Comic Strip of the Day Editorial cartooning

CSotD: Parading Our Colors

Tomorrow is the Big Parade, and, in Pett’s cartoon, King Donald wonders why nobody is saluting as the horrors of the past five months pass in review.

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison” works in reverse as well, however, and there are plenty of people in this country joyfully feasting on what has happened to the nation. The polls show a decline in support for Trump and his policies, but even with less than half the nation supporting him, he’s got plenty of fans, and Pett echoes the inauguration by showing Rich Uncle Pennybags in the reviewing stand.

When you run for office, you naturally find yourself surrounded by supporters. There has been revulsion at the open praise Trump’s cabinet members lavish on him, and it is a sign that he has appointed toadies.

Lincoln appointed a cabinet of rivals, but (spoiler alert!) Donald Trump is not Abraham Lincoln.

Trump is, rather, the anti-Lincoln, including renaming military bases to honor those who turned against our nation in Lincoln’s time, but also in the appalling spectacle he put on at Fort Bragg this week, making a dishonest political speech in front of a hand-picked audience of soldiers guaranteed loyal not to the nation but to him.

Lincoln sought to bind up the wounds of a divided nation, while Trump seeks to widen and exploit them.

Juxtaposition of the Day

Kal is more polite than Rizou, but both note the overwhelming hubris of the man who has not stopped raking in money and seeking praise since he first descended the escalator before a hired audience.

We’ve come far from the nation whose first veterans formed the Society of the Cincinnati, named for the Roman general who, like Washington, served his nation, won its war, then retired to private civilian life.

Bennett goes behind the presidential personality to indicate another fundamental shift. The cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump is more than the shower of fulsome, personal praise and includes a belief that, rather than the president leading the government, the government exists to fulfill the president’s ambitions and positions.

In his first administration, Trump clashed with attorneys general who advised him of what the law and the Constitution did not allow him to do.

He has solved the problem now by appointing Pam Bondi, who proved her malleability earlier by dropping Florida’s prosecution of his Trump University fraud after receiving a $25,000 campaign donation.

Now those who challenge Trump policy get warned by the Attorney General of possible prosecution, while a mayor is arrested for alleged trespass and a member of Congress gets indicted for assault after being grabbed by officers.

And Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem upped the ante: While making a speech calling the governor of California and mayor of Los Angeles “socialists” whose government she planned to overthrow, she watched her goons attack and handcuff a US Senator, claiming the man who said “I’m Senator Alex Padilla” never identified himself.

All of which takes some of the hard edges off Kallaugher and Rizou’s depictions, and adds credence to Bennett’s doubts.

Molina is more specific in tracing the parade route, having watched this process play out in his native Nicaragua before he was forced to flee a government that also feels dissent is disloyalty and must be punished.

What to do? Someone suggested that nobody watch the parade on TV tomorrow, under the false impression that television ratings are compiled either by Big Brother’s constant surveillance or perhaps by magic. Ratings are compiled by having a sample of households fill out diaries of who watched what during a ratings period.

If you aren’t a Nielsen family, your viewing won’t be counted, so you can watch the parade or watch porn or watch nothing and nobody will know one way or the other. In fact, if you are a Nielsen family, you could watch the parade but not record it in your diary and it would be the same as not watching.

And besides, the administration has already decided what resistance means. Telnaes is hardly the only cartoonist to point out how the administration has supported the rioters of the attempted coup in January, 2021, but is now condemning those who protest against ICE in the streets of Los Angeles.

But Pam Bondi has explained that it is not a double standard, because that was then and this is now. I don’t know what that means except that if you sit back and do nothing, you can’t complain about whatever happens next.

She explained that California is burning, which people in California don’t seem to believe, but, then, we’ve been told that Minneapolis was burned during the George Floyd demonstrations and nobody who was there believed that, either, or that it was Trump, not Gov. Walz, who called in the National Guard.

John Deering offers the theory that California is a purposeful use of chaos, stirred up to distract from the more subtle conniving happening with the budget. It’s an attractive idea, because, while it’s hard to prove, it’s certainly working as a distraction.

It’s hard to argue that people should ignore what’s happening there and focus, instead, on what’s happening in Congress. But you can write to your Senators tonight and show up to a No Kings Demonstration tomorrow.

As for the facts themselves, it’s lovely to believe that “truth will out,” but history tells us differently, and while there are plenty of cartoonists who defy the king and his court, there are others who proclaim a loyalist reality, as seen in this second

Juxtaposition of the Day

You see what you want to see, you believe what you want to believe, and if the editor of your local paper chooses one of these cartoons, that’s the news that will be on your porch, regardless of what happens in the streets of LA.

What’s going to happen in your streets?

As Lalo says, and as I’ve often said, it only takes one egocentric jackass to provide the media with colorful excitement.

Don’t be that guy. Make your local news cover a large, peaceful demonstration.

Be present.

And be cool.

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Comments 10

  1. Reading AND exercise? C’mon Kal. 😉

  2. We had four years to take care of this mess once and for all, but we didn’t. There will be no Mulligans available.

  3. “No KIngs!”

    “We are not a kin.”

    You just can’t make this stuff up.

      1. Well, he sure ain’t no kin o’ mine.

      2. But you’d be rich! You’d be in the money! You’d be socially secure!

  4. fortunately I work the day of the Orange Menace Ego Dictatorship parade. I’ve read that many of the major news channels don’t plan to cover it but never fear oh MAGA worshipers Fox Propaganda channel will cover it for them.

  5. Those soldiers attending and cheering at Trump’s speech should be disciplined. Ditto for their officers. An absolutely shameful display by the Army. Some officers said that the soldiers wouldn’t be disciplined because it would be awkward because the president is their “boss”. Uh, their oath is to the constitution, not the president. It is horrifying that senior officers wouldn’t make the distinction.

  6. Just one minor quibble about how the Nielsen ratings work, there are no diaries filled out these days, now it’s a digital device that family members carry around that pick up a high frequency signal from TV, radio and even online streaming services that participate in the rating service. A little closer to Big Brother than most of us are comfortable with, but it is what it is. And you didn’t hear that from me…

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