CSotD: Long, long division
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Steve Benson notes that Trump has made a U-turn, and, suddenly, a lot of current political cartoons are outdated.
I won't miss the recurring Statue of Liberty images. It was an excellent way to show our rejection of America's core values, and then it was a reminder and then it was just an indication that editorial cartoonists don't look to see what their compatriots are doing.
Ditto with baby Jesus being snatched away from Mary and Joseph. I featured one because it referenced the actual story from the Bible. Most others didn't.
They could have: the Bible tells how the Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape a murderous government, and the Egyptians didn't turn them back the way some fascist, racist, heartless country might.
But nobody reads that book. They just use it to flatten ganglion cysts and whack each other over the head.
In any case, we are apparently no longer putting kids into cages.
Now we just need to make sure the kids already in cages are let out and returned to their families.
I say that not just as someone who distrusts Dear Leader but as someone whose hometown iron mine closed and was declared a Superfund Site in 1978 and given a few floaties to contain the oil leakage in the river, but not until this year finally saw the gummint tear down the remaining structures.
They'd better move a little faster with these kids, or we're gonna need bigger cages.
Meanwhile, as Ann Telnaes indicates, it's not as if we've seen anything more than the simple reversal of a specific policy.
We're still stuck with a graceless, despicable, would-be tyrant at our helm, rallying his followers for the big Kristallnacht celebrations and denying all responsibility for the mess he blundered into.
I guess I didn't expect him to go on TV and say, "I was lying. I ordered this, and I could have stopped it any time I wanted to."
But it seems that, aside from never admitting having been wrong, he's also eager to preserve the hatred and division he has been stirring up, and you've got to admit, he's done a helluva job of that.
Note that "division" requires two sides. As prominent people from the right began to finally speak up and criticize the immigration policy, they were met on Facebook and Twitter not with welcome but with derision and hostility.
By November, we'll likely have people — people, not just Russian bots — sending a clear message on social media that, if you didn't vote our way in 2016, we don't want your goddam votes this time, either, you fascist assholes.
Swell.
Meanwhile, Darrin Bell blows up the executive order so we can read what it actually says, and my guess is that Dear Leader will get his wish and, by November, this will be long in the past.
And, as Kevin Siers suggests, if the entire crisis has not been forgotten by then, Dear Leader is hoping the cause will have been, and we'll remember only that the insane pyromaniac reversed the policy he claims someone else started.
One of the more bizarre oddities in all this is that Trump justified the policy for weeks by saying that it was out of his hands, that only Congress could fix it, that it was all Obama's fault … and then he fixed it, but, golly, it turns out that it was still everyone else's fault:
It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.
Almost makes you weep for the poor little fella, don't it?
He lied his way into it and he's lying his way out of it and the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Bottom Line: Psychologically, the Deplorables can't admit they were lied to and that they backed the wrong horse and, just as he doubles down on his outrageous lies, they will double down on their loyalty, even if it requires believing that the videos of kids are doctored or that the kids are actors or both.
And Elvis is alive and so is Bigfoot and the tax break has made me wealthy, despite what libtards like Bob Gorrell want you to believe. (If the irony of that wisecrack escapes you, check out Bob's other cartoons.)
Unfortunately, the impact of our Trumped-Up trade war will not really hit America until after the November elections, and those who haven't noticed what gasoline prices have done in the past two years are not likely to notice what happens to the prices of everything else when the retaliatory tariffs kick in.
But I still got a kick out of Chan Lowe's cartoon and I only wish it would come true in time to spark some of those "They're all the same!" non-voters to get out of their Barcaloungers and help reverse the skid.
Again, it's not just the Deplorables.
Miriam asks the right question in today's Non Sequitur, but the idea that she had any special gift is ironic humor: Anybody who bothered to look past the sound bites and blather would have known exactly what was at stake and what we were risking in 2016.
But it's not as if people are going to suddenly become wise and thoughtful in the next few months. They will forget this family-separation crisis entirely, or they'll buy the idea that it was invented and fake or they'll just … fade back into their cloud of self-satisfied apathy.
Mike Luckovich is right about the separation, but, unfortunately, Trump is not the cause but the effect.
This frightening documentary, made in 2015, will convince you of that, and, depressing as it is, you should buy it or pop up to Amazon and stream it, because it leads, sadly, into our
Juxtaposition of the New World Order
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(It's not a cartoon, it's reality.)
Here's a trailer for that documentary:
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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