CSotD: Wandering through the Pointless Forest

Damien Glez offers a clever variation on a too-common visual gag, proving that there’s no cliche that can’t be revitalized, and if plastic bags had a different style of handle or were more rigid, this wouldn’t work at all.

Which is sort of a backhanded way of explaining why it does.

Our co-op is phasing out plastic bags, which, on one hand, is too bad because they’ve never used the light, blowaway bags you see impaled on fence posts. Their bags are substantial enough to have second uses, which is not a bad thing.

But the transition brings some pressure to request paper, which, as someone who grew up with the timber-and-paper industry as a player in my local economy, I’m not against.

And I’m remembering that paper bags also worked for second uses, besides being biodegradable and sustainable.

I’m aware that canvas bags are an even better solution, but they are like sunglasses, which is to say, about the time you realize you need them, you also realize you’re three miles from the house and that’s where they are.

Meanwhile, at the regular grocery store, we’ve got an increasing number of baggers who pile everything into one (plastic) bag, but we’ve also got a lot who think every food category needs separation and I wonder if they are the kids who freaked out if the food on their plate was touching.

Which, combined with the antibiotic hand lotion stations for people who are afraid of catching diseases from shopping carts, makes me wonder what kind of weak, plastic-encased people we’re becoming.

I shared this astonishingly cool Tweet yesterday and got responses about how unsanitary it looked.

Which in turn goes back to several studies showing that kids who grow up on farms with plenty of access to dirt and fur and poop have fewer allergies than city kids who are exposed to nothing.

And which, if you really want to overthink matters, starts to suggest a correlation with kids who decline to leap into committed relationships, marriage before 30 and a whole lot of emotional vulnerabilities.

But then leap out of airplanes because the risk is such a thrill.

Oh well. Let’s examine another reason the rest of the world thinks we’re crazy.

 

I’ve seen about all the Greenland cartoons I need to see, but Jimmy Margulies ties Dear Leader’s nonsensical real estate ambition in with his equally nonsensical attempt to deflect blame for his economic damage. It’s an apt way of illustrating his tenuous grasp on reality.

Trump’s response to the (potentially) looming recession is not a PeeWee Herman “I meant to do that,” but an OJ Simpson “I didn’t do that.”

Let’s clarify with this

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Tom Toles)

(Mike Marland)

Toles is right in that Dear Leader simply ignores any reality that doesn’t suit his purposes. I have long proposed the theory that the reason starfish can regrow their arms is that they don’t know they can’t.

Which, in the real world, is how you can approach Deutsche Bank and ask them to float junk bonds to prop up casinos that are clearly, obviously beyond saving.

That Deutsche Bank would agree to the plan is a separate issue, except that Trump’s braggadocio and bullshit seem to have the same impact on bankers and bimbos.

Marland differs from Toles in that, while Toles argues the starfish concept, that Trump simply doesn’t process reality, Marland places Trump in the OJ Simpson camp of rejecting obvious reality.

There’s a certain subtlety in the distinction. At some point, OJ knew he did it, but, upon further disassociative processing, absolutely convinced himself he had not.

Where it leaves us is, as Marland notes, that Dear Leader is determined to blame someone else for the disaster.

OJ’s defense team was able to sell a jury on the idea that putting a sample of blood in the hot trunk of an LA Police car would turn its DNA from that of a stranger into an exact match for the suspect.

Similarly, if Trump and his bankers can convince investors to flush their money down the gold toilets of a failing casino, well, why not sell voters the asinine proposition that Google somehow conspired to hoodwink millions of people into voting for the wrong candidate?

And, furthermore, that the economy is really healthy but economists, bankers and the stock market itself are plotting to lie in order to defeat our hero, Donald J. Trump?

To which I can only say “Bring on the Greenland jokes,” because rational analysis is not moving the needle and maybe sophomoric ridicule will.

 

F’rinstance, I really like Pat Bagley’s cartoon, but it’s like the scribbled cartoon of the teacher that you pass around in class — it’s a hoot, but you can’t expect it to change anything.

Yes, Bush cratered the economy, Obama restored it, Dear Leader is destroying it again. And charts demonstrate all sorts of economic factors that improve under Democratic leadership and fall apart in GOP hands.

But the Deplorables are not rational and, however asinine and delusional Trump’s claims of voter fraud are, the fact is that his fat ass is planted in the Oval Office and we can’t guarantee it won’t still be there Jan 21, 2021.

His posse doesn’t read charts and they don’t do math and their grasp of history includes a faked moon landing and a living Elvis.

But Ann Telnaes’ depiction of neo-nazi crackpot adviser Stephen Miller brings to mind someone else’s theory, in which whoever it was (I didn’t write it down) pointed out that Trump always needs to be the Big Man.

They suggested that, when someone begins to rise in the Trump circle, the way to get rid of him is to quote him, praise him and make him appear more important than Dear Leader.

It worked with Bannon, it worked with Mattis, it worked with Kelly.

And, besides, Stephen Miller is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.

You can quote me.