CSotD: Repression as a Spectator Sport
Skip to comments
We’ll start with a cartoon from Australia that suggests two responses from up here: One is “Glad we could amuse you,” since we have to live with the chaos she depicts. But that draws a second response of “Thank god you’re watching,” because we’d sure hate to have all this unfolding without witnesses.
And if the speaker in her cartoon seems blasé, the other people in the pub are horrified, which is an appropriate response, even at a distance of half a planet.
Empathy may be dead to the American MAGAs, but decency remains alive and well elsewhere in the world.
Meanwhile, here in our own country, Bramhall observes that, while Dear Leader has always been a little wacky and eccentric, his speeches and his claims have become even more disengaged and disturbing. He’s a lifelong blowhard, tossing out “facts” that don’t match anything in the real world, but his disjointed diatribe at the UN was utterly bizarre and left the rest of the world shaking its collective head.
It might have been amusing, coming from the eccentric leader of a small, non-aligned nation, but the United States not only matters in global terms but is nuclear armed. As the familiar line goes, a clown with a flamethrower may be a clown, but he’s still got a flamethrower.
Example: Trump recently justified blowing up boats he claims were drug smugglers by saying that drugs brought illegally into the United States were the cause of 300 million deaths. There are only 347 million people in the country, so his claim is that drug overdoses have wiped out more than three-quarters of our population.
I think we’d have noticed.
But the critical factor is that his faithful believe him, even when his claims have slipped all bounds of common sense. And if his speech before the UN was bizarre, he then treated an audience of generals and admirals to an equally jaw-dropping display of random oddities.
Flag officers still in the service were constrained by military discipline and common sense from making the sort of comment Bish’s cartoon general makes, but some threads have drifted out, and the pictures of stony-faced officers at the gathering said what they did not verbalize.
And now the draft dodger has doubled down both on his nonsense and on his insult to the people who did answer their nation’s call.
Had he simply not been drafted, he might be forgiven for having an unrealistic, cynical attitude towards the war, and towards the endless Afghanistan effort. But he didn’t just “not serve.” He lied to avoid serving. Common decency would compel him to avoid the topic, or to defer to more credible spokespersons.
Granted, he hasn’t quite brought his sense of bravado to this level, but his warlike rhetoric in front of the brass surely struck them as bizarre, given the lengths that he’d gone in order to avoid knowing wotthehell he was talking about.
And my goodness but he’s ready for war, based on five-year-old videos of “wartorn Portland” and a desire to wipe out a group that doesn’t exist.
Rall pokes fun at Dear Leader’s apparent belief that “antifa” is an actual organization, predicting that Trump will also take steps to attack other attitudes and emotions.
Of course, he aims his rhetoric at a crowd that believes in a global Jewish conspiracy as outlined in a famous forged antisemitic document, and they also believe in a group of child-killing lizard-people in the basement of a pizza parlor. Inventing imaginary enemies isn’t necessarily plowing new ground.
But it returns us to the question of whether he believes what he says or is purposefully telling falsehoods to confuse people and make them vulnerable to additional nonsense?
Which then returns us to Bramhall’s cartoon, with the question of whether it matters if he is sinking into dementia, and “What difference would pursuing it make?”
Invoking the 25th Amendment requires either that the President voluntarily steps aside or that the Vice-President and a majority of the cabinet declare him unfit. I’d buy lottery tickets before I put money on either of those things happening; the odds are better.
In the meantime, we see Hegseth recasting the armed forces in his preferred direction, and the fake poster Zyglis drew brings back memories of a Vietnam-era anti-war poster:
The difference being that, while terrible things happened to civilians in Vietnam, it was not the intentions of top command. LBJ was reportedly dismayed by chants of “Hey, hey, LBJ: How many kids did you kill today?” while Nixon slipped out of the White House in the dark of night to sit and talk to antiwar demonstrators.
By stark and shameful contrast, Trump speaks not of “opponents” but of “enemies,” and he and Hegseth explained to the generals that they need to fight those enemies from within, with an intensity that Huck mocks with a satire of a poster from an old Martin & Lewis comedy.
But of course the humor in a Martin & Lewis movie was intentional, while Blitt finds humor in a pair who take themselves quite seriously, however the rest of the world sees them.
And after this past week in Chicago, how the rest of the world sees them has become the stuff of this
Juxtaposition of the Day
Neither of these is funny, and Murphy parodies a children’s favorite to contrast the lives of more fortunate kids with those targeted by ICE for abuse, dragged out in zip-ties and separated from their parents while their homes are wrecked with no warrants and for no discernible reason.
But if Murphy focuses on the misery, Telnaes recreates a scene of terror. Note that, while Murphy shows the evidence of ICE’s attack on the poor, Telnaes focuses on the moment of horror itself, and both artists depict the backs of the child victims. We needn’t see them cry. It’s not an occasion for tears, but rather a time to focus on the horror and cruelty.
And to admit that it is done in our names, if only by virtue of the permission given by our silence.
Bagley is right that Trump and his GOP henchmen will take no responsibility for anything bad, and may in fact deny that it was bad. They may deny that it happened. Or they may brag about it.
But I can’t help but remember the first issue of Spiderman, in which he declined to interfere with a robber who went on to murder his uncle. It wasn’t that Peter Parker caused it to happen, but that he could have prevented it from happening.
Take a lesson. Although I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody, outside of a small circle of friends.
Comments 9
Comments are closed.