CSotD: Taking Things Seriously AND Literally
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Jen Sorensen notes the people who may not have expected that what they were promised was going to happen. Some of them voted for Trump, some of them didn’t vote at all, some even voted for Harris but considered it a formality, little expecting, even if “their side” lost, the changes that are suddenly arriving.
Paresh Nath (Cartoon Movement) attributes Trump’s success to civic ignorance, and we’ve heard cries to increase civics education. As I noted the other day, however, we have civics classes, but they’re often ineffective.
It’s not that students shouldn’t learn how a bill becomes a law or that they oughtn’t to recognize the members of the president’s cabinet. They should understand the functions of government, but, more important, they should know the implications of what happens in their statehouse or in Washington.
That aspect of civics must be woven into history class, and perhaps it would be if we stopped having kids memorize the names of inventors and teaching American history as the glorious awakening that spread from Plymouth Rock.
It doesn’t matter who invented the spinning jenny or the air brake or interchangeable parts. What matters is the impact of the clothing mills, the transcontinental railroad and the rise of factories on the people who worked in those factories or farmed the railside claims, or picked cotton and harvested rice under a slaveowner’s lash.
And if you stop teaching that nothing existed until the folks from Plymouth Rock arrived on the scene, you won’t have to assume that everything that happened was caused by such-and-such a group.
Much of it was a result of systems steeped in error, like the assumption that land was only useful if it was being actively farmed or logged or mined. That led to contempt for native people and the urge to push them off land so it could be developed, which resulted in genocide, though, as if in revenge, it caused the Dust Bowl and other ecological disasters.
It’s admittedly hard to teach history without descending into a melodrama of heroes and villains. People like a simple, Manichean view of reality in which the universe is divided between God and Satan, or mortals who represent either of those extremes.
That belief system has brought us to odd sayings, like the one about the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party without realizing that they would eat her face. Or the one pointing out that a clown with a flamethrower may be a clown, but one with a flamethrower.
It’s how you wind up with the people in Sorensen’s cartoon being surprised. In 2016, Salena Zito wrote a piece for the Atlantic in which she observed that the press took Trump literally, but not seriously, while his supporters took him seriously, but not literally.
This dairy farmer, for example, supported Trump and still supports Trump but also hopes that the deportations won’t really happen because it would put him out of business and dry up the nation’s food supply.
He not only didn’t take him literally, but still clings to that because the reality is not acceptable. The leopards can’t possibly be eating his face, can they?
Which brings us to people who insist that they “back the blue” and want to see harsher penalties for lawbreakers, and, as Randy Bish points out, were promised an end to the war in Ukraine and savings on gas and eggs. Now they’re seeing people convicted of assaulting police being set free, and, meanwhile, no follow-through on those other promises.
Ann Telnaes cuts through the bafflegab by introducing a little German into the argument: “Sturmabteilungen” were the Storm Troopers and Brown Shirts who enforced Hitler’s programs in the streets of Germany, and though Trump, Vance and Bondi all promised that they would sort through the J6 criminals to avoid pardoning those who assaulted police, they didn’t.
Were they lying? Were they incompetent? Were they clowns with flamethrowers, or leopards determined to eat your face?
Why? What difference does it make?
Steve Brodner illustrates Robert Hubbell’s prediction that the criminals Trump has let loose will commit other crimes, and provides a quote from the QAnon Shaman to emphasize the degree of lunacy in Dear Leader’s broken promise.
Already we’re hearing of family members going into hiding because they cooperated with investigators and fear the revenge of the released felons.
Hubble says that, when the inevitable happens, Democrats must not fail to make it obvious, even to those who laughed at the flame-throwing clowns and were convinced that the leopards would never eat their faces.
Chip Bok (Creators) isn’t the only cartoonist or commentator criticizing pardons, though, like others, he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the difference between preventive pardons to shield people from the political prosecutions promised by Trump, and Dear Leader’s blanket pardon of violent criminals who were convicted by juries.
He dismisses Biden’s pardons with a snippet from a book of the Bible which otherwise seems mostly a screed against Trump and his oligarchs. But quoting snippets out of context is a well-established religious practice.
Context and relevance are optional. Trump has suggested that he’s hoping to put Joe Biden on trial, though he hasn’t said for what, apparently applying the Queen of Hearts’ legal system: Sentence first, verdict afterwards.
Anyway, the Book of Proverbs is good reading and yields many insights:
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Sajith Kumar — Cartoon Movement
Speaking of quoting from the Good Book, Kumar hails Bishop Budde — who preached a Christian sermon of mercy in front of Dear Leader — as the embodiment of the Statue of Liberty, while Alcaraz rephrases Trump’s bitter, hate-filled attack on the bishop as an attack on the man who inspired her words.
Meanwhile, the Bish herself is not backing down from her decision to preach the gospel in her church.
Predictably, one of Trump’s Face Eaters made a suggestion that combined unbridled malice with astonishing stupidity. Which might be laughable if he didn’t have the same legislative power as a sane, intelligent member of the House.
We began the day with people who might have second thoughts about where the country is headed. Let’s end with Tom Tomorrow’s assurance that some people are happy and confident about it.
Both perspectives are inspiring.
Inspiring what? Ask Phil.
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