CSotD: Changes and Heelmarks
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Our biggest recent change is, of course, the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, which has inspired a lot of cartoons, many of them formulaic and bland and others that are reprehensible and make me wish they’d just be honest and use the N-word instead of purposefully misrepresenting her record.
I like David Horsey’s because he makes a statement beyond simply drawing a pleasant caricature, but doesn’t overload it with either words or overly optimistic projections.
He’s right: We are (finally) on the right side of history.
Which Benjamin Slyngstad points out with a chart that demonstrates why people were saying that it was well past time SCOTUS began — began — to reflect the American nation. And now the biggest challenge facing the District of Columbia’s parks service is scraping all those heel marks off the monuments, from the foot-draggers who sought to Make America Great Again by maintaining the prevailing balance.
To be fair, I wouldn’t make too much of the partisan vote by which only three Republicans voted to confirm or even the insulting gesture when GOP Senators not only declined to join in the applause following the tally but pointedly walked out of the chamber, though it wouldn’t bother me to see the term “pig” re-enter our political discourse.
There is absolutely nobody, except maybe Donald Trump or Roger Taney, that a Democratic president could have nominated who would have gained their support.
I don’t know if they were angry to see an African-American woman gain the bench, or simply furious that they couldn’t keep the nomination from coming to a vote this time.
As for those overly optimistic projections from the left side of the aisle, Clay Jones may be a bit of a partypooper, raining on several cartoons of little Black girls being inspired. But the fact is, it doesn’t change either the balance in the court or the racism in America.
As he notes, the struggle continues.
Lisa Benson (WPWG) condemned the moment with faint praise, marking it not as a victory for women or for African-Americans or, certainly, for America as a whole, but as a slight and insignificant win for the Democrats, who, she declares, are failures in every truly significant issue, each of which outweighs this insignificant partisan victory.
Darrin Bell (WPWG) dissents, pointing out that she cheerfully and lightly rose, if not over the corpses of a defeated GOP, at least over their best efforts to misrepresent her record, impugn her ethics and slander her view of the law.
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Though it’s necessary, even in this moment of celebration, to point out that the confirmation was not so much the arc of history bending towards justice as it was the result of voters turning out to create a Democratic majority in both houses and in the executive.
Steve Brodner notes that, while we’re focusing on the horrors in Ukraine, there’s plenty of damage being done by the enemies of democracy in this country.
Brown Jackson’s confirmation is worth celebrating, but the midterm elections are only seven months away.
But Ukraine also matters, and Kirk Walters (KFS) is hoping for a wider war. He is, one assumes, ready to put down his pen and enlist as soon as we move from arming the Ukrainians to joining in active combat.
Social media is full of stories about heroic Ukrainians who have given up their artistic endeavors in order to take up arms, including some who have been killed in the front lines.
I can’t wait for the flow of similarly inspiring stories about hawkish American cartoonists and columnists finally unleashed to show their true grit.
Bearing in mind that a number of spirited Yanks joined the armed forces of other nations well before the US entered WWII.
I don’t often find myself agreeing with Chip Bok (Creators), but he nails this one.
When you already know you’re facing a war criminal, when you know he’s losing and probably desperate, and when you suspect that there is no level of depravity to which he will not sink, the fact that he owns a major nuclear arsenal ought to stifle any chickenhawk instincts.
It’s not just the kids you’d be sending to fight who will be at risk of dying. Heaven forfend, you might have to pay the butcher’s bill yourself.
I remarked the other day that one of the nice things about living in Colorado Springs was that Cheyenne Mountain was just on the edge of town. My next door neighbor worked there, Then-Wife did some tech writing for their software and I could see it from the window of the radio studio as I was interviewing a Reagan stalwart who admitted that covering a door with dirt and hiding under it wouldn’t protect anybody from a nuclear blast.
It was comforting to know that, if push came to shove, we’d be jelly in the first five minutes. Now I’m hundreds of miles from any logical target and would have to cosplay “The Walking Dead” until the radiation poisoning took complete hold.
And this discomforting notion: Ukraine gave up a large supply of nuclear arms with assurances from the other nations, including Russia, that its sovereignty would be respected. Between this horrific war and what happened in Libya after Gaddafi agreed to give up their WMD program, it’s hard to imagine any small country not wanting to possess something more secure than promises.
Finally, Joy of Tech comments on Elon Musk and his Twitter buy-in, and they’re not the only dissenters speaking up from inside geek culture.
“Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future,” former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao writes in her analysis of Musk’s newest move.
As she notes,
To meld old Hollies with a modern cliche, “It’s not a curse. It’s a feature.”
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