CSotD: Aftermath, if you can keep it
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A whole lot of cartoons just went obsolete, including this one by Mike Luckovich (AJC).
But others spring up to take their place, and this Pat Byrnes (Cagle) piece makes a lovely companion piece to Luckovich’s earlier cartoon, the pair, taken together, offering a reasonable perspective on the past several weeks.
Even yesterday’s concession was half-hearted at best, keeping Byrnes’ vision alive, even if Biden and Harris will now get to measure the drapes from inside.
There’s still the potential for a lot of dog-in-the-manger destruction before Trump turns over the keys and nothing in his admission suggested he intends anything else.
It makes me feel that Clay Bennett (CTFP) is a bit optimistic, at least if you visualize Uncle Sam’s gratitude as being for the ouster of Trump rather than in the broader context of being glad the election is over.
Not that I’m not happy to see Dear Leader hanging it up, but I celebrate the peace that comes with that, rather than, specifically, the ascendency of Joe Biden. As noted here before, I’d welcome a kind of Gerald Ford pause to regroup, and if it’s even more like a Fred Rogers presidency, I’d take that, too.
It did occur to me yesterday that we’re going to have to readjust to a world in which pronouncements from the administration are no longer based on division, suspicion and hostility.
For that relief, much thanks, even if we’ve still got some ghosts to be dealt with.
This Rick McKee (Counterpoint) cartoon from a few days ago has not lost its relevance, because he’s right: The illogical, anti-factual attitude that denies Covid is the same illogic that embraces paranoid conspiracy theories.
I don’t know what we do about that, but history doesn’t offer a whole lot of encouragement.
We could blame John Wilkes Booth for the violent, racist aftermath of our Civil War, since Lincoln might have been able to direct a more efficient Reconstruction, but you can certainly see the lessons of Versailles in how the Greatest Generation dealt with the Axis in turn.
The WWI Armistice involved so much negotiating and treaty-making and reparations and theoretical never-again pledges that we wound up with a re-armed Germany seeking to restore its national pride.
Such that, when the question came up again, the Allies responded by — to use a technical term — bombing the living shit out of Germany and then unleashing the atomic bomb on Japan.
Maybe you shouldn’t have to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats, but asking them to leave doesn’t seem to work, either.
Which brings us to this
Juxtaposition of the Day
Elevating Iran as the new boogeyman is easy enough, so long as you ignore the role the mullahs played in getting Reagan into office, and the fact that conservatives then secretly helped arm them.
But that’s history, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, though we’ve been running out of the other kind of friends lately.
It should not, however, take a great deal of research to realize that the treaty to suppress Iran’s nuclear weapons development was (A) not Obama’s or Kerry’s but rather an effort by the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union and (B) was working, until Dear Leader tipped the board over and stormed out of the room.
How well it worked could be argued by people of good will, but not by anyone who continues to promote the stark, obvious lie that frozen Iranian funds, released upon signing of the deal, were a payoff and not simply a refund.
Never mind. The chickenhawks have chosen our next target and the Deplorables will embrace the idea.
And, as the old graffito says, “War is good business. Invest your son.”
Unless he has heel spurs.
Dana Summers (Tribune) offers a cartoon that opens up a much more interesting and potentially productive discussion.
Demonizing the Squad is an ongoing conservative priority, just as demonizing Nancy Pelosi has been and demonizing Hillary Clinton was until she faded from the scene.
At which point we could diverge into a long discussion of things like minimum wage, health care and other policies the members of the Squad consider priorities and that are aimed at helping the working poor, but let’s put that aside for the moment.
They didn’t deliver the whole election: Suburbs were a major factor. But minority election workers — not just the Squad itself but allies in various states — did organize well and provide much needed support in an election that proved closer than expected.
But minority voters in minority communities were, it has been pointed out somewhat joyfully, not universally in favor of Biden, and those who thought Cuban exiles were leftwingers proved wrong (duh), though I’m more forgiving of those who didn’t know that Mexicans aren’t Nicaraguans aren’t Venezuelans aren’t Puerto Ricans and aren’t all raving liberals.
Anyway, the mainstream, by definition, delivers the most votes, so the issue of how much influence the progressive wing of the Democratic Party will have on the incoming administration is open and interesting.
At this point, I’d watch the Cabinet, because AOC and other progressives raised an objection to the rumored appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Transportation Secretary, citing his role as mayor in the coverup of the murder of Laquan McDonald, and Biden appears to be backing away from him.
Hardly a capitulation to Stalinism, however, in a world in which failure to properly background-check your nanny has also squelched Cabinet appointments.
We shall see, as the youthful, impractical optimism of the progressives encounters the established crotchets of the rightwing fringe.
Meanwhile
Joel Pett (Lexington HL) sorta kinda rewrites the lyrics to an old favorite.
The “sorta kinda” part being that the original song was a salute to the military forces who, indeed, would be home for Christmas only in their dreams, if they got home at all.
Something for selfish snowflakes to bear in mind when they’re feeling sorry for themselves this holiday season.
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