CSotD: Servants of Two Masters
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Carlo Goldoni found the prospect of a fool serving two masters hilarious; Matthew was less impressed with the notion. And at the moment, cartoonists seem to be falling on both sides of the matter, torn between farce and outrage.
For my part, I was tempted to leave the whole thing to resolve itself and run an entire page of Alex Trebek tribute pieces instead.
But let’s have a look.
Clay Bennett (Times Free Press) offers the basic premise, from which you can spin either direction, because, while it is absurd, it’s neither comic nor despairing.
Instead, he captures the odd standoff of a man who simply will not or does not or cannot hear opposition, and I particularly like it because there is no psychoanalysis implied.
Trump has, throughout his administration, demonstrated an utter lack of empathy, not as the considered choice of a rational mind but, rather, as a simple fact: He honestly cannot relate to other people’s emotional needs.
Dylan asked “How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?” but the ears are only portals. Lack of empathy is a failure of the heart.
Steve Breen (Creators) uses a clever play on words to illustrate the choice made, and we really did face a pair of opposites: On the one hand, an utter inability to empathize, which his opponents labeled sociopathic, and, on the other, someone with such an instinct to comfort that his opponents accuse him of sexual deviance, offering, as proof, a photo of him hugging one of his grandchildren at his son’s funeral.
But even without those extremes, the election largely balanced on the contrast offered and the choice made, and, while Breen’s take is clever, it’s not particularly humorous, nor is it intended to be.
Kal Kallaugher (Counterpoint), by contrast, offers a combination of striking art and humorous commentary on Trump’s inability to accept the facts in front of him, with the elephant’s sidelong glance an indication that his political allies recognize his inability to face things but haven’t decided what they are going to be able to do about it.
Bill Bramhall (NYDN) is less tolerant of their willingness to indulge Dear Leader’s insatiable need to be right. Many of them may be failing to speak up, but others, as he accuses, have stepped up to actively assist in undermining America’s trust in our system of government.
The Washington Post has an article this morning stating that, while he still insists that he’s going to pull this election out, Trump is beginning to concede his loss behind closed doors, and to speak of running in 2024 instead of continuing to contest the results this time around.
No recount is going to provide the number of errant votes to reverse results, with Georgia being the only logical place it might happen, and switching Georgia’s electoral votes from blue to red wouldn’t change the outcome.
Trump’s only hope for victory lies in uncovering some massive voting fraud which is as likely as uncovering pederastic cannibalism in the basement of a pizza parlor built on a concrete slab.
At the risk of admitting my optimistic naivete, when I saw headlines that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was offering $1 million for proof of voter fraud, I thought it meant he was defending the system, much as James Randi used to offer million dollar rewards for anyone who could prove the validity of telekinesis or Ouija boards.
Silly me.
And Silly Dan Patrick, though only one of us is working to destroy faith in the Constitution.
I don’t know how anyone could be comfortable for very long dealing with “I won, but in case I didn’t” as their boss’s operating philosophy, but that WashPost piece offered an explanation for the instinct to support Trump’s claims in practical terms:
“If the party doesn’t fight on the recount, the grass roots is going to leave the party,” said one senior Republican involved in the discussions. “That’s the choice they have. That’s why they are doing it. It’s less about the president than it is his voters.”
And, given the razor-thin margins of the vote, there’s a lot to be said for maintaining the loyalty of the Deplorables, though it’s a bit like hiring the Hell’s Angels to provide security at a rock concert: It sounds better than it’s likely to work out.
Beyond that and philosophy aside, simply the changing demographics of this nation are such that a political party exploiting white supremacy has a very limited future, regardless of how vocal their supporters may be.
Which brings up the topic of the next generation and where we stand with the younger GenX’ers and the rising Millennials.
Jen Sorensen (Ind) doesn’t so much decry the notion of behaving decently as she points out the futility of drinking from a poisoned well.
And the well has been poisoned, a process not of the past four years but of the last 30 or 40. I saw something promoting a Showtime series that says it all began with Reagan, and my response is not “I have to see that!” but “No shit, Sherlock.”
Reagan? Sure, but also with Nixon, the Silent Majority, Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and the death of the Fairness Doctrine.
In fact, over at GoComics, Tom the Dancing Bug has been running classics like this piece from a decade ago, which is particularly relevant at a moment when well-intentioned reformers want to do away entirely with the Electoral College and are questioning the Senate, without any explanation of how they intend to protect against tyranny of the majority.
Could their well-intentioned attempts at reform do more harm than good?
Well, Mitch McConnell wouldn’t have been able to pack the Supreme Court if well-intentioned Democrats hadn’t changed the Senate rules back when they held the majority.
In the necessary post-Trump cleanup, we’d do well to remember “Defend me from my friends; I can handle my enemies,” because our system is equally vulnerable to either.
And the louder you swear you won’t get fooled again, the likelier it becomes.
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