CSotD: Would You Like Some Truth With That?
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A few cartoonists joined in the general condemnation of Trump’s tasteless dismissal of Robert Mueller’s death. I remain disappointed in the number, but, then again, I didn’t see any cartoons about his jaw-dropping insult of the Japanese Prime Minister.
Granlund skips the revulsion, however, and instead injects a bit of truth to counter Dear Leader’s claim of innocence, which is a lie, after all, though perhaps Bill Barr is the liar, since we’ve seen how few people are willing to tell Dear Leader any uncomfortable truths.
Not that his quislings will believe uncomfortable truths about him anyway.
I’m not worried about the collaborators, who are beyond our reach, and wouldn’t believe Granlund anyway: The truth was there in the first place and they wouldn’t listen then.
It’s other people I worry about. I’d hate to think that Trump’s utter lack of human decency has become such a given that we no longer notice it. That borders on becoming — to borrow a phrase from an earlier generation — “good Germans.” Not active collaborators and dedicated Nazis, but the large mass of people who went on with their lives as if nothing unusual were happening around them when it was obvious that something most certainly was.
They’re more to be feared than collaborators. Collaborators can be punished, but Eisenhower ordered the “good Germans” to tour the death camps to see for themselves, so that nobody could ever deny what had happened.
Where did that truth go?
Royaards illustrates how normal people can walk past news of the war dead with no reaction, but will then panic when the same war drives the price of their gasoline up.
Leahy even illustrates the interface of the time line and the petroleum supply, and how the response becomes more fraught as the gauge dips closer to Empty.
Deering is kinder to the woman, who needs to feed her child and get her to school, with food prices and gas prices climbing and no meaningful impact on the government’s decision to either raise taxes or raise the national debt with an additional $200 billion to fight a war we’ve already won several times, according to Dear Leader.
Still, there are alternatives to just shrugging and going on with life. If your legislators are afraid of being primaried for failing to go along with Dear Leader, turn out for the next No Kings rally March 28 and give them something to really be afraid of.
Don’t be a sucker and don’t be too polite to talk about what’s going on. It’s true that, as the price of gasoline goes up, prices of things that require transportation will increase, too, even as far afield as New Zealand, though Emmerson suggests that perhaps those in charge are a little too eager to make the shift.
I’m old enough to remember when we were told retailers would absorb the extra cost of tariffs and wouldn’t pass it along. I guess they’re just as considerate about the extra cost of a truckload of beef.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Asked and answered. The story is so old that I just saw a cartoon based on that old graffito from the Vietnam years, about how nice it would be if schools got all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold bake sales. And a stingy hawk could argue that school funding is a state and local obligation, as long as he’s making the argument to someone who doesn’t know there have already been federal funding cutbacks there.
But Margulies has the real answer to Sheneman’s point, which is that the Powers That Be spend money on the things they value, and neither you nor your children are included. We’ve got monuments to build and a hero to honor, after all, and that’s besides the $200 billion for the war we’ve already won several times.
And then there’s this: We aren’t weeping for underpaid teachers in overcrowded classrooms, but we’re all very concerned about TSA officers who have been working without pay, simply because the Democrats insist on passing legislation that either funds them separately or requires changes in other DHI agencies.
The Republicans have alternated between weeping over the TSA agents and killing several different attempts to introduce legislation that would pay them.
It’s ironic that they’re refusing legislation that would both pay TSA and also require ICE agents to behave like legitimate legal authorities, and their solution to this contretemps is to assign ICE agents to act as TSA agents.
The cartoons practically draw themselves.
“At this time, our Premium Passengers may proceed to Gate 14 to be beaten unconscious and dragged up the jetway onto your flight. Please have your boarding pass ready or you may be shot.”
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Perhaps instead of just asking the question in order to answer it for us, the government might consider adding those questions to ballots and finding out what people really do want them spending money on.
A couple of things occur to me: One is that the reason people turn down school budgets is that, in most places, that’s the only tax they get to vote directly on.
Another is that I was impressed and delighted when I moved to Maine and began covering Town Meeting in various communities, where people considered, discussed and voted on every local budget item.
I’ve also lived in Colorado where, if enough people signed a petition, an item would be placed on the ballot for a statewide law, like requiring deposits on soda containers. And if it won the vote, it would become the law.
There were people in Maine who wanted to do away with Town Meeting and people in Colorado who wanted to make citizen-initiated ballot measures illegal.
Because there’s a certain type of person who likes to ask questions, but only if they know they aren’t going to have to listen to the answers.
(Irrelevant but irresistible: Just stumbled over a recording of the fiddler who broke our hearts by leaving our Irish pub band. You can hear why we missed him, though Western fiddling is a very different style.)
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