CSotD: Picking Sides
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Telnaes offers a State of the Union commentary at the Contrarian, one of the stronger arms of the resistance. Not only do they offer solid commentary by qualified writers, but they’ve added political cartoons.
Ann Telnaes is well-positioned to address the topic, because aside from her own cartooning, she is active in the global free-press community and has contacts and experience around the world. She is not simply a First Amendment hardliner but has defended the right to free expression everywhere.
She’s certainly right about the way Dear Leader has taken to controlling the American press. He has booted the Associated Press out of White House press conferences because they won’t call the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” and has expelled other uncooperative news outlets or sent them to the back of the room.
As she says, he puts toadies up front so they can ask “How did you get to be so wonderful?” sorts of questions, and if you don’t believe it, tune in sometime and see for yourself. What is coming out of these sessions is a series of press releases, not news coverage.
And it’s contagious: Here’s how one of Trump’s top loyalists responds to a reporter from the UK, and note that she didn’t even listen to find out what the question was. This snotty middle-school attitude is not just where we’re headed but where we already are.
Little wonder the world sees us as King Midas in reverse, turning gold into crap, and it’s not simply “I don’t like Donald Trump” but, rather, a judgment on American attitude towards policy, education, the economy, NATO and other elements both domestically and across the globe.
There were plenty of people who thought LBJ was a country bumpkin, but they still saw the United States as an ally and trading partner. The revulsion towards our boorish, braggart of a leader goes beyond his personal behavior and impacts America’s image and our ability to function in the world community.
Childish, temperamental behavior has become policy, and Madam and Eve got some laughs over the US expelling their ambassador for remarks critical of the MAGA movement, a ridiculous over-reaction that made him a hero in his own country.
Then they came back for a second helping when Dear Leader’s expert crew managed a major screw-up, the joke being that even little Thandi would be embarrassed at such an obvious, avoidable blunder.
And Thandi is kind, compared to how Globe & Mail cartoonist Parkins saw the matter, though of course it’s only fair to point out that, while the South Africans may hold Dear Leader in contempt, the Canadians have become genuinely hostile and therefore eager to jump on our excesses and mistakes as payback for the disrespect and hostility we’ve expressed towards them.
Yuxtaposición Del Día
Alcaraz and Espinoza leap on the sudden disconnect between the American government and the Cuban exile community, as the Trump administration has canceled a program whereby 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans were given legal entry to the United States.
Dear Leader continues to peddle a nonsensical story about Venezuela shipping criminals to our country, but the Cuban community has always enjoyed a special place in which refugees have been welcomed, and, while some limits emerged under Obama and Biden, it wasn’t cut off as it is by Trump, and, as Espinoza points out, by a Secretary of State with Cuban roots, albeit one whose parents came here under Batista, not Castro.
It’s quite a change from the way Goldberg saw things at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Nor does it seem to fit the outrage among conservative Latinos when Janet Reno stepped in to resolve a parental custody violation in the case of Elian Gonzalez.
But times change and there is another captain and crew guiding our ship of state. Immigrants of all sorts are being tossed overboard as unwelcome, including students, professors, medical workers and journalists who fail to toe the party line.
Or who coach soccer but come from the wrong country and root for a Spanish soccer team. The question now being, once they’ve deported disloyal foreigners or sent them to Salvadoran hell-holes, will they start looking for disloyal native-born people to arrest and jail?
We’ve already experienced their attack on equality and on the notion that women and minorities deserve to be given a chance to compete for educational and career opportunities, with DEI becoming a slur and an effort which, if not strictly speaking illegal, will still be prosecuted as if it were.
Congress has become irrelevant under a loyalist GOP majority. Legality is now whatever Dear Leader says it is, and apparently it’s patriotic to storm the Capitol building, attack police, smash windows and steal souvenirs, but highly illegal to attack automobiles made by the president’s best friend’s company.
While across the country, colleges and law firms are dutifully bending the knee and pledging their loyalty.
If you’re not sure which side you’re on, you’re on the wrong one. If you accept that giving tax breaks to millionaires means we can no longer give food to the hungry or medical care to the poor, you’re loyal to people who will never be loyal to you.
But there is a rising pushback, with angry constituents making town halls uncomfortable for GOP representatives, with massive crowds cheering for Sanders and AOC, and with special elections showing a rising resistance to the current administration.
We shall see, though I think Smith is being pessimistic when he centers the midterms on Social Security. To start with, I suspect we won’t see actual cuts, if we see them at all, before the midterms, and the inconveniences currently planned won’t hit a large enough group to make a difference.
But Social Security is not the only battle being waged, and it’s not the only sign of a growing fury.
Before we start predicting the midterms, let’s see how hurling money at the Wisconsin judicial elections works, and how many people turn out this coming Saturday.
This game ain’t over.
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