My Annual Thanksgiving Message

This year it gets a Little Dark...

On past Thanksgivings I have urged people not to talk about politics and given advice on how to avoid uncomfortable conversations, but this year I’m saying screw all that; go ahead and tell your uncle and/or aunt that he/she is a moron because they just reelected a guy who tried to overthrow the government, but then they’re going to point out more Americans agree with them than you and you won’t have a great answer, so next you’re going to storm out, get in your car and drive approximately three-and-a-half blocks before you realize you’re really really hungry and let’s hope you have a smart phone so you can ask Siri or Gemini or HAL 9000 about:

“Chinese restaurants near me.”

Turns out my Can’t-We-All-Just-Get-Along philosophy has been severely tested by recent events and we’ll start with…

Back when Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies, a number of stunningly naïve journalists said it proved the system worked and nobody was above the law and some of the same people said the same thing when a civil jury found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million and they said it again when a different jury ordered Trump to pay E. Jean another $83.3 million for defaming her.

Being a skeptic if not a full-blown cynic (and if someone starts blowing cynics I may change my attitude) when people said these events prove the system works and nobody is above the law, I said:

“Let me know when Trump actually pays a serious fine or does jail time.”

And here’s the essay where I said that:

https://leejudge.substack.com/p/the-system-works

According to the latest article I could find on the subject, including interest Trump owes E. Jean Carroll over $90 million, but – apparently – as of yet hasn’t paid her a dime.

Trump’s posted bond (paying the amount he owes into a court-controlled account) but he’s appealed both verdicts and they’re still arguing whether he’ll have to eventually pay anything at all and if the first verdict (the one for $5 million) gets thrown out, it’s likely the second verdict will too (the one for $83.3 million) because it was based on the findings of the original jury.

Meanwhile…

Trump was also ordered to pay $454.2 million in a totally different civil fraud case brought against him and his business associates and Trump is appealing that case too even though the judgement is accruing interest at the approximate rate of $100,000 a day.

Here’s the Forbes article if you want to read it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/09/06/trump-now-owes-e-jean-carroll-over-90-million-with-interest-as-appeals-court-hears-first-case/

In early September they held arguments in an appeals court and Trump wants a Legal Do-Over and this next article says the panel of three judges was not expected to issue a ruling before the election and sounds like they still haven’t.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-e-jean-carroll-appeal-judgment/

The 12^th of Never cartoon you just looked at was inspired by the judge in the 34 felonies trial delaying sentencing Trump indefinitely and the district attorney saying it was really unlikely that Trump would be sentenced while he was president and the DA was “open” to a four-year delay in the case and in the meantime Trump’s lawyers are arguing the whole thing should be thrown out because Trump’s the next president and his house-broken Supreme Court said he can do pretty much anything he wants and get away with it.

BTW:

I wrote everything you just read before the special counsel dismissed the indictment charging Trump with plotting to subvert the 2020 election because the Justice Department has a policy that says it’s unconstitutional to pursue prosecutions against a sitting president.

All of which has led me to this unfortunate conclusion:

IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY, THE SYSTEM DOESN’T WORK AND YOU ARE ABOVE THE LAW.

(That last statement might be 100% wrong: maybe the system does work, it just wasn’t designed to work for people who aren’t White and Obscenely Rich.)

And while we’re on that subject…

I just finished reading Character Limit, a book about Elon Musk ruining Twitter and at one point Elon wants to do something illegal and the people that work for Twitter point out it’s illegal and Elon says don’t sweat it, they should do it anyway because he’s used to being penalized.

If most of us lost a court case or got fined, we’d pay what we owe because we don’t have enough money to keep appealing our case until Hell freezes over (which apparently happened Monday night because I’m currently freezing my ass off) but if you have enough money and an incredibly sense of entitlement you can run red lights, sexually assault women and try to overthrow governments and if things go wrong, write somebody a check and then stop payment on it.

(At one point, Elon and His Henchmen…which sounds like the world’s shittiest lounge act…were thinking of ways to save money and came up with the brilliant idea of not paying the rent they owed on office space and challenging the landlords to do something about it. Do not try this at home or you won’t have one.)

Turns out, in America, you’re entitled to just about as much justice as you can afford and they sure as shit didn’t mention that in my American History class.

This cartoon was inspired by an article from the New York Times that talked about the people Trump’s appointing to lead federal health agencies like anti-vaxxers and a Fox contributor with her own line of vitamins and people who didn’t take the pandemic seriously and pushed back on COVID policies and now actual doctors and scientists are “bracing themselves for the gutting of public health agencies” and the “injection of politics into realms once reserved for academics.”

Political cartoons often make their point by exaggerating a situation, but in this case I really didn’t exaggerate all that much.

In a recent post I talked about immigrants and what I think they brought to America and how life would be way more boring without them and I also pointed out – with the possible exception of American Indians – we’re all immigrants and even the American Indians came from somewhere else and according to the National Institutes of Health that was probably Asia.

According to the one paragraph of the following article I was interested enough to read, they probably walked here across the Bering Strait between 13,000 and 23,000 years ago unless you’re a Devout Christian and then you believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and the American Indians got here by riding on tame dinosaurs.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2874220

I dimly recall drawing a cartoon way back in the 1970s that made the same point; people who came here on the Mayflower were complaining about “boat people.”

But thank God or the deity of your choice that people from faraway places wound up here and started restaurants that are open on Thanksgiving because if you followed my earlier advice you’re no longer welcome to eat with the people you’re related to.

Which, let’s face it, considering some of the people we’re related to, isn’t always a bad thing.

Happy Thanksgiving.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/