CSotD: 534 Years Later …
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Australia not much caring who discovered America, First Dog instead brought us up to date yesterday on what we’ve made of our corner of the place 534 years later.
Someone posted on Xitter last week about how much Trump is loved and admired throughout the world, but I’ll bet she’s nowhere to be found today and we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, First Dog offers a rebuttal that fits everything I’ve seen and heard from three-dimensional people around the globe.
Zyglis says Hegseth’s promise of a public execution has put an official end to American Exceptionalism, while as Mr. Greasy Kid Stuff says, it had actually been dead for years.
“American Exceptionalism” is mostly about our self-image. My schooling was fairly high-quality, but we were taught that the whole world looked up to us, so it came as a shock when I visited Denmark in 1965 and saw anti-Vietnam War posters, which hadn’t yet broken out in such profusion back home.
Two years later, I went to the Soviet pavilion at Expo in Montreal and picked up a history booklet that said they’d played a rather large role in defeating Hitler, which was news to me. I knew that General Burkhalter kept threatening to send Colonel Klink to the Eastern Front, but I had learned almost nothing about it in high school history beyond the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Not everyone admired us and I hadn’t been told the whole story, and I had to leave the country to discover these things.
However, a year later Chicago taught that the whole world was watching. Always were, still are.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Blower and Brookes both skip over the actual horror of shooting people on television, using the promised extravaganza as a metaphor to talk about an appalling action with far more global significance.
It makes sense, given that we’ve already watched Alex Pretti murdered on camera by federal authorities, and he didn’t even get a trial, nor was there anything to charge him with. Next to that, what’s the big deal about the feds shooting a guy who actually did something?
Brookes is more specific about the execution, with Zelensky standing in for all the Ukrainians who will be killed with the money Blower shows Putin taking for Russian diesel.
The deal seems to be an election ploy by Trump, and Body indicates the respect with which he is held in New Zealand. It’s not the first time the “clown car” metaphor has been used, but the Confederate flag adds a grim note to that mockery, and the contrast between the American clown car and the massive Russian tank emphasizes the diplomatic contrast between Trump and Putin.
Molina focuses on the direct outcome of this corrupt bargain. The money paid to Russia in violation of the specific sanctions voted by Congress will help fund missile attacks on Kyiv, perhaps with Russian missiles, perhaps with armaments they are purchasing from Iran. You remember Iran, right? That’s the country Russia helps target American troops.
Danziger offers a direct metaphor, adding a second meaning to the “red diesel” Trump is encouraging truckers to use.
Actual red diesel is sold for agricultural use only, and because it isn’t for highway use, it doesn’t include a 24-cent tax, making it theoretically much more affordable. The offer is that those who buy it for their 18-wheelers will have to cough up that tax later, which means it’s only a deferral, not a savings. And since you don’t see a lot of tractors and combines lined up at gas stations, there could be a question of how the big rigs are going to even find it to purchase.
Also it’s not made for 18-wheelers and may gum up their engines. Here’s a good overview of this cunning plan.
Still seems better than purchasing Russian diesel that, as Danziger says, flows red with the blood of slaughtered Ukrainians.
And we’re not buying enough Russian diesel to cut prices anyway.
Bagley depicts Putin and Netanyahu as quarreling over who gets to make the puppet dance, as Dear Leader openly abandons Ukraine to Russia and continues a war to destroy a nuclear weapons program that nobody but he and Bibi seem to think really existed.
Horsey is not kind enough to believe that Trump is being mislead by those smarter world leaders. Rather, he doesn’t fret over why Dear Leader is hewing wood and drawing water for Putin, and — by calling him a traitor instead of a puppet — he brands the shift in US policy deliberate.
Oh well. We may never know all the facts, but at least we’ve temporarily lost a significant source of lies.
The bots and trolls normally unleashed at this hour will not be seen due to technical difficulties. Seems three of Russia’s major data centers were hit by Ukrainian drones, with the result that bot traffic on social media reportedly fell by 49%.
It’s a little confusing, in that the actual damage may have been to connectivity rather than to actual troll farms, but that might be a distinction without a difference.
MSN reports that the most visible evidence of a problem is that there have been far fewer supportive comments to White House postings, and there’s no logical reason to think that blowing up supercomputers in Russia would stop legitimate posters in this country from responding.
Goris goes a little wide of the mark, since silencing Russian troll farms wouldn’t change poll results, but it has more than decimated Trump’s on-line cheering section, and you can monitor the repair efforts by going to Xitter and seeing how thick or thin the loyalist traffic is flowing. Some on-line wag dubbed it “Operation Quiet Piggy.”
Poor Elon felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of pretend voices suddenly went off line and were suddenly silenced.
In any case, it was odd timing for Betty, who noted the high volume of ridiculous nonsense on social media yesterday, just as it had been choked off.
Until they get things repaired, I guess we’ll have to go back to making bogus stuff the old-fashioned way.
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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