CSotD: No Time For Schadenfreude
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Gary Markstein comments on the decision to move tomorrow’s inauguration inside. Or possibly on the entire process of making Donald Trump president. Both interpretations work, though the former is less partisan and potentially more constructive.
There’s plenty of speculation and commentary about the decision, including people pointing out that the Kansas City stadium was packed for last night’s football game despite comparable weather to what is predicted for DC tomorrow, as well as others pointing out that JFK was inaugurated in worse weather and didn’t even wear a top coat.
Some speculation from the right is that there was fear of an assassination, which seems a bit overwrought: Are they going to keep him in the White House basement for the next four years?
Speculation from the left is that the weather provided an excuse for avoiding an obviously low turnout and thus negating the need for a repeat of the “alternative facts” with which Trump began his first administration.
Markstein just observes that “the people” have been frozen out. That’s a hard point to argue with, but it’s one that the anti-Trump crowd would do well to emphasize.
We’re seeing reports of people who spent thousands in airline tickets and hotel rooms that are now wasted, but — at least on my feeds — it’s provoking laughter and “I told you so” mockery.
This is no time for schadenfreude. We’ve already mocked the MAGAts with jokes about their being bumpkins and suckers and stupid people and, yes, with insults like “MAGAt.” If that were going to make them rethink, if that were going to make them love and embrace liberals, it would have worked before the November elections.
If common sense doesn’t argue against condescending insults, mathematical results should.
This is the first betrayal of the new administration, though Trump has already admitted he can’t lower food prices and his DOGE partners have said they can’t cut that much from the budget after all. Those, however, are theoretical.
Eating $5,000 in nonrefundable airline tickets and hotel rooms is very real, and if-and-when they realize that all the millions Trump was given for the inauguration will go into his pocket rather than being put into helping his followers recoup their losses … well, 2026 is only two years away and represents what may be the last chance to preserve the democracy.
Maybe make friends with these folks instead of driving them further away.
Trump is already hoping young voters will forget that, as Nick Anderson (Tribune) notes, he was against Tik Tok before he was for it, and Tik Tok not only took down their site before they needed to, but framed their explanation with a big smooch for the incoming president.
However, Congress has passed a law and the Supreme Court has affirmed it, so … so I guess what happens next depends on how much Trump cares about Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and so forth and so on.
I suppose that will tell us a lot about what to expect in the future.
But what we’re seeing so far is expert damage control and Trump’s traditional reliance on the short memories of his supporters.
Still, perhaps if we insult them and make fun of them and laugh at their disappointments, they’ll become our friends!
Anderson provides a bookend for this topic, because, as he suggests, people ignore philosophical, theoretical warnings, but they realize when their own ox has been gored.
The task ahead is to make sure people know when their own interests have been betrayed and when they’re losing something they care about. The trick is to point it out without mocking them, laughing at them or calling them stupid.
Without blaming the victims. Without saying it was their own fault. Without demanding to know what the hell they were thinking.
If we can do that for rape victims, we should be able to do it for people who have lost Tik Tok or who can’t afford groceries or who are losing health coverage or having their food stamps cut back.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Burkhart Mohr — Cartoon Movement
I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. — President Joseph Biden
Ramirez mocks the warning in Biden’s farewell speech, Mohr offers a grim vision of what is going on.
Mohr’s take reminds me of a meme that Daniel Boris put together a month ago, which gains more relevance following Biden’s speech and the response to it:
It seemed awfully grim at the time, but as we’ve seen the preparations, the nominations of incompetent loyalists to the cabinet and a parade of plutocrats to Mar A Lago — the latter reminiscent of the envelopes presented to Connie Corleone on the occasion of her wedding — the parallel becomes distressingly apt.
Tony Carrillo hit this one over the fence on F Minus (AMS), because it parallels Nick Anderson’s cartoon above but expands it. Anderson correctly observed that people take notice when their own interests are involved, but Carrillo wishes — okay, probably in vain — that people would recognize news that matters in a less personal context.
People call for “civics” to be taught, but I put that in quotation marks because nobody agrees what civics consists of. In my day, it was woven into the social studies curriculum, which half my senior year was economics more than history. But broken out by itself, it gets squishy and ill-defined and too often something kids sleep through, sometimes literally.
Jen Sorensen identifies much of the framework within which misinformation and disinformation are passed along. She’s right, but it’s a top-down approach, preaching to the choir. The MAGA crowd won’t see her cartoon, or identify with her POV.
The challenge is how to reach them at all in our siloed, divided country, and to do it in a voice they’ll be willing to hear.
We’ve got two years before the midterms. After that, it may not matter.
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