CSotD: Realms of Bliss, Realms of Darkness

Not sure Fiona Katauskas is being terribly helpful with this cartoon, but it’s at least comforting to know that all the low-information nitwits are not segregated into the United States, and that, if they’re also in Australia, they’re probably everywhere.

Which isn’t helpful because we still have to deal with ours, but it’s also not helpful to take a condescending attitude towards them, because that’s a large part of how we got to the current crisis point.

We all know of people motivated to greatness by childhood poverty and lack of resources, but their stories stand out because that’s not the usual response, and jokes about tin foil hats only deepen the resentment.

Thoreau wrote that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, but Thoreau was an elitist and wrote for other elitists, determined to remain above that mass of men.

Meanwhile, JD Vance is hardly the first person to gain a following by playing up “hillbillies” as noble and worthy people, and portraying himself as “one of you,” though if it weren’t to his benefit, he wouldn’t have a rearview mirror in his Cadillac.

But it’s a mystery how the Donald Trumps can hold themselves out as “one of you” when they so clearly are not.

Yet here we are, and while Trump was mocked for tossing rolls of paper towels to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, that insensitive gesture pales, as Nick Anderson (Counterpoint) notes, next to the potentially fatal impact of his distribution of harmful lies in the wake of Helene and Milton.

It’s hard to know what begins as a genuine error and what is a deliberate lie, but he persists in his statements even after being corrected, even after the facts are known.

And why not? It works, and, when the goal is power, the ends justify the means.

Rick McKee portrays the result, which is people rejecting needed help because they’ve been radicalized into distrusting the federal government in general — the fellow wears a “Don’t Tread on Me” shirt — and FEMA specifically, having been falsely told that their property will be bulldozed and confiscated.

Rescue workers have been hampered by such things, though I think it unfair hyperbole to suggest that they would just give up and dismiss a victim as a Trump voter.

More to the point here is that he portrays the victim of both hurricane and lies as a semi-literate slob, which raises the question of the cartoon’s purpose.

“Don’t be like this idiot” could be a reasonable message, but as noted here yesterday, people tend to defend those with whom they identify. There is only a fringe at the edge of the group who can be shamed into changing their social allegiances, which is why you don’t use terms like “trailer trash” if you’re trying to make friends with people who have families living in mobile homes.

To put it another way, I can make jokes about my Thanksgiving Uncle, but you’d better not mock him.

McKee redeems himself with this cartoon, because, while he places a MAGA hat on the fellow’s head and a scowl on both their faces, he suggests the normalcy of people who are being lied to. Yes, they’re MAGAts and this isn’t the first time they’ve bought into the hype, and, yes, they live in a state of perpetual anger.

In order to talk about whether they were always so defensive and hostile, I’ll just once more plug the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, in which hate radio transformed a nice guy and turned him sour.

A main point in that film is that he may have been gullible or easily influenced, but he wasn’t stupid.

Like your Thanksgiving Uncle, he just became hard to live with because he was being manipulated by well-financed, well-directed sources of misinformation, fear and distrust.

There’s a lot of it out there, and it’s hard to tell what is deliberate propaganda and what is innocent misunderstanding.

For instance, I don’t understand this Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) cartoon. I know what it says, that the Harris/Walz campaign has run aground over bad polls.

But the polls aren’t bad. It’s certainly tight, but she’s marginally ahead in national polls at 538, at the NYTimes and at the Economist, and, while the Independent suggests Trump has a slight advantage in four of seven swing states, nearly every poll shows leads that are within the margin of error.

In other words, it’s a statistical tie nationwide.

There are ways to indicate that: Spinning wheels, perhaps. But it’s not as if Trump’s getting any better traction.

And Scott Stantis is correct: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget predicts that Harris’s economic plans would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

But they predict that Trump’s economic plan would add $7.5 trillion in that same period.

I’m no CPA, but I know which number is more than twice the other.

So he’s right about her plan, but he seems to be leaving out an extremely crucial point.

(I’d also be a little judicious in using a rhino in a political cartoon unless I meant a RINO.)

I prefer this Gary Varvel (Creators) piece, in which the artist’s intentions are perfectly clear, though he is confirming that FEMA is only giving people $750 to repair their homes, that they plan to bulldoze Chimney Rock, NC, and confiscate the land, and that sinister government forces created the hurricanes in order to punish Republican voters.

I thought those stories were misinformation and lies, but according to Varvel, I’ve been fooled by Joe Biden.

Don’t listen to those people who keep warning you that leopards will eat your face.

Or as Dr. MacLeod says, to those who say the party which promises to build concentration camps for deporting both illegal and legal immigrants, as well as naturalized citizens, is going to build concentration camps for deporting both illegal and legal immigrants, as well as naturalized citizens.

To each his suff’rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
—?Thomas Gray