CSotD: The Plane Facts
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Sorensen sets today’s mood, and I’d say she sets the agenda, but I’m not sure we’ll get to all this in a single day. But she captures the sense of everything being not just out of control but insanely so. Things are so beyond logic and expectations that it’s hard to know where to start.
That stupid airplane video makes an irresistible symbol of it all, and Anderson joins Sorensen in lumping it all together under the topic of how a childish, temperamental showoff has managed to, well, crap on everything.
We start, after all, with the bizarre, unanswerable question of how a modern nation could have fallen under the leadership of somebody who would find that video amusing and/or appropriate.
It’s a level of debate you might expect from an 11-year-old, not a grown-up and certainly not one of the most powerful men on the planet.
Put it this way: If you read that a school somewhere had suspended an 11-year-old for having created such a vulgar, hostile video, you might think the school was being a bit strict over a silly bit of misbehavior, but if you found it was just one more inappropriate move from this kid in a series of disruptive nonsense, you would likely agree that the school was justified in calling in the parents for some sort of intervention.
And don’t forget that Donald Trump had four siblings, each of whom was permitted to grow up in the family home. Only Donald was shipped off to military school because he was uncontrollable and his parents had lost patience with him.
I don’t know if parents still do that, but when Donald and I were young lads, being shipped off to military school was a sign of parents giving up on a kid.
I did know a family or two for whom military boarding school was standard, but in those cases, all the kids went. Four at home and one in the barracks is a very clear signal.
Unfortunately, about the only significance it has at this point is a reassurance, as Charlie Sykes is fond of saying, that we are not the crazy ones.
Except in the collective sense of having put him in whatever remains of the White House.
Cartoonists leapt to capitalize on the video, with Molina pointing out how completely disconnected Trump’s raging id is from his grandiose expectations for worldly acclaim.
There’s always been a strong element of the barroom braggart in Dear Leader, but most such people live out their lives as a sort of village point of amusement, a Cliff Clavin, but without the endearing elements of that well-drawn character.
Darkow notes that the vandalism at the East Wing of the White House reflects a selfish, self-absorbed personality that we’d seen before.
His cavalier, immature lockerroom bragging would, in an earlier era, have halted his political aspirations on the spot, but despite the warnings we had before he was elected, here he is.
He is who he is. We voted him into office.
Like Sorensen, Ruben Bolling takes advantage of a multi-panel format to sum up the ongoing disaster, focusing on the loss of freedom and personal rights and the unleashing of masked secret police.
But by setting his story in Chagrin Falls, he emphasizes the way in which “normal America” has been turned upside down, and one of the saving graces in this mess is how the assaults on normal people are happening in front of everyone, which in turn makes Dear Leader’s fantasy of dumping crap on his own citizens a good symbol of his approach, and of his regard.
Zyglis capitalizes on the vulgar fantasy by pointing out, correctly, that the video was specifically intended as Trump’s response to having seven million people show up to object to his undermining of American values.
Trump speaks not of the “opposition” but of the “enemy within” and his administration is formulated on the basis that their way is righteous and that to disagree is evil.
Luckovich focuses on the health care issue, which makes sense given that it is the single hold-up keeping the government shutdown in place.
He references the destruction of the White House indirectly, but Trump does not appear in the cartoon because in this case, Trump is simply the useful idiot propped up to carry out what has been a long-term Republican goal.
The GOP continues to advance the blatant lie that Democrats are insisting on extending health insurance to undocumented migrants, and they’re doing a very good job of selling that lie by repeating it without responding to fact checks.
They’ve also adopted Dear Leader’s claim that they have an alternative plan that they’re going to announce in just a little while but not quite yet.
Meanwhile, Dear Leader has gone off the deep end with a sudden inexplicable need to bail out Argentina’s failing economy at the expense of our own farmers. Argentina is not a particularly close ally of the US and is not even a blip in our foreign trade, while Trump’s cuts and his trade war have left American farmers in a deep hole.
Not only have they lost China’s soybean trade thanks to Trump’s tariffs on China, but the cuts to foreign aid eliminated a major market for American food production, as will cuts to school food programs and SNAP.
Asked how he could reconcile his support of Argentina with the needs of American farmers, Trump went into a condescending tirade about how the Argentines are starving and never mentioned his own farmers.
Nor did he explain why it’s okay for children to starve and die of preventable illnesses in other countries while Argentines deserve aid we don’t even want to offer our own kids.
And he has pushed plans to purchase Argentine beef, while claiming out of the other side of his mouth to have saved American cattle ranchers, assuming that they will lower their prices below the cost of production in order to be more competitive.
That’s our Dear Leader, doing for American farmers and the American economy what he once did for the USFL.
While we watched. And then voted for him.
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