The Losers Who Saved Us
Now that we’ve dealt with sofas, air travel and pro athletes, time to catch up on politics…
In 2020 The Atlantic magazine had a story that quoted four anonymous sources who said Donald Trump had referred to American soldiers killed in combat as “losers.”
This patriotic moment occurred when Trump had a scheduled visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, but it was raining that day and (also according to the anonymous sources) Trump didn’t want the cotton-candy architectural marvel he calls hair to get wet.
Having demonstrated his priorities, Trump said why would he want to go to that cemetery to honor the dead because it was filled with a bunch of “losers” and on a separate, but equally repugnant occasion, on the same trip Trump called the over 1,800 marines who got killed at Belleau Wood “suckers” for dying.
Once those statements became public they were not popular and never having encountered a situation he wouldn’t try to lie his way out of, Trump denied he said those things and claimed he had 25 witnesses to back him up, but the Washington Post investigated that claim and said Trump was also lying about having 25 witnesses.
And then, in 2023, Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelley – a retired four-star Marine general – confirmed that Trump said those things.
Donald Trump has done so many awful and reprehensible things that it’s hard to remember all of them, but since we just celebrated D-Day and the soldiers who saved the world and fewer and fewer of those soldiers remain alive so they can be honored by the rest of us, it seemed like a good time to remind readers of how Donald Trump views our heroes.
For a brief time I saw a therapist (it clearly didn’t work, I’m still an asshole and I’m pretty sure I can drum up 25 witnesses to confirm it) but I can highly recommend therapy because it’s the one time in your entire life when you get to talk and someone has to listen to you.
But remember, therapy is like visiting a prostitute; what you’re about to do is so awful you have to pay someone to do it with you.
Although at one point I suggested that I be given a discounted rate because judging from the amount of time my therapist spent laughing, I had to be her most entertaining client; a pricing suggestion she was happy to ignore.
So while I didn’t get a discounted rate or an improved personality, I did walk away with the understanding of a new concept: the Double Bind.
The Double Bind is being put in a situation where no matter what you do you’ll be wrong. In terms of rats in mazes (which is much more similar to our everyday lives than we like to think): if the rat takes a right turn it gets a shock, but if the rat takes a left turn it still gets a shock. I asked what happens to the rat once it figures out anything it does will be punished and my therapist said: “The rat sits and quivers.”
Which is one possible reaction to being punished no matter what you do; now here’s another.
If you’re going to get punished no matter what, you can decide to do whatever the hell you feel like doing because the results will be the same.
I thought about Double Binds when President Biden came up with a new border policy and the Democrats said Biden had moved too far to the right and the Republicans said Biden hadn’t moved nearly far enough. So if you want to learn a lesson from that, you might start doing whatever seems right to you regardless of consequence because somebody somewhere will be happy to criticize you no matter what you do and if you decide to do nothing and just sit and quiver they’ll be happy to criticize you for that, too.
Frankly, I think I got my money’s worth out of therapy.
Last Saturday hurricane season officially began (which sounds like the worst Opening Day ever) and I used that news event to comment on the Republicans and Democrats going at each other over the meaning of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.
More on that momentarily, but first one of my digressions.
According to the internet, Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day and when they pray they’re supposed to face Mecca and at least once in their lifetimes – if they’re physically able – also make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
And that comes to mind because despite their policy of xenophobia Republicans have emulated that practice except they symbolically kiss Donald Trump’s ass five times a day while facing the 18th green at Mar-A-Lago and if you want to get in good with the MAGA crowd, a pilgrimage is also required.
Out of curiosity…
I googled “what politicians have visited Mar-A-Lago” and was directed to an article from November of 2022 which said since January of 2021, members of Congress, state government officials and candidates for office had visited Mar-A-Lago and other Trump properties over 500 times and the article reminded readers those visits put money in Trump’s pocket (another one of those legal bribes) but those Trump sycophants thought it was well worth the money to get a chance to kiss his ass personally and if they could also get a picture with Trump they thought their money was well spent.
The article is from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the fact I never heard of them and you probably haven’t either lets you know just how well that’s going:
One of the many problems associated with being a political cartoonist is not knowing when or where you’ll find a cartoon idea, which means you have to read a lot and just keep reading while hoping some idea presents itself, which happily happened when I read about Donald Trump joining TikTok so he could “reach out” to young voters.
After reading that line, all I had to do was depict what reaching out looked like.
BTW: I’m well aware that the “problems associated with being a political cartoonist” are incredibly minor when you think about “problems associated with being a coal miner” or “problems associated with being a Marine sniper” or “problems associated with being a therapist with smart ass patients.” In comparison to those professions, being a political cartoonist is a breeze which is one of the reasons I choose this job.
On the other hand, “problems associated with getting someone to pay you to be a political cartoonist” are enormous.
Anyway…
No idea if Trump’s efforts to reach out to young voters will work, but generally speaking when older people try to act “hip and with it” and do something they think young people will like, they usually wind up embarrassing themselves and we can only hope that tradition continues.
Which reminds me…
When the internet first becoming a thing and the Kansas City Star developed a website, I came across a Star video of one of our editorial writers earnestly reading an editorial in front of a camera and looking like a hostage reading his kidnappers’ demands. When I asked WTF that was supposed to accomplish, I was told:
“Kids like videos.”
To which I replied:
“The number one video on YouTube right now is one kid sticking a firecracker up his butt while another kid lights it and if we can convince our editorial writers to read their editorials with a lit firecracker between their butt cheeks we might be on to something.”
Sadly, my idea was never implemented, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t have watched that if it had been.
OK, so the American legal system is rigged and out to get Republicans except when it’s putting Democrats like Hunter Biden and Bob Menendez on trial and then it’s working perfectly fine and is totally fair and we shouldn’t question the process.
There’s enough hypocrisy floating around those statements that no matter which side of the political Grand Canyon you live on you can find something to be pissed off about; whether it’s a Liberal arguing that the 2nd Amendment protects his right to do what he did or Conservatives arguing that the 2nd Amendment doesn’t.
If you think about it – and I just did – it’s insulting that politicians think we won’t remember that they said one thing on Monday and the exact opposite on Tuesday and compare the two statements and conclude that they’re a bunch of untrustworthy liars, but near as I can tell, being on both sides of an issue simultaneously doesn’t stop anybody from getting elected.
According to the internet, H.L. Mencken said: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
Mencken also defined democracy as “the worship of jackals by jackasses” but also had some shitty things to say about Jews and Blacks and sounds like a kind of a dick on a wide variety of subjects and I think it’s time to end this essay because this description is starting to sound overly familiar.
But don’t forget I have the right to write this and you have the right to read this and leave comments telling me I ought to get back into therapy as soon as possible, only because a bunch of “losers” charged straight into machine gun fire on a beach in France 80 years ago.
Have a nice, and if at all possible, appreciative weekend.
Lee, I'm sending a link to this column to my therapist. We meet on Wednesdays at 5:00, and their client is also a smartass. 🤣
When the business about the cemetery came up with Trump in France, it just flashed me back to when Reagan visited the cemetery at Bitburg, Germany, where the Nazis were buried even after some of his staff told him the press would make a thing of it. I guess one thing about being a sanctimonious dick is that you double down on any resistance.
FYI, It wasn’t a firecracker, it was a bottle rocket, which made the video all the more hilarious when the idiots butt was sprayed by bottle rocket effluvia because it got stuck.