CSotD: No responsibility at all

Ann Telnaes packs a lot into this commentary on Trump’s dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, mostly by saying little.

That is, while others have gone over the top with exaggerations in condemning the event, her only distortion is putting Fuentes — an outright and unabashed white supremacist — in a KKK hood.

Well, unless you count having Trump eat a steak that still shows pink, but maybe that’s ketchup.

Beyond that, she lets the situation speak for itself, with the artist formerly known at Kanye West looking enigmatic and Trump — with makeup accurately shown only on his face, not his neck or even around his eyes — spouting a familiar dismissive disclaimer.

In fact, she toned it down considerably, because Trump’s actual response, that he hosted Ye out of concern for “a seriously troubled young man who just happens to be black,” and his claim that, even after the meal, he really had no idea who Fuentes was or what he stands for, was too silly to pass muster in a cartoon.

As has often been observed, “truth is stranger than fiction” because fiction is required to made sense, and Trump’s unlikely version of events, once again, failed to jibe with any of the other witness’s accounts.

Trump’s position that he has no responsibility for the mire in which he wallows is not simply a symptom of his own lack of moral stature, but an echo of the amoral, uncaring universe in which he dwells and prospers. Compressing it into six words offers a Cliff Notes summary of his entire career.

Unsaid here, but dangling in the air over this gathering, is the shameful fact that Republican leadership has remained silent on the topic, despite the attention it has garnered.

When I say “mire,” by the way, I don’t just mean mud, which is the formal definition. I’m thinking, rather, of the filthy, stinking swamp of a pigsty, a reeking mud of dirt mixed with the animal’s own urine and feces.

Pigs left semi-feral to run in the woods and be harvested in fall remain fairly clean, and we can’t blame a pig for what happens when it’s confined to a tiny area.

But it tells us something important when others climb over the fence to luxuriate alongside the mire-covered animal.

 

Clay Jones predicts an absurd slap-fight between Trump and De Santis, once we get into the actual primary season, and he’s right that it would be an entertaining spectacle.

Still, we should remember that about 49% of voters recently declared themselves in favor of mindless, pointless, evidence-free accusations, including much based on the anti-Semitism and white supremacist positions of Trump’s dinner companions and Trump himself, with his talk of rapists and drug dealers from shithole countries.

 

The mob is intentionally incited by people who promote, for instance, fables about our schools, as seen in this Steve Kelley (Creators) cartoon, in which teachers and school boards are condemned for things that could easily be proven false by anyone who cared enough to visit classrooms and talk to teachers.

 

As Patrick Bagley says, while these fearmongers insist that allowing children to know that LBGTQ+ people exist is “grooming” them to become gay themselves, they take no responsibility at all for the deadly outcome of the constant barrage of hatred and hostility they spew towards those perceived as different.

 

Clay Jones is more specific, mocking Lauren Boebert for offering thoughts and prayers for the murder victims in her home state, but taking no responsibility at all for her own torrent of hostile, unthinking hatred.

Including the belligerent Christmas card of her family, festooned with high-powered rifles, which not only normalizes wallowing in the mire of threats and violence but glorifies it, an attitude, lest we forget, that earned her over half the votes in her district.

It’s not as if these groomers and sociopaths are outcasts.

 

Nor, as Kal Kallaugher points out, is it as if the Republicans are taking any responsibility at all.

You’d think there would at least be a debate within their ranks.

And you’d be wrong.

 

As David Horsey notes with regret, a sizeable number of self-proclaimed Christians — and extremist Muslims — remain utterly convinced that they’ve got God on their side.

 

As for those extremist Muslims, Lebanese cartoonist Hassan Bliebel (Cartoon Movement) salutes the Iranian team at the World Cup for their brave support of the anti-hijab protests in their nation, which they signaled not only by declining to sing their national anthem before their first match, but with statements of support by their captain in the post-game press conference.

I’ve been avoiding the contaminated games, despite my love of futbol, but I may tune in for this afternoon’s (Update — no, tomorrow’s –see comments) USA/Iran match, since I’d dearly love to see them advance and remain a prominent, globally visible thorn in the side of the mullahs.

Meanwhile, I continue to hear complaints that nobody from a nation with its own flaws should condemn FIFA’s corruption or Qatar’s ghastly human rights positions, which Cartoon Movement condemns as a form of whataboutism that, improperly advanced, goes beyond common decency.

Their discussion of how this impacts political cartooning is well worth the click.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Morten Morland)

(Patrick Blower)

Meanwhile, the street protests in China are rising in size, in tone and in how they are connected from one city to another, and Morland offers a salute to the courage of the people in a tribute to Tank Man, the lone soul who stopped a line of tanks in the days of Tiananmen Square, when an uprising of young people demanding reform galvanized the world.

But Blower seems closer to the reality, which is that China isn’t so different today than it was at the height of the Cultural Revolution, particularly as Xi Jinping asserts his personal authority in that authority-bound nation.

Tank Man remains a symbol of courage, but we should not forget how briefly he halted Beijing’s response, and that thousands are thought to have been slaughtered in the ensuing crackdown.

The event has been wiped from history in China, and it may be that the people in the streets today don’t even know what happened 33 years ago

But the US isn’t perfect, so we shouldn’t demand that Beijing take any responsibility at all.