CSotD: Clocks, Broken and Cuckoo
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The familiar expression is that even a broken clock is right twice a day, but I’d add an amendment to point out that some clocks are cuckoo all the time.
Ohman makes a vital distinction, in that although it is paranoid and foolish to see a conspiracy in the attempted shooting at the WHCA dinner, it’s important to be realistic about the genuine, narcissistic conspiracy under which the president of the United States piles up loot and indulges in jaw-dropping self-promotion.
Jonesy gets the laugh, but mostly because he’s right, which ought to scare the bejazus out of you.
I was listening to a podcast conversation between Charlie Sykes and Anne Applegate, and it struck me that, while it was a serious discussion, it contained an assumption that Trump is incapable of focus and a bit dim on how the world operates.
That wasn’t the basis of their criticism; it was simply assumed, just as, when they discussed the contretemps between Trump and Pope Leo, they accepted the Pope’s Catholicism as given.
As for Jonesy’s diagram of how it all works, I’d suggest that the firing of the entire National Science Board came from the devil on his right shoulder and the decision to put his photo on passports came from Homer, but that it really doesn’t matter.
Obviously, driving science out of the public forum is serious while the passport thing is nonsensical, but it’s frightening to have anyone combine such great power with such a fundamental lack of rational judgment.
We can get some comfort from the way a large portion of the public is giggling over the idiotic indictment of James Comey over a set of seashells, because it is farcical and can’t possibly get through any actual court process. And, similarly, we can enjoy a laugh over the public reaction to the vainglorious passport nonsense.
But Miles Taylor, who has seen things close-up, points out that the purpose of indicting Comey has a serious, devil-side purpose, which was to humiliate Comey with a perp walk in which he’d be photographed in handcuffs being led into court by officers, helping to cement in the public mind Dear Leader’s view of him as an enemy of the nation.
That’s not just Taylor’s opinion. Kash Patel suspended an FBI agent who declined to participate in the farce.
Hannah Arendt’s caution is becoming far too relevant:
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. … If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Genuine example: China has blotted out the demonstrations and killings in Tiananmen Square. People under 40 may not even know that it happened.
Now, as Goris points out, the January 6 riot in this country is similarly being not just denied but erased, and Dear Leader has declared that he also wants to strike the 2020 election from our histories.
If you think it can’t happen, you’re the reason it can.
While, if you think every loony attempt on Trump’s life is part of a conspiracy, I’d like you to explain how Gerald Ford recruited Squeaky Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore, and why Dear Leader hired a sniper who couldn’t even make his high school’s rifle team.
Poor Charlie landed in the middle of this ongoing idiocy, as Herbert notes, and she didn’t have to make anything up.
Our Secretary of War not only invited Kid Rock for a ride on a military helicopter, but had him address a gathering of troops, which makes me wonder if people young enough to have to sit through such nonsense are old enough to know Kid Rock as a musician rather than, as Hegseth explained, “a patriot and huge supporter of our troops.” And a guy who shoots beer cans to express his hatred of LBGTQ+ people.
The importance of the ballroom, of course, speaks for itself.
Royal Juxtaposition of the Day
Wilcox isn’t the only cartoonist to suggest that both Trump and Charles are darkened by Epstein crimes, while Morland points out that Britain is currently reeling under a scandal because Starmer hired an Epstein pal as ambassador to the States. It’s also worth noting that the king’s brother was stripped of his royal standing because of his links to Epstein.
Wilcox is right that the Epstein factor hovers over both men, but I wish someone on this side of the Atlantic were taking the hits that Andrew, Mandelson and (by extension) Starmer are taking over there.
Do they have copies of the files that we haven’t seen?
Royal Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Charles gave a speech which Deb Milbrath quoted in her cartoon and which Michael Jochum praised at length as “a reminder that somewhere along the way, we traded eloquence for noise, clarity for chaos, and principle for performance.”
And then Charlie apparently gave a second speech, which Kelley describes as an attack on those who dissent from Trump.
To be fair, People Magazine also focused on the 93 out of 2,644 words in the speech in which Charles discussed the WHCA dinner incident, which mostly proves that folks take away whatever they showed up looking for.
The Supreme Court, as Espinoza depicts it, cut the final legs out from under the Voting Rights Act, which white supremacists had been nibbling at since it was passed in 1965.
Someone reposted Mauldin’s 1963 classic commentary. I used to tell students to look at that crow, and realize that the eagle could have taken mastery at any time he wanted. Mauldin was criticizing, not praising, him.
Brodner depicts the return of the crow, his artistic style suggesting a kinship between Roberts and Roger Taney, who wrote the decision in Dred Scott, and who is generally seen as the worst Chief Justice in US history.
So far.
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