CSotD: 52-Card Pickup, Pro Division
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This time of year invariably produces a flood of turkeys attempting to avoid the ax, but Hands breaks tradition and makes an actual point, based on Dear Leader’s pardoning of those who worked to overturn the legal results of the 2020 election, which matches the pardons he provided for the rioters who stormed the Capitol with the same traitorous goal.
JFK started the political pardoning of the turkey in 1963, so blame him for any cartoons on the topic that at least touch on politics. But editorial cartoonists often take a day off this time of year for a cartoon about turkeys trying to stay alive.
There was a time not all that long ago when people bought a live turkey and butchered it themselves, which could spark a sentimental response from kids who hadn’t grown up on farms where meat happens with regularity. Contrariwise, one of the things Vietnamese Boat People had to get used to here was the notion of buying dead animals, which they found appalling and certainly unappetizing.
I’ve also read that, if you let a turkey live for two years, it’s all dark meat. The birds we find in the grocery store are yearlings or less. As a dark-meat aficionado, I wish them all a long life, at least comparatively.
Hruska/Carswell Memorial Juxtaposition
For many people, the holidays are a time to spread the simple joys of brotherhood, a moment when, like Ebenezer Scrooge, we cast off our negativity and embrace humanity. But is that fair?
In 1970, Nixon was attempting to confirm G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, a major barrier being that he wasn’t a particularly distinguished jurist. In support of the nomination, Roman Hruska (R-NB) told his senate colleagues:
Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?
The Senate didn’t buy his argument and the nomination failed, but his point lives on, and perhaps mediocre people with serious doubts about their own sexuality deserve cartoons and are entitled to a little representation on the editorial pages of our newspapers, aren’t they?
Let’s not let the so-called “holiday spirit” deprive hostile, insecure people of their chance to be heard.
And speaking of Holiday Sarcasm:
The good news is that you don’t need sarcasm to illuminate the growing cracks in MAGA world, as those who trade in general hostility find themselves increasingly appalled by the outright, blatant bigotry of their allies.
A large part of the fissures emerged when Tucker Carlson befriended neo-nazi Nick Fuentes with a cheerful interview that served as a wake-up slap upside the head for those who don’t share Fuentes’ extremist views.
Then Marjorie Taylor Green had the nerve to disagree with Dear Leader, which resulted in a flood of death threats and hate messages, such that she announced her intention to leave congress.
Meanwhile, people who have, personally, been inside of grocery stores are wising up to the absurd boasting of a man who not only thinks “groceries” is an exotic term but believes that you have to show photo ID to buy a box of cereal, and who keeps telling them food is less expensive when it most clearly is not.
They realize that the bounty he claims to offer is not just a disappointment but a deliberate lie, and one that his minions are willing to repeat despite documentation to the contrary and the more homespun evidence of plain common sense.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote to Edward Carrington:
I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.
That was the letter in which he said he’d prefer newspapers without government to government without newspapers, because keeping people informed is vital in a democracy.
Jefferson wasn’t the only person to recognize the importance of an informed electorate, or, in some minds, the danger of an informed electorate.
Emmerson suggests that Dear Leader’s new BFF can gain insights as Trump eliminates uncooperative reporters from his press pool and pressures media to report along approved government lines.
Bennett explores the ramifications of the dust-up over whether military members are responsible for following illegal orders.
In the trials that followed World War II, the excuse “I was just following orders” was rejected. But there weren’t a lot of German privates and corporals on trial at Nuremberg; the condemned were senior officers and governmental administrators who were in a position to know and understand the orders they gave and followed.
There are moments of crystal clarity: The soldiers at My Lai might believe, from experience, that women were as capable as men of being enemy soldiers. And if you are part of a unit, it’s hard to stand up against your entire band of brothers.
Still, shooting babies is fundamentally not okay, but it took a chopper crew from outside the group to declare that the slaughter must stop, which was, however, followed by a popular groundswell of support for letting their officers off the hook.
The veterans/legislators who reminded American military members of their duty to resist illegal orders were correct, but let’s not circle back into blaming those trapped in an unacceptable, unbearable reality as we did too often during Vietnam. If your officer says a boat is carrying drugs, you’re neither responsible for, nor capable of, calling a halt to the operation so you can assemble a jury and resolve things.
You needn’t re-up, but walking away is complicated, and those who can effectively intervene are almost always much farther up the food chain. And then sometimes those who are in a position to intervene seem to do so on the wrong side of morality.
We’ll figure it out once we restore order and can convene a fresh, untainted court.
Meanwhile, don’t kick the dog. The problem is at the other end of the leash.
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