CSotD: The Center Cannot Hold
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I hadn’t planned on featuring any more “list of accomplishment” cartoons, since, as said the other day, they were fairly identical and uninspired, but Matson has broken through with this piece, since we’ve entered a moment when the oligarchs seem to be losing their grip.
Specifically, Republican lawmakers have been advised by their leadership to stop holding townhalls with their constituents, because they’ve been running into a lot of very angry people at these gatherings. It is being suggested that, if they want to meet the people, they do it by Zoom so they can cut them off if they become obstreperous, or at least only meet with residents of their districts rather than allowing all the public to attend.
That’s the problem with democracy: People think it gives them the right to criticize their leaders.
That’s silly: Republicans don’t even have the right to criticize each other.
The answer to this problem is simple: If you can’t inspire loyalty, command it.
And as Kamensky points out, the first step is to deny access to journalists who fail to toe the administration’s line.
He shows a disloyal videographer being kicked out of Air Force One in flight, which is comic exaggeration, because disloyal reporters are not allowed on the plane in the first place, nor are they allowed in the Oval Office.
Some are still allowed in the White House press room, but they won’t likely be called on, since Dear Leader is now determining who has access, where they may sit and whether or not he takes their questions.
As Karoline Leavitt explained, journalists’ access to the President is a privilege, not a right. We believe in the First Amendment freedom to report, but not to gather news if you don’t report it the way the administration wants it reported.
As Wolterink points out, that includes using whatever cockamamie names the President in his wisdom chooses to bestow, for instance, on international bodies of water. The Associated Press has been barred for choosing to use the terms that everyone else in the world uses, but it’s only fair to point out that journalists are not required to use the term “Biden Crime Family” when describing the former president.
Yet.
But as Wolterink suggests, the new rules of access also require promotion of Trump policies, and, at least by implication, demand use of short words that don’t suggest acceptance of women and minorities as equal to the white men who made this country what it is today.
They must also avoid saying what this country is today, bringing us to our
Juxtaposition of the Day
You might expect this to touch off a rebellion amid media outlets, but, as Dr. MacLeod points out, you would be wrong about the “paper of record,” because the Washington Post couldn’t move fast enough to declare its loyalty to Dear Leader.
Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and also has some businesses that rely on government grants, issued a Happy Talk Decree that, as Van Leeuwen suggests, leaves a very large hole in the newspaper’s coverage of national politics.
Bezos is calling this a dedication to free markets and personal liberty, which is as good an example of Newspeak as anything Orwell imagined, but Steve Brodner will very likely never be invited to cover Dear Leader or to the Washington Post’s Christmas party for remembering back when the newspaper’s motto was that democracy dies in darkness.
And for pointing out who is decreeing that darkness.
Barry Blitt offers this cover for the March 3 New Yorker, and I not only agree with his analysis but with its placement on the cover where even nonsubscribers will see it.
I particularly like the armored cop escorting the Founders out of the building, because it does suggest the brutal force being used to end the American Dream. And make no mistake: However this dark night ends, the country will never be the same again. It won’t snap back any more than it did after our first civil war.
If Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow, the GOP would be hard-pressed to find anyone as entertaining as he has been, and having taken a turn in professional wrestling programs, he knows that his schtick doesn’t have to be on the level in order to make the audience shout and cheer.
But they’d find somebody eager to fill the chair. Greed and power are infectious.
Paul Fell notes that a lot of people have been using the “slowly boiled frog” myth to describe how we got here, but frogs are one helluva lot smarter than we are, because they will try to climb out in time.
Instead, he enlists the old joke, “What is green and red and goes 100 miles per hour?” And it’s any frog in a blender, not just the one he’s marked “Nebraska.”
You can’t reassemble the frog and we won’t be able to turn back to the America we knew 10 years ago, or even last month.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a president who has progressed from making impossible promises that at least sounded good to suggesting projects of absolutely gob-smacking, jaw-dropping idiocy.
His promise to drive all the Palestinians out of Gaza and create a seaside resort there was horrifyingly stupid to begin with. Ethnically cleansing the area would not only be a war crime but would touch off a terrorist response that would make ISIS, the PLO and al Qaeda look like altar boys.
But if you needed to recognize the difference between a dreamer and a lunatic, you had only to see the bizarre AI video that Dear Leader posted and that Kimimo is mocking. And, yes, bearded odalisques appear at the 15-second mark of that astonishing video.
As Wuerker points out, there’s no danger that Trump could actually create such a place — with or without bearded odalisques — because he’s already proven his incapacity to successfully operate a casino in the middle of Atlantic City.
As Madam & Eve point out, his grip is slipping. We’ll see if his compliant billionaire buddies can save him from the people, or even from himself.
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