CSotD: DoD Help Us
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I like the fact that Wuerker has given this clown a 10-gallon hat and a six-shooter, because the sort of clown who serves as a distraction, the way this one does, is more like the ones who used to be called “rodeo clowns” until they decided it undercut the importance and dangers of their work, distracting bulls so thrown riders could exit safely.
Last month, Paul Waldman speculated that Hegseth was likely to be the next cabinet member to be fired, because he was embarrassing Dear Leader, who could use a chance to blame someone else for the disaster of his Iran war. Waldman unfolded a list of Hegseth’s foul-ups and foolishness, and it was not unlike the junkyard display Wuerker depicts.
The clown’s job here is also to protect from serious hazards and problems by being a distraction, but the joke is that, unlike the rodeo clowns, he caused most of those hazards himself, and his job is not to provide distractions to ensure safety but apparently quite the opposite. He’s on the bulls’ side.
His fixation on testosterone would be funny if he were still at Fox and were imposing it on his fellow anchormen, though I don’t think he’d get away with firing all the women and minorities in a private industry the way he has eviscerated the senior officers of America’s armed forces.
The notion that testosterone levels are what makes a man into a warrior is as medieval and foolish a notion as anything RFK Jr has declared true of vaccines and germ theory and the glories of unpasteurized milk, and Sack offers a good analogy in that his depiction of the tank’s barrel has some real world basis.
Hegseth’s overall vision of manliness seems based on theories developed in junior high locker rooms and gradually dismissed as nonsense by those who start having real adventures, and who develop the manly grace not to talk about them.
Whamond is far from the only commentator who has mocked Hegseth’s insistence that the armed forces not have any fatties, beardos or weirdos, with the observation that he wouldn’t have to search hard to find some of each in his own circle.
Nor is Telnaes the only one to contribute more examples to the list. Her talent both for ridicule and for producing identifiable caricatures remain unmatched, and the sharpness of her pen emerges in that final, far-from-humorous addition.
In another of his speeches to the troops, Hegseth doubled down on his concept of developing an army of Abercrombie & Fitch models and announced the development of an Office of Religious Affairs for the military, which, particularly given Hegseth’s specific credo, gave Milbrath plenty of content for a sharply critical cartoon. She was spared the work of making things up, but felt compelled to add a note pointing out that she hadn’t.
And if you think Telnaes and Milbrath are critical of the fellow, take a look at what Arwa Mahdawi thinks of his plans.
The latest act at the Trump-Hegseth Circus is a decision to commit the military’s first execution by firing squad since Eddie Slovik in 1945.
Not only is Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan going to be executed by firing squad — a decision that could conceivably be defended as more humane than the method that failed in Tennessee — but it will be livestreamed for the entertainment of loyal red-blooded Americans.
Rowe pulls out the familiar term “circular firing squad” to point out his opinion that the move is politically self-destructive, then ties Hasan and Uncle Sam together, making both the shooter and the nation’s traditional freedom its victims, and dresses the elephants — clearly casting the event as partisan — in ancient helmets and arms them with blunderbusses to signal the lack of modern ethics involved.
Golding goes another direction, pointing out that we’ve already got video of executions by government agents, the difference being that Hasan received a trial rather than being executed at random in the street.
Luckovich voices the commonly held hope that, stripped of his congressional support by the midterm elections, Trump will be forced to tone down the irrational bragging and threats that have grabbed headlines. And it certainly seems that the predicted Blue Wave will not only put the House in Democratic hands but could also end the Republican majority in the Senate.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Two fantasy visions: Tom Tomorrow suggests that Republicans may want to get Dear Leader out of the way, though in the real world, he is traveling around the country to support GOP candidates, while incoherent remarks either predicting or encouraging an Iranian missile attack on Los Angeles and San Diego seem to be doing more to energize the opposition than to bring the loyalists to the polls.
Turner’s dystopic vision of those polls seems more an exaggeration than an outright fantasy. He combines the ongoing efforts to make voting more difficult with the build-up to declare doubt in the results, and then tosses in Trump’s threat to have armed ICE agents around the polling places.
ICE seems the wrong agency to disrupt the election, except that Pro-Publica has documented over 500 cases in which American citizens have been cuffed and detained, including some who have been deported. But even if they were released promptly, it wouldn’t be until after the polls had closed.
And now Channel 9 in Denver reports that Tina Peters, the town clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, met with Trump and outlined an elaborate plan to seize ballots and potentially kick off a civil war. Her lawyer told the press that
“In the event that we have this kind of disaster, and everything goes wrong, and the vote is crazy, and the senatorial races put it up there to remove the president and the vice president, in that nightmare, should it come true, Donald Trump is not going to relinquish control again.”
Joyce Vance has a cooler, but no less concerned view of things, the bottom line being that it will take an unquestionably large majority to avoid an attempt to doubt and even negate the outcome.
Keep the faith. And keep up the inspirational dark humor:
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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