It's Not The Heat
An essay about SUVs, the Afterlife and Marjorie Taylor Greene...
Despite the fact that the Midwest of the United States is currently melting and you could fry eggs on our sidewalks except the chickens we’d get eggs from spontaneously combusted earlier this week, people are still buying SUVs the size of small nations that get approximately a hundred yards to the gallon and add to the air pollution that is causing tornadoes and heat waves and rising sea levels and cats marrying dogs.
According to the following article, SUVs accounted for 48% of cars sold globally in 2023 and in advanced economies (the “advanced” economies are the ones screwing up the planet so I’m not sure “advanced” is the right word) SUV sales surpassed 50% for the first time.
Now here’s a quote from that article:
“If SUVs were a country, they would be the world’s fifth largest emitter of CO2”
Bill Nye The Science Guy recently appeared on CNN (and right now hearing from a guy who explains science to children seems like a good idea) and said unlike a war where an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 gets everybody motivated, climate change is happening slowly so like the low-IQ frog that gradually gets boiled to death we’re looking at each other and asking:
“Is it just me or is it hot in here?”
(BTW: I added the bit about the boiling frog, but I’m sure Bill Nye would have used it if he’d thought of it.)
In the cartoon business what you just looked at it is called an “obituary cartoon” and people tend to love them although I have mixed feelings about drawing one.
Probably because when I think about it (and I try not to) I consider myself an agnostic; someone who believes nothing is known or can be known about the existence of God and His Gated Community.
So if you believe in the Pearly Gates and flights of angels singing thee to thy rest or the lights going out like you forgot to pay the utility bill, either way I won’t argue with you. I don’t think you know for sure what happens after we kick the bucket, but I also think I don’t either.
“Faith” gets a lot of positive PR and is generally considered a good thing, but if you think about it (and we probably should) faith is belief without evidence which maybe we actually ought to discourage because way too many people believe way too many things that they can’t prove and that’s how you wind up believing a Reality Show Host should be president, the pandemic was a hoax and the 2020 election was stolen.
There’s no evidence for what you believe, but you have faith anyway.
In any case…
I’ve drawn more than my share of people arriving at Heaven’s Gate (I’m getting ready to draw another one for Willie Mays) and I mentally justify doing that because I don’t know for sure that the Afterlife doesn’t work that way (although it seems pretty unlikely) but I also occasionally draw Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to get my points across so I guess I can draw Jerry West arriving in Paradise to find out if Saint Peter has his name on Heaven’s backstage pass list.
After Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of being a dick (they called it something else, but “being a dick” is what it amounted to) he claimed the trial was rigged and the Justice Department only went after Republicans, claims that were almost immediately disproved by Hunter Biden being found guilty of three felony counts of being a dipshit.
(Once again, they used a different legal term, but let’s face it; trying to buy a gun and lying about your drug habit during the gun-buying process isn’t on too many MENSA members bucket list.)
But, as you may have already noticed, these days truth doesn’t matter.
Apparently Hunter Biden being convicted and disproving the MAGA Republicans’ contention that the justice system is rigged is not a reason to reevaluate their beliefs; instead it calls for doubling down and even more lies and conspiracy theories.
That being the case…
Trump supporters complained that Hunter was only found guilty of three felonies when it should have been 50 and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who also tried to warn us about Jewish space lasers) claimed it was all an elaborate Deep State plot to distract us from Joe Biden’s vast array of crimes that we all know he committed even though we don’t have evidence to support that.
I haven’t thought this one all the way through because I’m up early and writing, but at 4:49 AM it seems like maybe the world would be a much better place it we all quit believing things we can’t prove.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, speaking to a crowd of people who apparently feel like they just don’t hear enough from her, tried to defend Donald Trump’s criminal record with this gem:
“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about, ‘Oh, President Trump is a convicted felon.’”
“Well, you wanna know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon, and he was murdered on a Roman cross.”
This can best be described as a Gordian Knot of Stupidity; a statement in which a person gets so many things wrong at once it’s hard to untangle the giant ball of mistakes and misconceptions and you wish Alexander the Great would drop by with some razor-sharp cutlery.
First off, Jesus was not a convicted felon.
According to the internet, the earliest known use of the word “felon” was in the Middle English period (1150 to 1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest evidence for “felon” is from 1297 in Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle which is either a vernacular history of England or Spinal Tap’s second album.
The word “convicted” is also problematic because it means “having been convicted of a criminal offense by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge” and according to the following article based on Biblical accounts (which let’s face it, aren’t the clearest things ever written and could have used a good copy editor) Pontius Pilate wasn’t convinced Jesus was guilty of anything, but allowed his crucifixion (remember the hand-washing bit) to “satisfy the crowd” which was remarkably similar to the way the January 6th riot got going.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/jesusaccount.html#:~:text
Also, equating Jesus Christ who cared about the sick and the poor and did what he could to alleviate their suffering to a guy who banged a porn star and then falsified business records to cover up paying her off is comparing assholes to oranges.
(I really need to patent that last bit.)
As you may have already heard, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito got people stirred up when an upside down American flag appeared on the flag pole outside his house and I think the first question that raises is what kind of person feels the need to have a flag pole in his yard?
An upside down flag is a sign of distress and then an “Appeal to Heaven” flag popular with the MAGA crowd appeared outside his New Jersey beach house and once again inquiring minds want to know if Alito only buys houses with flag poles or installs them himself and maybe I’m a little flagpole-a-phobic because the first time I visited the San Diego Union to start my new job they had a whole row of flagpoles in front of their building including a “Copley” flag (Helen Copley owned the newspaper) and I turned to the editor who hired me as their cartoonist and asked:
“You guys planning on invading somebody?”
Which is just the kind of astute observational humor that got me hired and fired within a year.
When people asked what was up with the flags, Alito did what any red-blooded American male would do: he blamed his wife.
Alito also claimed neither he nor his wife knew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag was associated with the ironically-named Stop the Steal movement and since they apparently have a policy of flying flags they don’t fully understand, maybe someone should give the Alitos a rainbow flag and see if it winds up on one of their many flagpoles.
After twice flying flags associated with the Far Right, Alito was asked if he would recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election or January 6th Capitol riot and Alito refused to do so which is what inspired me draw his house with a flag associated with the kind of people who do whatever they want and then tell other people to go fuck themselves.
And if you want to hear what an actual professor of law thinks about all this, here you go:
Today’s Lesson
Generally speaking I like to wind these things up with a summary of what we’ve learned and here’s what I got so far:
Donald Trump’s a dick.
Hunter Biden’s a dipshit.
And unless you’re a member of the Brady Bunch, maybe you don’t need to drive an SUV.
Stay cool, America.
“Heaven’s backstage pass list…”
You better call the copyright office, pronto, pal. I am so fucking stealing, "assholes to oranges."
Wait, it's not stealing, it's "forgetting the source."