The above cartoon was inspired by a New York Times story headlined: “Democrats urge leaders to show more fight against Trump”
Which is something a lot of people have been wanting ever since Inauguration Day, but at this point too many Democratic politicians seem to think the way to America’s heart, votes and checkbook is being reasonable and pledging to work with Trump whenever possible and while I wasn’t there or alive at the time, I’m under the general impression that was the same plan that worked so well for Vichy France.
Just in case you don’t know because you’re too busy repeating history…
Vichy France was the collaborationist government that worked with the Nazis during WW2 and it was called that because it was based in the city of Vichy.
And the Vichy government enacted laws that restricted the civil rights of Jews and deported Jewish citizens to death camps and turns out, when you collaborate with a bunch of anti-Semitic, racist and psychopathic assholes, history might not look back on you fondly, so maybe the Democrats pledging to work with Trump whenever possible should keep that in mind.
Anyway…
According to the NYT article, Democratic voters are pissed off and demanding that their leaders in Congress get off their asses and do something, like trying to stop what Trump is up to or, at the very least, offer a meaningful counter-message.
At least theoretically Congress is supposed to act as a check on the Executive branch and so far all they’re doing is rolling over and showing their bellies and confirming unqualified Cabinet members and the first time I typed “confirming” I accidentally typed “conforming” – a typo which might have been even more accurate.
Nevertheless, some Democrats are preaching patience and saying the country will eventually tire of Trump which is contradicted by the fact that he was a Stupendous Moron for four straight years and just four short years after that, the majority of American voters wanted a second helping.
But the “Let’s-Wait-Him-Out” policy has the virtue of allowing its Democratic proponents to do absolutely nothing while cowering under their desks and passing it off as strategy.
BTW:
There is a highly cynical point of view (which if history is any indication, dramatically increases its chances of being right) that some Democrats don’t want to fight and win because it’s easier to sit on the sidelines and piss and moan about what’s happening and then ask for political donations so they can get reelected and continue to do jackshit about the Republicans that are currently shoving the U.S. Constitution through a paper shredder.
As former Kansas City Royals manager Buddy Bell once said: “I never say it can’t get worse.”
Political cartoonists are always looking for metaphors and the DOGE emails instructing federal workers to describe what they did in the last week or be fired and then the instructions from the heads of some of those departments telling their workers not to respond to the DOGE emails and then a federal judge ruling that the firings were illegal, mixed in with J.D. Vance’s assertion that the Executive branch can do whatever the fuck they feel like doing whenever they feel like doing it and we shouldn’t pay any attention to federal judges, reminded me of game of dodgeball where you need to keep your head on a swivel because you don’t know where the next hit is coming from.
One of the ways to create political cartoons is to extend your target’s logic to an illogical conclusion: if A. is true, then B. must be true and C. must be true and just keep going until the logic collapses and in this case I extended the administration’s policy of firing people to the pilot of Air Force One.
And if you read about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he fired people before understanding what they did, so in this case I’m not sure I exaggerated all that much.
Where’s Joseph Welch when we need him?
Once again setting the Wayback Machine for the World War II era…
After the war an extremely mediocre politician and person – Senator Joe McCarthy – gained power and prestige when he started calling people communists and a lot of people were afraid to stand up to McCarthy because they didn’t want to be called a Commie and lose their jobs or worse.
This went on for several years, until…
In the spring of 1954 McCarthy picked a fight with the U.S. Army and charged them with lax security, but the Army said McCarthy only did that because he wanted preferential treatment for a subcommittee aide who had been drafted. The Army refused to give the aide preferential treatment, so McCarthy started painting them as incompetent or, even worse, Commie Sympathizers.
So you had a bully who got too big for his or anyone else’s britches and he decides he can fight the U.S. Army and win and unless you’re the North Vietcong that tends to be a bad idea.
They put the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV, mostly because they hadn’t developed reality shows featuring dimwitted people who allow themselves to be filmed while behaving badly because in the current climate apparently it’s better to be known as an Antagonistic Asshole than a Nice Nobody.
But I digress as I so often do.
Next the Army hires a lawyer named Joseph Welch to make their case and McCarthy—swinging the one club in his bag—charges that one of Welch’s lawyers had ties to a Communist organization and here’s how Welch responded:
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
McCarthy tried to go back on the attack, but Welch interrupted and said:
“Let is not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
According to the internet, after that exchange America woke the fuck up and support for McCarthy disappeared overnight and he was censured by the Senate and shunned by his party and ignored by the press and McCarthy died three years later at the age of 48 which, all things considered, seems about eight years too late.
The intriguing thing about that story is why and how what Joseph Welch said changed things overnight and lucky for both of us, I have a theory.
The Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome
There are things we all know to be true, but don’t say out loud because everyone is saying something different, so we start thinking maybe we’re the ones off base and the desire to conform and fit in is a strong one, so we ignore what our eyes are telling us until somebody has the balls to stand up and tell the truth.
In the Emperor’s New Clothes everybody thinks they’re the only one who can’t see his new clothes until a young boy blurts out the obvious and then everyone admits:
“Yeah, I saw the emperor’s ass, too.”
When I think about what I do (which I do way more often than I probably should) most of the time I’m not saying anything amazing or profound (sorry about that) I’m just pointing out the obvious that other people are trying to ignore and the more of us that point out the obvious the sooner our Modern Day Joe McCarthys drink themselves to death or go brood about their fate on the 17th green of a country club and frankly, as far as I’m concerned that can’t happen soon enough.
As always, hang in there.
Dems are behaving cowardly. They need to walk out of the senate and the house sessions, stand up a shadow cabinet. The only 2 people actually speaking out forcefully now are Bernie Sanders and AOC.
There’s another possibility as to why the democrats haven’t done diddly-squat, jack-be-nimble shit to slow down the orange menace’s wholesale slaughter of democracy, they’re the “good cop” side of the equation.