CSotD: Vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts

There have been a raft of cartoons using the Statue of Liberty to comment on the tear-gassing at the border, some quite good, others quite predictable, but I like Jim Morin‘s because it is unapologetic in admitting that we’ve left our values behind.

That is, I get a nice emotional surge from the idea that the Statue of Liberty is weeping, but here’s who we have become and why bullshit ourselves?

 

Michael Ramirez offers an echo from the rightwing which is more regretful, perhaps, but no more apologetic.

That is, while Morin bemoans the change from warm and welcoming to hostile and rejecting, Ramirez points out the impossibility of the situation.

This, mind you, is beyond “Who Started It?” and all that, and “Who Started It?” is not simply what we’ve done in Central America, but, across the pond, the incredible damage the Cheney Administration’s needless wars in the Middle East have done to create Europe’s refugee crisis.

However, “Who Started It?” simply paralyzes things.

“Stop Doing It” would be a good move, but, at the moment, we need “What now?”

We can, clearly, admit more refugees than we do, particularly if they’re willing to work in our fields and processing plants and to do other menial labor, not forever, but until they, or their kids, move up the ladder, while new refugees and immigrants replace them on the lower rungs.

This is not the same rich promise we were able to offer when we put France’s statue up in the harbor, but it’s a pretty good promise and it may be more than they’d find in other Western countries.

 

I wasn’t planning to use this Joy of Tech cartoon today, but it fits the moment because, whatever the parallels in Silicon Valley, I’ve got to think that, if I’m handing out shit jobs in the vegetable patch and people are willing to walk 1,000 miles to get one, well, I’d be a fool to turn them away.

And if we ever take up human decency as a policy, we could divert some of the money we’ve spent keeping people out and use it to make sure the people we let in are treated decently in those fields and processing plants.

But now I’m dreaming, and dreaming doesn’t fill bellies.

How about this: How about we quit lying?

For instance, when we tear-gas desperate refugees, either own it or STFU, but don’t tell a bunch of God damned lies about how we’ve always tear-gassed refugees.

And I say “God damned” instead of “goddam” because if you’ve got the resources to find the time we gassed people at the border during the Obama administration, you know that it was a very few very specific troublemakers being pepper-sprayed at the fence, not a cross-border random crowd-gassing with a less directional, more potentially toxic chemical.

And you can say “Obama did it,” but Obama didn’t make fanatical, hostile, racially-tinged speeches about refugees and Obama didn’t publicly order extra troops to the border to fend off mythical, murderous Central American Ay-Rabs.

So let’s start by being honest.

(There I go dreaming again.)

 

Paul Fell sums up reaction to the Climate Change Report, again one of several cartoons on the topic.

But others blame Trump for ignoring it or putting it aside, and he is only the symptom, not the disease. The disease, as Fell points out, is Greed.

I like the clean, sharp analysis. I particularly like the way he ties it into “stand your ground” legalized-homicide laws that only seem to protect one type of person who shoots another type of person.

We know whose side the courts are on then, and, when it comes to climate change, we know which side the gummint is on.

That’s not cynicism; it’s history.

Hey, some of us remember the Tobacco Institute, but at least those lying bastards came up with specious arguments to counter the actual science.

On this topic, it’s like being at the Argument Clinic, demanding that John Cleese give us more for our money than empty, stubborn contradiction.

 

We’re trapped in this insane Tom the Dancing Bug world — and I strongly encourage you to go read the rest — because of idiot news directors who think “fairness” means that, if one person says it’s four o’clock, you need to find a guest who will insist that it’s noon.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

This morning, the Twitterverse was alive with praise for Ari Melber’s solid, extensive interview of Mueller target Jerome Corsi, and I join in the delight over what was an engrossing, highly professional 20 minutes of intelligent broadcasting.

The drawback to such things being that, once we know you can do it, we might start demanding it all the time.

 

On a lighter note

Arctic Circle jokes about the nonsense of information on nutritional panels, but there may be relief coming: The FDA has new, much improved guidelines that take into consideration things like practical portion sizes.

They’ll take effect in about two years, unless the GOP’s owners realize that the change is part of Michelle Obama’s dadgum communist attempt to make children more healthy.

 

I’m likely the only Zits reader who got a little verklempt over this one.

I mentioned the other day a relationship I wish circumstances had not cut short. In those days, dinner with me was pizza and she declared early on that she didn’t like “hairy little fishes.”

However, I argued that, when tucked under the cheese instead of draped on top, anchovies melt into salty, oily goodness, and she was willing to give it a shot.

After that, we didn’t have to order half-and-half pizzas.

And after that, she went off to Africa and Nepal to augment her nursing degree with on-the-spot studies in traditional medicine.

If you find someone who is willing to give anchovies another shot, hang on tight. They’re probably more interesting than anyone you deserve.

 

“Oh Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together!”
“Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”