CSotD: Memorials in a time of death

It seems odd to open up the discussion by sending you somewhere else, but the Association of Canadian Cartoonists has put up a gallery of Covid-19 commentary that is well worth your time and attention.

This one, by the Montreal Gazette’s Boris (Jacques Goldstyn) seems particularly apt, using a very wise caption to comment upon the chaos going on around the world as nations respond with varying degrees of wisdom and idiocy.

The sea indeed could be more placid, and others have noted that, in times of crisis, the world has traditionally drawn together, but this is different.

I don’t know how much we should blame the captain of that “ship of fools,” but it is certainly a reflection on the divisions that now plague not just our country but the world in general.

 

David Rowe offers this commentary on the implosion of the government of the UK, in which Mini-Trump Boris Johnson — who you think would have wised up after having been hospitalized with Covid-19 — has excused an aide for breaking the rules and driving 260 miles to leave his children with relatives while recovering from the virus.

The response has come not so much from this party or that party but from people of both parties or neither who also had personal reasons they’d have liked to break the rules but did not.

That seems to be a lot of people.

 

Including a presumably now-former employee of the Civil Service, whose defiant posting on an official gummint account sparked this utterly remarkable Twitter thread, demonstrating that (A) Boris Johnson is in more than a little political trouble because (B) politicians in some countries seem to put the public good ahead of their own interests, or, perhaps, to conflate the two.

Fancy that.

 

It would never happen here, where, as Adam Zyglis notes, we’re letting people die to avoid puncturing the pride of one man and slowing the policies of his cabal.

Trump’s response to the report from researchers at Columbia is to declare the university “liberal” and “disgraceful,” adding to his policy of demonizing any who would challenge his world view.

No word on whether anybody has rubbed his nose in the findings of a team at Business Insider, who found that nearly half of the Twitter accounts calling for re-opening the country are bots, and that these phony accounts comprise nearly two-thirds of the more influential and persistent messagers for that position.

Which leaves poor little multi-billion-dollar Twitter caught, or at least pretending to be caught, in a bind, since their rules forbid much of the action of Trump and his followers — including groundless, cruel, delusional accusations of murder — but, golly gee, he’s the president, so you have to let him post outrageous things anyone else would be suspended for, right?

Polls show a strong majority of Americans want to keep the lockdown in place, but Dear Leader panders to the minority who disagree and are, this holiday weekend, cavorting in tight, unmasked crowds at distant resorts.

And on Tuesday will bring their new-found viruses home to communities across the country, as gifts to their friends and families and random fellow citizens.

 

Michael Ramirez suggests that keeping your grandparents safe from the virus is an appropriate way to honor the sacrifices of their fellow members of the Greatest Generation.

 

But Dana Summers disagrees, insisting that our honored dead gave their lives so their grandchildren could enjoy the right that is written into our Constitution to ignore the needs of society and the safety of others.

 

After all, as Sgt. Al Stevenson explained in “Best Years of Our Lives,” we have to protect the values we’ve established and by which we live.

This video clip is pretty foggy, but so is the logic he mocks.

 

In any case, March’s character was simply objecting to the lack of consideration given to returning veterans.

Kevin Siers  explains today’s overall self-centeredness as it applies to our long-abandoned goal to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Turns out sacrifice requires sacrifice. Who knew?

 

And over in the New Yorker, David Sipress reminds us that, if you go a few hundred years back beyond the founding of the nation, you can find a time when the goal of science — then called “natural philosophy” — was not to discover reality but to explain how nature reflected our beliefs.

Kings and Churches would rather construct elaborate mathematical formulae to explain the odd paths of planets than accept the more logical explanation of a heliocentric, rather than geocentric, world, since they already believed in the latter as written in the Bible.

 

So Columbia University’s findings on the unnecessary spread of Covid-19 are heretical, Dear Leader declares, and, besides, we’re going to have a great new vaccine by the end of the year.

Steve Sack dares to suggest otherwise, as a promising development in the search does not quite yield quite as much, nor certainly as quickly, as a waiting world was hoping it would.

It’s that damned science again, clinging to reality and refusing to kowtow to beliefs.

Dammit, if God can create an entire Universe in Six Days, you’d think we could come up with 330,000,000 doses of a safe and effective vaccine in six months.

 

Well, whatever the science and logic and superstitions and delusions, Dogs of C Kennel sums up our current holiday, the best part being that you can consider this a commentary on war, on sacrifice or on our current losses.

Maybe all of the above.

 

Though, lest we forget the original intent of the holiday, Paul Berge offers a collection of 100-year-old tributes, including this Magnus Kettner piece honoring the inclusion of WWI and Spanish-American War veterans alongside the Civil War vets.

 

https://youtu.be/kWbV7dSHwto

(This astounding, sad, perspective-changing documentary can be seen here. The book upon which it is based is here.)