CSotD: Humpday Humor

I’m with Lizzie in Reply All (WPWG), with some mixed feelings about the holiday season but a large dose of “When is this over?”

For the self-employed and empty-nested, the holidays are mostly days when the banks and the post office are closed, but, in addition, we’re entering a Dead Zone where a lot of people take the entire week off between Christmas and New Years. There isn’t much news nor people reporting it, and I expect a few political cartoonists will put their pens aside as well.

Take that as a warning that we may go into some Cartoons From Years Past here, simply for lack of fresh fodder, so I hope you like that sort of thing, though I expect the comic strips to remain robust throughout.

Juxtaposition of the Day

The Other Coast — Creators

The Barn — Creators

One of the interesting divides that Theodore Roosevelt dealt with was the distinction between “conservation” and “preservation.” Conservation is the wise use of resources, while preservation means not touching them.

On his famous 1903 trip west, Roosevelt visited Yosemite and spent three days with John Muir, but the two later clashed over plans to build a dam in the Hetch Hechy as a water source for the growing city of San Francisco. Muir was a preservationist, TR was a conservationist.

Throughout his trip, Roosevelt boosted the preservation of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, but emphasized the value of trees as a water resource as well as a source of lumber, and championed wise husbandry of the nation’s forests. As he said in a letter to America’s schoolchildren:

Roosevelt’s presidency was a start to the government’s backing of the conservation movement. Relevant to these cartoons, the Nature Conservancy takes a strong stance in favor of real Christmas trees, which, as noted here the other day, are nearly all farmed.

Not only are they replaced by the farmers, but they are neither manufactured nor are they shipped nearly as far as artificial trees from China, meaning that their carbon footprint is considerably smaller.

And when they are no longer in your home, they can be used in various personal and civic projects where they continue to make a contribution. Artificial trees eventually end up as a permanent addition to landfills.

While, for the patriotic among us, real trees represent American jobs.

Speaking of which:

And on the topic of American jobs, Chip Bok (Creators) poses an easily-answered question.

If Nippon Steel were to sell American-made steel to Honda’s overseas factories, that raw material would still count as domestic content, because it was made in America by American workers, from the mines to the mills.

But since two-thirds of Hondas sold in America are built in America by a different set of skilled American workers, it’s likely that the only foreign content would be a handful of components that are not made here.

Granted, a large share of the profits would be headed to Japan now instead of to American plutocrats, but, in either case, they weren’t being deposited into your bank account.

By the way, Honda is not a union shop, but they, Hyundai and Toyota have a cunning plan to avoid having the UAW successfully organize in their American factories: Following the union’s success with Ford, GM and Stellantis, they gave all their workers substantial raises, too.

Mr. Boffo offers an excellent way to explain things to kids, assuming you want to keep them believing.

Santa really is a major conspiracy theory, complete with explanations that don’t stand up to much scrutiny but that will satisfy anyone who is strongly invested in believing.

I’m seeing the start of cartoons about Colorado kicking Trump off the ballot, but it reminds me more of Sunday’s Candorville (KFS). I’m either realistic enough or pessimistic enough that I expect SCOTUS to reverse things, but, even if they don’t, the True Believers will continue to truly believe.

Why do people believe idiotic conspiracy theories? Maybe they like to be the smartest person in the room but have to clutch at straws in order to do so.

It helps to be slightly sociopathic so that you think the reason other people don’t know something is because of a conspiracy only you and your elite circle of smart people know about, rather than because it is self-evident nonsense.

Occam’s Razor wouldn’t even qualify as nail scissors with this gang. The more complex the explanation, the more delight they take in explaining it all in exquisite detail.

And while the Internet certainly speeds circulation of nonsense, conspiracy theories have always been with us.

I don’t much care what they think of the moon landing or the death of Elvis, though the theory that 9/11 was an inside job begins to intrude on the orderly governance of the nation, and the idea that the 2020 election was stolen is definitely a political issue, given that these paranoid nincompoops vote.

We all know that it was the 2000 election that was stolen.

Or maybe it wasn’t, but SCOTUS is now going to decide if Trump deserves a shot at Colorado’s 10 electoral votes, so I’m holding onto my confetti for awhile.

Forbes, you will note, is in on the conspiracy. Not the one about the moon landing, but the one about our open border, and they’re not afraid to name names.

Including that nice Mr. Hilter who, at last report, had rented a room in a small boarding house in Somerset.