CSotD: As The War Drags On

I particularly like Andy Davey’s piece, both for what it is and for how it contrasts with other commentary.

We need to be a little cautious in accepting everything we hear from the resistance, because they’re in a war for hearts-and-minds, too, but it is plain that Ukraine hasn’t folded up like Putin expected it to.

Not all of his tanks are disabled, but using a disabled tank as a symbol of Russia’s problems in the war so far is fair game.

Similarly, we should assume that the disheartened Russian POWs we see are only a fragment of the force, but the soldier in this cartoon can certainly stand for the poor guy who had no idea what he was being led into. There is a dreadful contrast between what we know is happening and what these soldiers were led to expect, and what their parents are being told is happening.

And, yes, Putin is in a high state of denial, not only over the failure of his attempted blitzkrieg but over a pushback in his own country that required him to pass draconian laws and shut down opposing media outlets.

Within the usual bounds of hyperbole inherent in political cartooning, this is a good snapshot of the war that sums up the situation without overreaching.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Miguel Morales Madrigal – Cartoon Movement)

 

(Patrick Chappatte)

The nuclear button is on the table, and not because we must theoretically consider it but because Putin himself has declared it an option.

Cuban artist Morales Madrigal properly positions it as the desperate option of an aggressor besieged by the mass of nations.

Russia is perfectly capable of overcoming Ukraine’s regular army and destroying its cities, whatever guerrilla opposition might dog them for years afterwards.

It is, rather, the pointing fingers — both of international condemnation and of international economic isolation — that are the real threat, and Morales Madrigal does not sugarcoat the peril of that bloody, cornered bear.

But Chappatte offers a bit of hope with the suggestion that there are probably cooler heads in Russia who fear the desperate move their leader has laid on the table.

Lindsey Graham’s public musings over assassination are more likely to harden Russian solidarity behind Putin than hasten any move to replace him, but the long table with which the germophobic Russian isolates himself is, one hopes, a good metaphor for the distance between his childish, impetuous desires and his actual ability to carry them out.

Together, Morales Madrigal and Chappatte lay out the tension brewing between understandable fear of the cornered bear and reasonable hopes that, if things drag out long enough and go badly enough, someone in the shattered remains of the Politburo will step in, if only to restrain Putin if not to replace him.

 

Juxtaposition of the Useful Idiot

(Jeff Danziger – WPWG)

 

(Bill Bramhall)

When PJ O’Rourke died last month, I remembered, but couldn’t find, something he wrote in response to a reporter who described a jet pilot seeing a small Arab boy with a camel, waving to him. O’Rourke’s point was that fighter jets fly at such a speed that you wouldn’t likely even see the kid, much less be able to tell that he was waving.

Now comes Heel Spurs the Military Analyst, desperate, as Danziger depicts him, to cling to his fading relevance, and, as Bramhall suggests, in danger of being filed away as a Russian asset that is no longer in play.

The blathering, egotistical nincompoop has once more proven that no comedian can make him appear any more foolish than he makes himself, with an utterly asinine suggestion that we put Chinese emblems on American fighters and pop a few Russian planes out of the sky.

Which assumes observers can’t tell American jets from Chinese jets without seeing what’s painted on them, and assumes that anybody would be able to see what’s painted on them anyway.

O’Rourke would have fallen out of his chair.

 

We do have to remember, however, that there is an active Fifth Column at work in this country, willing to sacrifice the people of Ukraine and even risk a third World War so long as it advances their goal of undermining the current government.

AF Branco (Creators) offers an absurd graphic depiction of the three to four percent of our oil imports that come from Russia, while repeating the silly contention that only Democratic speakers use TelePrompters and countering Trump’s fumbling, two-handed attempt to drink from a glass by depicting Biden with a sippy cup.

As noted before, it’s not about logic or truth. It’s about having a team to identify with and cheer for.

It’s foolish, certainly, but, just as Graham’s public statements about assassination threaten to bolster Putin’s support in Moscow, so, too, mockery of the outlandish Q-anon forces in this country simply makes them cling more firmly to their baseless self-deception.

Tucker Carlson has been backpedaling from his support of Putin and several other GOP turncoats are doing the same, but, for all the mockery of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “gazpacho police” and her ill-bred behavior at the SOTU, she remains one of the Republican party’s top fundraisers.

Laugh it up, but take them seriously.

 

Clay Jones is right: Even perfectly reasonable demands to halt imports of Russian oil are very likely to be met by the same people with complaints about the impact on prices at the pump.

Gas prices are already jumping, and it’s hardly Biden’s fault, despite accusations that an unbuilt pipeline hauling the wrong kind of oil would have solved everything.

Fuel is priced not by what it cost to obtain the current supply but what it is projected to cost to replace it, and, right now, the projected cost of replacement is largely hypothetical and highly speculative.

However, you might as well try to refute the difficulty of spotting flags on the sides of fighter jets to a clown as explain gas pricing to someone determined to complain.

 

Juxtaposition of Two I Really Like

(Morten Morland)

 

(Cathy Wilcox)

Political cartoons don’t have to make a deep recommendation about policy. Morland and Wilcox offer a pair of statements about the war that are well-based, fun and morale-boosting.

That’s a valuable contribution in such fraught times.