CSotD: Screwball Roundup
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I don’t know that people overseas have a clearer view of our situation, but perhaps it’s easier to laugh at existential dread when you’re observing from afar.
Not that there isn’t concern about the effects, because what happens in the United States certainly doesn’t stay in the United States, but what distance there is between the US and Austria allows for plain analysis like this.
Clearly, Trump is flailing. His ratings are in the cellar and however much he is motivated by bravado and self-deception, he must surely be hearing from Republicans terrified of the coming midterms, and even he must realize that a Congress no longer under his command would make things difficult.
It can’t have helped that his 250th Anniversary stuff was a dismal failure and that his much-vaunted work on the reflecting pool has become a joke. Then a judge not only slapped down his attempt to declare his family tax-free for life, but referred the attorneys who proposed the measure — including his attorney general nominee — for discipline and potential disbarment.
So he turned back to bombing Iran, since blowing stuff up always gets support from his groupies and usually gets network anchors to put on their flag lapel pins, and he’s launched an attack on election integrity which will play well to his diminishing base despite being refuted by the very documents he posted (which his fans won’t read).
These new measures aren’t playing so well either, and Turner is far from the only person asking, if the Chinese were such masters of deception and control, why didn’t they get what they wanted? But while American cartoonists tend to beat about the bush and fret over what might happen, the view from Ireland is of a democracy already in ruins.
Bagley asserts that the MAGA crowd will continue to be loyal and easily persuaded, and picks up on their sense that taking the unpopular route is a sign of superior intellect. Let the fools believe Elvis is dead, but we know the truth!
The question is how much of the group that put Dear Leader back in the White House remain loyal.
It seems certain, for example, that while Trump did well with Latino voters in 2024, there’s considerable backlash to ICE harassing, arresting, jailing, deporting and occasionally murdering brown-skinned people.
And while threatening an invasion of Cuba may play well in South Florida, the Hispanic community is a good deal more diverse than that. The Cubanos would support him anyway, and those in other Spanish-speaking demographic groups may not.
Then again, he won the White House twice when the smart observers thought his campaign ended with that Access Hollywood tape. Is there any difference to his faithful between his having paid off Stormy Daniels and that Playboy model before his first election and having to give E. Jean a few million bucks now?
Sheneman makes fun of the absurd, counterfactual claim that voter fraud is a major problem, and, to repeat, even the magical super-secret documents Dear Leader posted on the White House website work against his dire claims of a crisis.
But while it’s easy to answer the question, “Is there really a problem with election fraud?” there is a more immediate question to be answered, which is “So what?”
If his followers believe that he graduated from college with honors and the rest of the obviously nonsensical, easily disproven claims he has made, why wouldn’t they believe in mythical hordes of non-citizen voters and the ability to alter votes on machines that are not connected on-line and which are almost entirely used to total paper ballots anyway?
The world isn’t even laughing behind our backs. They’re laughing in our faces, despite the impact our feckless approach to the war with Iran has had on their economies.
And Madam & Eve have the additional insult of Dear Leader believing Elon Musk’s racist lies about how his fellow white Afrikaners are being treated, to the point where not only did Trump ignore their president’s assurances that Musk was lying, but changed our refugee program to fit the fantasy.
The world would like to see an end to the Iran confrontation, and there might be a way out, but, as Luckovich suggests, it’s not one Iran’s leadership is likely to embrace. And why would they? They lose less money through sanctions and by having their sales of oil cut off than people do who invest in Trump’s crypto deals.
But not to worry, because we’ve got a superhero coming to the rescue, or at least a guy who will be a superhero once he mans up and takes a few shots of testosterone, and then buys a round of the same for his merry men.
And they are merry (white) men, because Hegseth has done his best to eliminate high-ranking women and minorities in the military, pressuring them to retire or declining to promote them, in a world in which being passed over for promotion is a message that the military wants you to leave.
The attempt to create a fighting force of macho macho white men created a minor stir last year when the on-line profile of a Medal of Honor winner disappeared because he was Black and therefore it was assumed that he had only won the medal as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program.
The profile was restored, but the explanation reveals what the current department thinks of women and minorities in the service.
Meanwhile, we’re still looking for examples of battles lost for lack of testosterone, a search which is handicapped by the widespead realization that most guys who talk about masculinity are empty wagons making the most noise.
Bright nine-year-olds used to write into DC asking questions like how Superman cuts his nails, and the editors would come up with answers that only made sense if you were nine years old and desperately wanted to believe.
Some did, but Larry Niven dug deeper into the mysteries and came up with the immortal classic, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, which I assume Pete Hegseth never read.
Because his vision for our manly armed forces seems a lot like this:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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