for any abuse, but instead we’ve got that anonymous food delivery guy, who didn’t wipe out the bullies with a cosmic ray but, rather, provided the world with a real-life laugh.
Alcaraz celebrates the moment, because we need whatever small victories we can get these days, but especially if they make the bullies look foolish and the resisters embody a kind of David and Goliath unexpected triumph.
The best part of that Chicago video is that nobody got hurt, so we can focus on how unnecessary and ridiculous the whole thing is. Similarly, Wolverton points out the difference between Dear Leader’s imaginary “war-torn Portland” and the real thing.
One of the resistance weapons has been the pics and videos posted by Portland residents to show how untorn by war the city is, and thus how ridiculous and out of touch Trump is.
Washington residents have also pointed out that the ICE and Border Patrol troops have been in the least crime-ridden parts of DC, which makes sense since their mission is mostly to impress voters with what a macho dude Dear Leader is. And if you watch that Chicago video, you won’t see a lot of bomb damage or frightened faces in the crowd.
The answer is that if all you watch is Fox, then, yes, you’re watching things on television that are different from what’s happening.
That might be okay for some down-and-outer, but it’s not only foolish but irresponsible for a world leader. Competent presidents not only absorb multiple media but receive a briefing packet each morning to sum up anything they may have missed.
And they read the packet. And they don’t get up bored and wander out of the room while they’re being briefed.
That’s not funny, because (A) he’s messing around with our nation and our people and, (B) as Dan Froomkin points out in that linked article, it sure sounds like the old fellow is slipping another cog or two.
Speaking of Dear Leader and the Border Patrol, here’s a photo I took in 1992 that ended up on the wire services because 54 kilos is a lot of cocaine.
They called a press conference to let us know they were on the job and to show us what they’d found, which I mention because if the US Navy and Coast Guard can’t intercept a motor boat and have to blow it up and kill everyone aboard, they could at least circle back and verify that it was carrying drugs.
Whether they lay the drugs out on the table or just photograph them amid the wreckage, they should show their work. I can’t help but wonder why we’re not seeing any evidence to back up their macho claims.
They also aren’t showing a lot of evidence in their indictment of James Comey, and I think Matson has it right, and let’s remember that Gulliver wasn’t a giant. He just appeared to the Lilliputians to be a giant because they were so small.
They were also petty and vindictive, but that emerged later in the story.
What is also likely to emerge is that the charge against Comey is nonsense, which is why a senior attorney resigned rather than have his name on the case.
So Dear Leader found a really cute young woman to sign the paperwork, which she did, twice, on conflicting documents, but she really looked good doing it. Runner-up in the Miss Colorado pageant.
Smith is right, but timing is everything, and he was lucky to slip this in at a moment when it appears that Trump’s bromance with Putin is hitting a few rocks. Still, you have to suffer from TDS — Trump Deification Syndrome — not to have already connected Dear Leader’s governing style with Putin’s.
His diplomatic shift is creating problems. Right-wingers used to scream “Go back to Russia!” at demonstrators, but now the MAGA gang doesn’t seem to see Russia as such a bad place. They still call their opponents “communists,” despite Trump’s grafting of US Steel and Intel to the central government, but they’ve never known what communism was anyway.
They also used to charge demonstrators with being paid by the Kremlin, and now they have to say the money is coming from George Soros, which is delightfully Antisemitic but doesn’t really make any sense.
As for “Better dead than red,” well, look at their hats and the way they color loyalist states.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I was surprised to see Matson play the both-sides gambit, largely because, as de Adder points out, the GOP is in the driver’s seat, holding the White House and both houses of Congress plus having an apparent hammerlock on the Supreme Court.
GOP spokesmen are lying about Democratic health care demands, which suggests that they know they’re holding a losing hand in that area. One of the smartest things they did in the run-up to the overthrow was imposing the term “Obamacare” on the Affordable Care Act, because there are MAGAs who hate Obamacare but rely on the ACA.
And another example of both-sidesing. You can hate gerrymanders, but there is such a thing as self-defense and we know who started it. Failure to respond would leave the Democratic Party on the dustheap along with the Whigs.
Noble behavior makes a lovely epitaph, but in the words of General Patton “No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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