David Horsey focuses on Trump's executive order to resume work on the Dakota Access pipeline and, in his essay, suggests that Trump's war on the environment and on science could and should spark an uprising against his disregard of facts and his war on the truth.
I wish Trump's move had taken me by surprise, but Obama's executive order halting the pipeline came out after the election and it seemed clear would not survive into February.
And I'm pleased to see National Park Service people defiantly posting facts about climate change online, but it's hardly surprising that their postings are being scrubbed, in part because of the war on science but moreso because of the postings being off-topic and unauthorized.
Still, those acts of flagrant defiance signal a resistance that, if it flourishes in such ways, and in marches in pink hats, and in contributions to Planned Parenthood to defy funding cuts, might persuade GOP lawmakers to weigh the differences between party loyalty and saving their own scalps.
I realize that last phrase may seem racially insensitive except that, while the Lakota are at the center of the pipeline issue, Horsey's cartoon made me think of the Cheyenne, allied to the Lakota at the Little Bighorn, and, specifically, of a pair of Southern Cheyenne women who, as the Indians were scavenging for supplies among the bodies and mutilating the corpses as was the custom, persuaded some men not to mutilate Custer, who (sorry, Libby) had a common-law wife among their kinswomen.
However, they did drive a sewing awl into his ears to remove whatever blockage had caused him not to have heard the words spoken at the treaty he had signed seven years before, when he had been told the consequences of once more making war on the Cheyenne.
It was, of course, too little too late, because, despite that great victory, the endgame was disastrous for the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota.
Still, I like the notion of opening ears, and I don't think a continuing barrage of Pinocchio cartoons will be sufficient to open the ears of anyone who is not already listening.
How, then, can the message be sent to those who are not inclined to hear?
Don't look for a definitive answer; I'm genuinely asking the question.
Juxtaposition of the Day
For example, Jim Morin chooses a narrow target and doesn't offer any humor, making, rather, a grim statement about the hypocrisy in the GOPs sudden embrace of that which they were just calling unconstitutional overreach a few weeks ago.
Marlette broadens this to not only change the charge of partisan hypocrisy into one of active participation in the lies of the past eight years, but adds to it a question of the patriotism of those who allow blatant dishonesty to govern their actions, and our country.
I like both approaches, but my guess is that the same resistant viewer touched by one would not be reached by the other.
In particular, Morin's more specific charge might provoke a response of, "Well, yeah, that's true," but only from a very fair-minded individual who was open to the conversation.
Marlette's might be too much entirely. Lumping all those sins into one piece could be more overwhelming than persuasive, and it's hard to imagine an argument that would resonate among birthers in the first place.
As Clinton said -- though it was generally misreported -- half the people in Trump's basket of supporters were unreachable.
It's the other half that still need to be persuaded, and I'm not sure reminding them that they allied themselves with birthers will do that.
In our divided society, we become like the people I knew from Ulster, who did not support the violence of the nationalist groups, but were even more outraged by young men being dragged from their beds in the night and imprisoned without lawyers or charges.
Similarly, I think attacking Trump supporters could cause the more reasonable among them to strengthen their loyalty to the screwballs and nutcases in the deplorable half of the basket, and, thus, to Trump himself.
Better, I think, to let the campaign become history and focus on Trump and on those Republicans who declared him incompetent, dishonest and unqualified before he was elected but are now loyally following along.
And keep it simple.
I really like Patrick Chappatte's take on both the First Amendment and patriotism, but it's an insider gag, more to comfort the afflicted than to open blocked ears.
That is, and I don't mean this as an insult, it may require too much awareness of actual news and the Chinese media, as well as too strong a commitment to the free press to change any minds.
I would not have said that a few months ago, before it became clear that people who had screamed "Go back to Russia!" at antiwar demonstrators a generation earlier would now support a candidate who was actively embracing, and being embraced by, Vladimir Putin.
I hope cartoonists will continue to ask people what "patriotism" means, and not accept "Follow the (Dear) Leader" as an answer.
If put simply, that is an approach in which ears that are not permanently blocked may hear you.
Juxtaposition of the fatal K.I.S.S.
I still believe that, if Hitler had been strangled in his crib, someone else would have risen to fill the desire for revenge and glory in that beaten-down, defeated nation.
However, I'm softening my rejection of pulling his pants down in the midst of a critical speech.
That specific action would earn him sympathy from his fans, but a stream of ridicule that is easily understood, that does not hinge on sophisticated knowlege of history or even current news could work, the sort of silly, childish nonsense that, in the hands of late-night TV hosts, sank Bob Dole and John Kerry and Al Gore.
So Margulies and Hands may be applying the awls correctly.
Let's hope it's not too late.
Sadly, IMHO it *is* too late: the US has spent too many years traveling down this path, and now nothing will change it but some kind of forced intervention. The stupid amoungst your populace (and yes, we're seeing them in Canada as well) have been given too much leeway and now see their place in all this as their own special-right entitlement, which glistens with so much irony that I dont even know where to begin.
But then America has consistently proven to be not the sharpest cheddar in the cheese aisle: it will elect a president like Obama, and then hobble him with a congress like... well, the one the voters kept sending back, despite its gross inconsistencies and outright lying. Maybe someone can explain that to me someday. But I wont hold my breath waiting.
Posted by: sean martin | 01/26/2017 at 11:12 AM