CSotD: Profiles in Discouragement
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Sometimes even when you work weeks ahead, you manage to drop the right cartoon at the right time, and Scott Stantis did that with this morning's Prickly City.
When the Washington Post reported Dear Leader's outrageously racist remarks yesterday, there was a flutter of people getting the vapors on CNN, and a surge of cartoonists on Facebook and Twitter recognizing that a day's work had just become obsolete.
Down in Brazil — which I assume is one of the shithole countries — Rice Aurajo may have penned the best possible response.
I like it: It's vulgar and to the point, without simply being "Fuck you."
Newspapers and TV stations are having enough trouble dealing with "shithole" and don't need to add the burden of the succinct response that I'm sure crossed a lot of minds.
Well, a lot but not all, because Fox & Collaborators sprang to Trump's defense, explaining that he was only voicing what "the forgotten people" say in bars.
I would point out that this is why they are in bars and not working or perhaps at home with their families, and that it is precisely why we have tried so hard, as a nation, to forget them.
Lawmakers have condemned the comments, or, at least, Democratic lawmakers have.
Orrin Hatch commented that he wanted more information, which I guess means he needed a specific list of shithole countries or maybe he hoped Trump prefaced the quote with "We don't want to sound like the racist scum who would ask …"
However, the most depressing response was the reaction to Republican Representative Mia Love, who roundly condemned the statement and was then attacked on social media for not having — in the 90 minutes or so between the revelation of the quote and her demand for an apology — also voted against something Trump wanted, resigned from Congress and perhaps set herself afire on the Capitol steps.
Proving the point of the Prickly City cartoon: We've long since abandoned any pretense at sharing a common humanity.
And proving that Trump and his groupies are far from the only people who now divide the nation not into Democrats and Republicans but into Friends and Enemies.
There have been other cartoons on the topic, but this issue has to sit, I think, before we really know what the impact is, beyond pissing off some people and delighting others.
The cartoons I've seen so far on it seem rushed and, while some are better than others, the reason I featured Aurajo's is that he managed to express the appalled, insulted reaction of an outside observer with some very good artwork that was disgusting without being simply vulgar.
And the fact that it comes from abroad reminds me of my sister's response to the assassination of Dr. King, which was, she said, that she just wanted to walk up to random black people on the street and apologize.
Similarly, I know what I think of us. I'm more concerned with what other countries must think of us, not simply people in the shithole countries but people in all countries not led by insane racist morons whom they freely elected.
Which I think is pretty much all of them, if you include the "whom they freely elected" part.
The hardcore talk-radio Trump loyalists talk about an "apology tour" that Obama took, but the repair work our next president will have to do is going to make that look like an Olson Twins travelogue.
And an overflowing toilet is not a bad metaphor. It isn't stopping.
Yesterday, Dear Leader began his twittery by repeating some drivel he'd seen on Fox & Friends which contradicted his own stated policy on FISA surveillance. Apparently Paul Ryan phoned him in a panic and Trump then added a PS to semi-walk back his foolishness.
But he hasn't modified this other ridiculous tweet he sent out, about why he has cancelled his trip to the UK, which is not a shithole but which still wasn't looking forward to his visit.
Responses to this PeeWee Hermanesque explanation included a number of people pointing out that it was George W. Bush who ordered the relocation of the embassy.
And here's the point:
He can complain about disloyal Steve Bannon and lying Michael Wolff portraying him as a dumbass who refuses to think or listen or learn and who shoots his mouth off like a petulant five-year-old, but the person who most advances that view of him is still in the White House.
Before and beyond the quick-draw responses to yesterday's outrageous, openly racist remarks, cartoonists like Jack Ohman were picking up on a distinct, if not distinctly courageous, level of disengagement by erstwhile Republicans.
Jeff Stahler puts the growing movement in starker terms, which may well be justified, it seeming less a thoughtful reaction than a mindless panic.
For cartoonists, and for the rest of us, this points to a more measured, valuable response than being angry at Mia Love for her immediate reaction.
Granted, she's hardly the first dogmatic conservative to find her heart when partisan bigotry strikes a personal target.
The question, however, is not anyone's immediate response to a revelation, whether achieved nobly or through a personal affront, but what they do after that epiphany has struck home.
Representative Love has to answer for her part in thus far enabling this travesty of good government, but mostly to her constituents and her own conscience.
She's started the process, now she has to complete it, and I'd support her spiritual odyssey, just as I'd support Jeff Flake and Ron Corker if they had the guts to stand up in order to do more than simply scurry out of the room.
Meanwhile, pointing out that Donald Trump is a moronic, unapologetic racist does not advance the process of reclaiming our nation.
Tell us something we don't already know.
Ask the dogs why they lie down with this fleabag.
And demand answers.
Meanwhile, we'd all do well to stand up to Mia's name:
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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