CSotD: There is no Dr. Jekyll
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Once again, Marian Kamensky takes advantage of the time difference between Austria and the United States to get his commentary in before anyone here can catch up.
However, the Washington Post did hit the virtual street this morning with not only the facts of Trump's Friday Night Special, but a bit of analysis and commentary as well, in which they referenced this tweet from GOP strategist Alex Conant:
Either Trump pardoned a racist sheriff for ignoring the law and signed an order barring transgender people from serving in the military hoping it wouldn't be noticed on a Friday with pending disaster on the Gulf Coast.
Or he just doesn't give a damn about civil rights and minorities, and is happy to play to his base of neo-Nazis, Klansmen and silent collaborators.
As a famous politician once said, "At this point, what difference does it make?"
But the Friday gambit is more political intrigue than I expect from a president who appears to have no impulse control and no shame in proclaiming himself in line with white supremacists.
The "Rally Trump/Teleprompter Trump" duality that, when I noted it here a few days ago, I credited to CNN Commentator Gregory Krieg, has caught on, and there have been several cartoons lately on this bizarre Jekyll and Hyde form of governance, Jimmy Margulies being simply the one who quoted it most specifically.
The question of whether Trump can bring the country, or himself, together being entirely secondary to the question of whether he wants to.
He's doing, as Bill Day points out, a pretty good job of getting his own way, simply by relying on a base of people who don't mind being lied to and having their gullibility exploited, who, as I've heard some analysts explain, "take the things he says seriously but not literally."
And if you think they are a small base, just sit down, turn on your TV and go through the channels, one by one, spending 10 minutes on each channel and reminding yourself that they don't put shows on their air unless there is an audience for them. And that these embecilic programs are not only attracting a viable audience but doing so in direct competition with each other.
As for our dual presidency, let's not dismiss it as something that is bound to correct itself, the way some protest-voters did when they gave Trump their support: "Oh, he'll adapt to the office."
Nice theory.
Nor is it the case that there is a kind, responsible Dr. Jekyll who is, against his will and without his knowledge, occasionally taken over by horrific, evil Mr. Hyde.
Rather, more in keeping with this Mike Luckovich piece, the default character is Hyde, who must be "handled" in order to appear competent and responsible.
This is a good time to go back to Michael Cavna's suggestion that cartoonists drop the "Baby Trump" imagery, which he later clarified as letting Trump off the hook, since the errors of a baby are simply the innocent result of inexperience.
Trump, rather, is more like a reluctant brat, forced to step up to the Teleprompter and make a polite but utterly insincere speech, after which he storms off to have an angry fit on Twitter.
And my experience with reluctant brats who are also bullies is that punishing them rarely makes them reflect upon their own behavior, but rather increases their sense that the world is unfairly arrayed against them, which results in even nastier behavior in the future.
Meanwhile, Trumpanzees are currently pushing the fact that polls show the majority of Americans want the Confederate statues left in place, which may prove that most Americans still think the damn things were erected by patriotic Southerners during the Civil War and not by Klansmen and other racists in combination with Jim Crow laws.
Mostly, they prove that there is a reason we use the term "minority."
If, back in the 50s and 60s, we had settled all the Civil Rights issues by majority vote, "we" wouldn't need to fret over "their" rights, because they'd still be "them" and not "us."
But we hadn't switched to a "winner take all" form of government then, and presidents, while guided by their mandate, still acted on behalf of all Americans and not just their own base.
I think, for now, Clay Bennett has the right strategy, and I'll be looking for other ways of implementing it.
And speaking of statuary, I have no idea where the new story arc at Vintage Juliet Jones is headed, but here are the last two episodes, yesterday's (from May 31, 1960) tying up one storyline and hinting at the next, and today's (June 1, 1960) kicking off that new story, in which a clearly demented character apparently has a problem with statues of civic virtue.
Glad the Mayweather/McGregor fight is tonight, since I can only take one of these everything-old-is-new-again parallels at a time.
And, as long as we're back in the Vintage strips, I'll bet Olive Oyl still contemplates March 16, 1931, as the day she blew the opportunity of a lifetime.
Help was on its way regardless, and all she had to do was give that crusty old sailor a little encouragement.
"That can wait."
Heh. Yeah, how long, Olive?
I'll bet you hear those words in your sleep.
(New adventure starts there Monday)
Name Check
Friend and frequent collaborator Chris Baldwin does diary strips between episodes of Space Trawler, his complex, funny, smart sci-fi semi-spoof adventure.
He and his artist GF have brought their peripatetic selves to this part of the country for the past few weeks and we had a chance to buddy up.
The diary strip is good discipline for an artist, both graphically and in storytelling, and I'm always interested in what Chris and Cedra are up to, plus the name check is fun.
The adventure, plus my school reunion the weekend before, made me of this:
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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