CSotD: Mutual hegemony
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Kal Kallaugher looks ahead to the president's tax reform efforts, which may turn out to be Trump's last chance to keep a campaign promise.
(We will now take a short break while you marvel
over the facial expressions in each panel.)
I suppose "keeping promises" is an outdated 20th century concept.
Our hyperconnected, centerless world makes it easy to make huge promises and then blow them off, since there's no particular focus on anything, and all you have to do is wait five minutes for something else to surface on the Intertubes and send everyone screaming off in another direction.
It may also be that the explosion of information has created a sort of mutual hegemony, and we've joined a lot of Third World countries, adopting a culture of powerlessness in which chest-thumping, bloviating, nonsensical speeches are about all the satisfaction you can expect and so you take your leaders seriously but not literally.
If so, Trump is not the cause but the result.
It does go back further.
For instance, I see that the Cleveland Police Union says it won't hold the American flag before NFL games unless all the players stand at attention.
Which revives the question that came up back in the early 70s when the flag began appearing on police and firefighter uniforms: "Why are you wearing the national flag when you don't work for the federal government?"
The answer is that, just as "Confederate monuments" were really erected to solidify Jim Crow, all that Nixonian flagwaving was really a message to STFU about Vietnam.
At least the fans of Jim Crow were consistent in demanding and enforcing states' rights, while the flag worshippers want everyone to toe the line for the feds while resisting strong central government.
Well, we have to take them seriously, even when it's impossible to take them literally.
As for tax reform, I hope Kal's right, because I fear a GOP majority that doesn't fear the 2018 midterms. They're starting to defy Trump, but that doesn't mean they're willing to defy Wall Street or their gerrymandered base.
While, if they do get an oligarch-friendly tax package through, it won't have hit home with consumers by Election Day, so the populist smoke and mirrors will still be good campaign material.
Juxtaposition of the Day
On the topic of Third World Bloviators, a pair of international cartoonists seem to suggest that, when it comes to making infantile, nonsensical statements, it helps to have been born into the culture, because Kim Jong Un is pwning Trump, looking like one of those foreign exchange students who are indifferent athletes at home but who turn into superstars on an American high school soccer field.
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley generally says moderate and reasonable things, but I'll admit, when she said that Kim Jong Un "is begging for war," I was tempted to make the SJW autoresponse, "Nobody begs for war."
But seriously: Kim doesn't want war. He wants to score points by playing the American president like a kazoo.
Not even a serious, legitimate brass trumpet.
A ridiculous tin kazoo.
The whole world is watching, and would be laughing if nuclear arms weren't on the table. But they're at least snickering, as in these two cartoons.
The grownups in Trump's circle, among whom I count Haley, are looking for sensible solutions, knowing that there really isn't an answer that involves military action. The Korean peninsula operates under mutual assured destruction and it's not possible to hit Pyongyang without the result being the obliteration of Seoul as well.
As Gargalo's cartoon suggests, while there's no doubt who has the sharper teeth, there's also no doubt who has the upper hand in this absurd-but-deadly schoolyard posturing.
As David Kang, a Korean expert, told Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered last night, even the adult-sounding responses of Haley, and of Mattis, are not going to solve the problem:
It is not a problem to be solved. It's not like we can do a little bit of X, a little bit of Y and somehow there's a magic formula and, poof, North Korea will just disappear and problem solved – on to the next one. It is a country we're going to have to live with. It's not going to collapse. It's not going away. And one thing that we have done is, by focusing so much on threats, we're getting North Korea to respond in arming itself. …
So as long as we don't attack them first, there won't be a war. Then we just have to figure out what is the long-term play for getting the regime to change and to help the human rights situation in North Korea. And that's a different subject than calling them names.
But, while it may be difficult — even impossible — to deal with Kim by ignoring his tantrums, we should probably start by finding a way to contain the peevish, ill-informed tantrums of our own Fearless Leader.
The advantage on our side being less our nuclear capabilities than the fact that our infantile, pathological loudmouth is not a dictator.
At least not yet, as Darrin Bell suggests.
Meanwhile, back in Houston
Nick Anderson provides an excellent question, and On The Media provides the answer, or, at least, the best answer we've probably got.
The entire episode on hurricanes and hurricane reporting is excellent and absolutely worth a listen, but the relevant segment is here.
A snippet:
Brooke Gladstone: How do we deal with the problem that "100 Year Flood," heard casually, suggests that it's a flood that occurs every 100 years, as opposed to the idea that there's a one-percent chance that this flood could occur every year?
Spoiler: Dr. Robert Holmes, USGS National Flood Hazard Coordinator, doesn't provide an answer that she likes very much, but we learn a lot from him.
Here's the graphic summary:
And here's the audio summary:
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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