CSotD: The Emperor

Michael Ramirez (Creators) offers a magnificent spoof of Jacques-Louis David’s Coronation of Napoleon.

Napoleon had himself crowned in the presence of Pope Pius VII but rewrote the traditional ceremony and, rather than having the pope place the crown on his head, did it himself before placing a smaller crown on the head of Josephine.

That’s the pope sitting behind Napoleon in the original painting; Ramirez has added George Washington not only standing behind Trump but, unlike the pope, objecting to the new emperor’s re-imagining of things.

As it happens, I’ve just reached the start of the 1812 campaign in War and Peace, and Ramirez’s choice of model lines up extraordinarily well with Tolstoy’s description of an attempt by Czar Alexander’s delegate to persuade Napoleon to withdraw:

An excellent parallel indeed. I hope things turn out as well for our would-be emperor as they did for that one.

Meanwhile, Matt Wuerker (Politico) points out, Dear Leader has begun the search for a quisling to serve as his vice-emperor, the contest centering on which lickspittle is willing to show up in the court in New York and best make speeches to circumvent the legal orders that prevent Trump from intimidating witnesses, doxing jurors, insulting the judge’s daughter and generally undermining respect for the legal system.

Dave Granlund had to narrow things down because, for all that Dear Leader is better than any other person in the world, he still only has two hands.

As for respect for the legal system, the GOP has followed Trump’s lead in setting the stage to declare not only the 2020 and 2024 elections fraudulent, but also the judicial system, so if a guilty verdict comes in, his followers will believe it was fixed.

As Steve Breen suggests, once you’ve convinced the mob that neither democracy nor the courts are legitimate and that Dear Leader is more important than the nation itself, it will be easy to overturn the rest of the Constitution.

Alas, despite Bill Bramhall’s delightful vision, it won’t be possible for Judge Merchan to swat away the vermin, and what difference would it make if he could?

They aren’t there to listen to witnesses and see what’s happening, and their speeches were no doubt prepared before they even arrived. At least I haven’t heard any of them try to actually refute anything said in the trial.

Kevin Necessary surveys the field, but I’m not convinced of his choices, in part because only Scott and Vance have made the trek to New York to kiss the ring, and I’m pretty sure Kristi Noem has totally fouled her chances, which were excellent given her having served as the South Dakota Snow Queen.

Not to be confused with the Narnia Snow Queen, though the mix-up is understandable.

Katie Britt is cute enough to make the cut, and should hurry to Gotham to emote for the press, since her astonishingly vacuous SOTU reply still leaves her, intellectually, head and shoulders above Tommy Tuberville, the reigning dumbest member of the Senate and a leading contender for the job.

Though perhaps intelligence is a disadvantage: Trump may be looking for a Spiro Agnew type who will rile up the libs and delight the mob with speeches written by someone who can, in fact, write.

But a veep who won’t get caught with his hand in the cookie jar like Spiro did.

After all, that’s the President’s job!

While on the topic of those with ambition, RJ Matson presents a horrifying picture of Dear Leader hoping for a little of the old roly-poly with the leaders of the petroleum industry.

Just put the billion dollars on the dresser as you leave.

In the end, Robert Ariail contends, voters will likely mark their ballots oblivious to the news they haven’t seen and the information they haven’t read and will, instead, remember all the jokes and the attacks on Biden for being three years older than the lying, cheating narcissist and wannabe dictator.

Or they’ll pick the wacko conspiracy theorist with a brain worm in order to register their fury at being asked to vote at all.

Which gesture may solve their problem.

Can’t We Talk About Something Less Pleasant?

We started the day with an excellent cartoon and now here’s another: Martyn Turner notes the blatant hypocrisy of the migrant crisis.

Most migrants reach Europe by boat, but even without that maritime parallel, his point could be applied to our own self-declared border crisis.

We’ve actually come to the point where elected officials are lobbying to overturn child labor laws, because they’d rather send our kids into the factories and fields than admit the brown adults clamoring for a chance to do that work.

I remember, back in the previous century, a point when the limited hours that high school students were permitted to work came up for discussion in New York, and Gov. Mario Cuomo reminded the kids that, while it was good for them to work in their spare time, their real job was to get educated, and that being prepared and alert for school was a priority.

I sure miss the guy:

I’d also point out that Cuomo took a raftload of abuse from rightwing Catholics over his landmark speech at Notre Dame — Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective — where he said he was personally opposed to abortion but believed that religious viewpoints were out of place in crafting laws in a democracy.

Now, 40 years later, it’s Biden’s turn to get abused by his fellow Catholics for the same small-D democratic attitude.

And if things haven’t changed much here since 1984, Mohammed Sabaaneh (Cartoon Movement) contends that you can reverse those two last digits and nothing has changed much in the so-called Holy Land, either.

Migrants being forced from their homes is an old story, but that doesn’t make it a fair one. As Turner’s cartoon notes, slavery is also an old story and one best consigned to history’s dustbin.

As for reclaiming ancient lands, the Diaspora was some 1200 years ago, and in Googling for the American Indian Movement’s meetings with Palestinians in the ’70s, I came across this interview with a Jewish/Lakota activist.

Don’t look at me. My folks have only been here about 225 years, and most not even that long.