Golden Dreams Were Shiny Days

 Today's Graphical History Tour rummages through my September cartoons from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. I'll bring up another September at the end of our tour.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., September 1986

My cartoons for the NorthCountry Journal were drawn to accompany the month's editorial by Susie Isaksen, in this case warning that "Lake Charlevoix may be in Michigan, but what happened there could happen in Wisconsin."

Citing an editorial from Northwoods Call by Glen Sheppard describing Charlevoix as an ideal lake for swimming and fishing, with restaurants and "prissy gift shops" nearby, the alarm is raised: "But Charlevoix's shoreline has been scandalously polluted by some of the most god-awful ugly nightmares of the north — condos."

I've moaned here before how much I dislike drawing buildings. They are mostly impersonal and repetitive, and the perspective is unforgiving. That said, there was no choice here but to draw a lot of  late-20th-Century high-rises.

I did, however, like adding a swimming pool on the roof  of the condo in the upper right corner.

1996

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., September 22, 1996

One of the banes of electoral democracy has been the telephone push poll. Push polls have nothing to do with determining how candidates or issues rate with the public. I doubt that the alleged pollster at the other end of the line is recording your responses at all.

No, the caller first determines which candidate or issue you support, and if it's not the candidate or interest group that hired him/her, then moves on to a series of questions like: "Would you still support Your Candidate's Name Here if you knew that he drops little puppies into boiling water?"

I imagine there are still campaigns that employ push polling these days. Someone picking up the phone is unlikely to remember that the caller represents American Eagle Minuteman Opinion Research or whatever long enough to complain to anyone about it. Most people probably just hang up within the first minute.

Which is the same length of a political campaign or issues interest commercial on television; dishonest ads on social media are even cheaper, and get through to the vast majority who do not answer calls on their cell phones from unknown numbers.

2006

for Q Syndicate, September 2006

Twenty years ago, Gays were effectively banned from military service in the U.S. under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a worthless compromise from the Clinton administration with the prior complete and total ban.

The reasoning was that openly gay homosexuals were somehow "bad for unit cohesion and morale." Unit cohesion and morale failed utterly to suffer deleterious effects once the Obama administration lifted the ban on LGBTQ+ soldiers. Even the neo-Nazi and gangster recruits got used to it.

Well, except for one Minnesota National Guardsman who got put in charge of the Pentagon nowadays.

I have a note in the margin of this cartoon that I should have drawn the recruiter with an open collar and no tie. I can't think of any later cartoon I drew set in a recruitment office in which I could have corrected this costume error.

2016

for Q Syndicate, September 2016

I was away from drawing board for much of September, 2016, on a family vacation to Italy, so I left my editors a couple of non-political cartoons to release while I was gone. This one could still be run again today, save that now the President of the United States has weighed in against this kid.

We've just been through the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I thought about basing today's Graphical History Tour on my experience of that day, but I've done that before. I've also blogged about 9/10. And 9/13.

I just don't have any fresh new insight on 9/11, and my own experience was not as directly connected as was many others'. I considered, and rejected, posting some 9/12 cartoons by cartoonists who are no longer with us (Pat Oliphant, Stuart Carlson, Steve Benson, and Mike Ritter, for example).

We were chatting with the owner of a local restaurant Thursday night, and she said that it's hard to believe that 9/11 was a quarter century ago. She was in high school back then, to give you some idea of her frame of reference in saying that. I could have pointed out that on 9/11, hardly any of us had heard of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, K-Pop, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Rodgers, or Game of Thrones. 

Donald Trump wasn't even host of The Apprentice yet. 

Speaking of that egomaniacal fascist liar, he came up with a fresh new memory this week of having been hauled away from Ground Zero by two brawny firemen (who, no doubt, had tears in their eyes and called him "Sir"). The organizers of this week's commemoration decided not to give him a speaking role in it, and I'd just as soon do likewise here.

I'll let others who have more personal connections to the events of that day share their non-fabricated, non-embellished memories and, perhaps, some cartoons for those of you too young to have caught them the first time around. Counterpoint's Substack yesterday had anniversary cartoons by some of my progressive, Pulitzer-winning colleagues, if you're interested. 

But as for me, I'm sitting this one out.

An Army of TestosterOne

Secretary of Butchness Pete Hegseth announced last week that military recruits — men, and any women that he hasn't yet driven out of the service — will now be tested for testosterone levels. Anyone found wanting in the T-level department will be offered the option of undergoing hormone therapy (the sort of thing the Trumpsters claim is so very, very dangerous for transgender persons).

Soldiers can, we are told, refuse the testosterone treatment. The choice is theirs, although future promotions and positive performance reviews may not be. 

Basing a cartoon on a popular internet meme is dicey. There is a good chance that somebody will have already beat the cartoonist to the idea. And probably has beat me to publication.

I considered basing the beefcake in the foreground after movie soldiers who dispense with wearing shirts early on, like Rambo or John Matrix; or the old GI Joe dolls. But since my print clientele is the LGBTQ press, patterning him after the hyperhomosexualized military hunks in Tom of Finland's cartoons seemed the more obvious choice. 

I'm not saying that Mr. Hegseth is part of that closeted gay Republican mafia that Hunter Biden was talking about this week.

Well, I'm not saying he isn't, either.

The First Month of Black History Week

Today's Graphical History Tour should have been the one I didn't post on the last Saturday of my vacation three weeks ago. Better late than never, I hope.

Exactly 100 years ago this month, historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) declared the second week of February "Negro History Week," expanding on earlier observations of Frederick Douglass's birthday. I didn't find that any of America's Black editorial cartoonists were drawing about Black history that week or that month, although each of their newspapers took note of the proposal from Woodson and the ASNLH.

Here's what America's Black editorial cartoonists were drawing about in February of 1926.

Given the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 mission of pressing the Courts to invalidate same-sex marriages like mine (and a law just passed in Tennessee legislating a right to discriminate against us), I was particularly interested to find that the state of Virginia was in the process of outlawing mixed-race marriage exactly 100 years ago this week.

"The Mongrel Bays at the Moon" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 27, 1926

Leslie Rogers's cartoon was accompanied by a sarcastic "fable" summarizing the history of the "small shipload of outcasts" from England who settled in Jamestown, only to decide twelve years later "that work was obnoxious to them," so they contracted with the Dutch to supply them with slaves from Africa. From that editorial:

"Now, seeing that there were among the slaves many comely maidens, the lusts of these outcasts were aroused, and since the slave-women could not protect themselves, their masters threw themselves upon them and bred children by them. And it came to pass that a great war freed these slaves and made them citizens of a great state and country. But interbreeding went on merrily until the land was filled with a mixed race whose people spoke out against their former masters and kinsmen.

"'We will have no more illegitimate babies,' they cried. 'If you would cohabit with us. you must marry us.'

"And the masters raised their hands and eyes to holy heaven in horror. 'How can we, the salt of the earth, marry with these people who were once our slaves? Heaven forbid! Let us hasten and pass a law to prevent intermarriage in that we may breed with their women without fear of punishment. It is our God-given right. Our law will dull their will and keep them from thinking that they, as human beings, are entitled to live, love and marry according to their desires. We will hasten this law and shroud it in a pretense that we seek to preserve the integrity of all races.'

"And so they did."

Appropriately enough, it was a case out of Virginia that eventually overturned anti-miscegenation laws. Not that the ruling in Loving v. Virginia is certain to stand against the present Project 2025-26 backlash against civil liberties.

By the way, I would have liked to include any cartoons by Black editorial cartoonists from Virginia here, but none of the Black newspapers in that state appear to have employed their own cartoonists at the time. (The Norfolk Journal and Guide did start running its own editorial cartoons later that year.)

"And It Never Says a Mumblin' Word" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 6, 1926

Leslie Rogers employed what had become a common metaphor for President Coolidge, in this case accusing him of having little to say about the lynching of Black Americans by "mob rule in enlightened society." 

"Silent Cal" did not have a lot to say about a great many things; but he did support the Dyer anti-lynching bill (which never passed Congress) and spoke against the so-called "Americanism" of the Ku Klux Klan. In October of 1925, he told a convention of the American Legion:

"Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of to-day is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat."

"Taking a Black Prisoner from the Jail to the Courthouse" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 13, 1926

Meanwhile, Kentucky Governor W.J. Fields sent 1,000 troops to secure the safety of a Black defendant in a triple murder case as he was transported from jail to courthouse in Lexington, Kentucky.

The defendant, Ed Harris, stood accused of killing a White man and his two children, and assaulting the man's wife — exactly the sort of case that often excited mobs to take matters into their own hands; so Gov. Fields sent in eight infantry companies, four cavalry troops, two machine gun squadrons, and a tank company, with orders to shoot to kill.

Leslie Rogers here added dirigibles and the "U.S.S. Mobqueller," in a cartoon that reminds me very much of the style of Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist John T. McCutcheon.

"New Use for U.S. Air Fleet" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 27, 1926

Fred Watson proposed enlisting the U.S.'s new air fleet to ferry Black prisoners past the volatile mob.

"Trial by Troops" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 20, 1926

If Wilbert Holloway was not impressed, it was because there was no chance of Ed Harris being found anything but guilty. He pled guilty and was sentenced to hang, his trial lasting all of sixteen minutes.

Elsewhere, Delaware Governor Robert Robinson called out the National Guard to prevent angry mobs from interfering in the trial in Georgetown of 21-year-old Harry Butler, who pled guilty to critically assaulting a 12-year-old white girl. He, too, was sentenced to death by hanging.

As for Tennessee, Holloway may have been referring to the trial of John Franklin Webb, convicted of raping a 17-year-old white girl. The trial and jury deliberation took a combined thirteen minutes; he was sentenced to death in the electric chair.

"Finally Hooked" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 6, 1926

Holloway didn't limit himself to explicitly Black issues (two of his four February cartoons were about the weather). I can't be sure what his opinion of U.S. involvement in the World Court was; reported elsewhere on the pages of that edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, a southern Senator made his opinion crystal clear.

"The Drunken Driver" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 6, 1926

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Cole Bleas (D-SC) offered as an argument against U.S. participation in the World Court that Liberia and Haiti were members of the League of Nations and would therefore have a say in the selection of World Court judges. If you were triggered by that Tourette's advocate blurting out an obscenity at the BAFTAs on Sunday, you might want to skip the next two paragraphs.

"I call the attention of Senators from the South," Bleas fulminated, "while they are voting on this reservation, to the fact that they are voting for a court where we are to sit side by side with a full-blooded [the N-word], who has as much right as we have in the election of judges of this court. I ask them if they are aware of the fact that there may be and probably will be a  representative of Haiti as a judge on this court so that the southern Senators are voting to throw the destinies of southern women and southern men into the lap of a black man?" 

Bleas used that N-word several more times in the course of his argument, mostly to describe what kind of republics Haiti and Liberia are.

"State's Rights or State's Wrongs" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 20, 1926

Here's a rare cartoon that includes criticism of California's treatment of Japanese Americans. The topic occasionally came up in the context of protests from the Japanese government, but most white cartoonists and their newspapers approved of cutting off immigration from the Orient, and were content to overlook the restrictions against Japanese-Americans owning property.

Maryland Governor Albert Ritchie's moves to undermine Prohibition would be a topic for another day, but serves as a segue to a couple of editorial cartoons about local issues.

"An Unwelcome Serenader" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 13, 1926

Watson cites a song popularized by the California Ramblers to express the plight of Black school teachers in his native Baltimore. The story about which he appears to be editorializing concerned two female Black high school teachers, Mabel Jackson and Mary Craft Cottrell, who filed lawsuits against the Baltimore school board for hiring two White women for positions for which Jackson and Cottrell were more qualified.

Jackson and Cottrell had passed the state examination for teachers of domestic art in 1924, placing first and second on the eligibility list. But the Baltimore School Board instead hired Susie Jennings and Elizabeth Burrell, neither of whom had a college degree or a graduation certificate from an accredited normal school, nor had they passed a competitive examination for teaching domestic arts.

The School Board contended that tailoring and dressmaking were trade vocational subjects not requiring a teaching degree. Jennings and Burrell, in their view, were not high school teachers per se, in spite of instructing high school students in a high school building during high school hours.

"An Alarm He Doesn't Heed" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 20, 1926

In Chicago, Blacks could apply for and qualify for employment as city firefighters, but would have to wait for a vacancy at the Taylor Street station, the one and only fire station open to Blacks. Any vacancies at any other fire station in town could only be filled by White applicants.

Even if their only qualifications involved tailoring and dressmaking.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. But you get the general idea of where race relations were in this country 100 years ago.

✍

Well, this is a little off-topic, but since Fred Watson brought up Prohibition a couple cartoons ago, I'll close with one of Leslie Rogers's other regular features in Chicago Defender, a more or less non-topical panel titled "The Hardest Job in the World." 

"The Hardest Job in the World" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 20, 1926

Anyone who has had to live with dietary restrictions should understand.

Hail, Columbia...

Today's Graphical History Tour was inspired by a reader who was curious about the cartoon figure of Miss (sometimes Lady) Columbia.

"America Triumphant and Britannia in Distress" 1782

In the Eighteenth Century, European cartoonists represented the American colonies, later the United States, with a Native American woman, or at least what they imagined Native American women to look like. I’ve seen that personification used in a very few German cartoons as late as 1920; but White Americans preferred seeing their nation represented by White cartoon characters.

European cartoonists were quick to oblige, almost as soon as the ink was dry on Cornwallis’s surrender. “America Triumphant” predates Lady Columbia, but served as a model for her: neoclassical Greco-Roman clothing similar to Brittania’s, plus the liberty cap that would later be the hallmark of revolutionary France’s Marianne.

"Columbia Teaching John Bull a New Lesson" by William Charles, 1813

The name Columbia has been traced to The Gentleman's Magazine's accounts, begun in 1738, of Parliamentary proceedings by Edward Cave. To get around a British law prohibiting accounts of Parliamentary debates, Cave substituted nicknames for persons and places: instead of “America,” he coined the name “Columbia.”

Uncle Sam came along much later. His name originated sometime around the War of 1812, and he first appeared in a political cartoon in 1832. His features evolved from another early cartoon personification of Americans, Brother Jonathan; but the characterization you might recognize only develops around the time of the Civil War. 

"Mistress Columbia, Who Has Been Taking a Nap," in Harper's Weekly, ca. 1860

In general, Brother Jonathan represented the American people, Uncle Sam represented the government in Washington, and Lady Columbia represented the U.S. as a nation. Brother Jonathan could be a wise-ass, but Lady Columbia was always quite serious.

"The Spirit of '61," 1861

Before James Montgomery Flagg painted Uncle Sam wanting you to serve in World War I, Columbia recruited soldiers to come to her defense in the Civil War. I have not been able to discover who created this recruitment poster.

"Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, Nov. 20, 1868

Columbia and Uncle Sam both appeared in this postbellum cartoon by Thomas Nast. She was seated in the foreground between the Black and Chinese Americans at Nast's Thanksgiving table (greatly exaggerating any welcome and promise of freedom and equality the United States offered persons of those two ethnicities).

"The Right Kind of Valentine," in Canadian Illustrated News, Feb. 18, 1871

Columbia had "reciprocity" behind her back in this cartoon in Miss Canada handed her a valentine reading "Freedom of fisheries," a contentious issue between the two nations for years. Curiously, the cartoonist decided that neither Uncle Sam or Johnny Canuck were appropriate for a cartoon about piscine love notes.

"That's a Pretty Chicken" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, 1872

Columbia could register shock and alarm, as in this Keppler cartoon expressing disappointment with proposed civil service reforms.

"Auch eine Tätowierte" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, Nov. 1, 1876

In another Keppler cartoon, "Also a Tattooed Woman" (in the German language edition of Puck), Columbia's shame was laid bare.  tattooed with Corruption, Tammany (New York City's Democratic headquarters), the Crédit Mobilier scandal, Civil War, taxes, Black Friday, Whiskey Ring, Election Frauds, and plenty more. The caption under  indicates that Columbia was not a willing recipient of her tattoos; similarly themed cartoons of Uncle Sam left open the possibility that he might have foolishly submitted to the inkster's ministrations.

"Columbia's Unwelcome Guests" by Frank Beard in Judge, Feb. 7, 1885

Frank Beard drew this version of a more determined Columbia offering a firm KEEP OUT to immigrants arriving on her shores with their strange ideas and drinking habits. It could be your own great-great-great-great grandparents Beard drew streaming out of Europe's sewers. Maybe even Stephen Miller's.

"A Disgusting and Scandalous Condition of Affairs" by Unknown cartoonist, 1899

Here is a cartoon that illustrated the relationship between Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam: she gives the orders to him to do something about the Army beef scandal (meat issued to soldiers in the Spanish-American War with embalming fluid added to it to slow spoilage). Uncle Sam appears slow to act, however; "How long are you going to sit here idle?" she scolds him.

Neither Grainger nor Alamy credit the artist or publication of this cartoon.

"Darned If I Can Have Any Fun" by E.T. Richards in Life, July 5, 1900

After the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American war put the U.S. in charge of Spain's former colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines, Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam both appear uncomfortable in their new role as imperial powers in E.T. Richards's cartoon.

Come back next Saturday, as we follow the fortunes of Lady Columbia into the Twentieth Century.

This Week's Sneak Peek

From the pencil rough that eventually became this week's cartoon:

It bothered me that most of the editorial cartoons about the My Lai massacre that I had selected for last Saturday's Graphical History Tour seemed to excuse Lt. William Calley's role in it; so yesterday, I dug up one more cartoon taking a contrary position and added it to the others. It goes against the rules of blogging, but apparently rules don't mean anything any more.

Clean-up in Aisle Beback

Today's Graphical History Tour catches up on a few news items from a century ago that we left unresolved last Saturday, and had overlooked in previous episodes.

We'll start with the inconclusive federal election in Canada, in which the coalition government of Liberals and Progressives suffered significant losses, but without giving the Conservatives a majority in Parliament.

"Tit for Tat" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 2, 1925

A major issue in the 1925 campaign particularly a propos today was tariffs against United States imports: the Conservatives wanted them raised, while the Liberals and Progressives were opposed. I posted some Canadian cartoonists' arguments for and against higher tariffs last week; Ed LeCocq, filling in for "Ding" Darling at the Des Moines Register, is the only cartoonist from across the line I've found addressing the issue.

"After the Assault" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 3, 1925

Cartoons by "Passepoil" in last week's installment showed Baptiste Ladébauche, the characterization of French Canada, mocking Québécois Conservative Esioff-Léon Patenaude. This cartoon by Sam Hunter in Toronto, with his own version of M. Ladébauche, cheered Patenaude's election loss as a rebuff to "Montreal big interest dictation" and "Montreal Star dictation." The "Noble Lord" in the cartoon is the founder of the Montreal Star, Sir Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan, who had sold the newspaper earlier that year but still had a hand in its management.

By the way, it seems that at least for now the identity of "Passepoil" will have to remain a mystery. His cartoons on the front page of Le Canada stopped abruptly after the 1925 election. Since his version of Baptiste Ladébauche was virtually identical to that of Albéric Bourgeois, I have to wonder whether those two cartoonists were one and the same.

"And the Cat Came Back" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Nov. 5, 1925

Over at the Montreal Star, A.G. Racey was hugely disappointed that Prime Minister William Mackenzie King was back at Canada's doorstep in spite of his party having lost 18 seats in Parliament — including his own.

King managed to stay in Parliament by getting one of the other members of his party to resign so that King could run in his place. Somehow that's perfectly acceptable in a parliamentary system, even though King had represented a Toronto, Ontario neighborhood, and the guy who gave up his seat for him represented Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

In my country, we call that carpetbagging.

"When the Western Train Comes In" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 17, 1925

Sam Hunter used a different baggage reference to depict the Conservative and Liberal leaders wooing Progressive leader Robert Forke. The Progressives' 22 seats would be more than Conservative leader Arthur Meighen needed for a majority, but not enough to do the same for King's Liberals. Ideologically, however, they had little in common with Meighen's party.

"Still Going Strong" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1925

I have overlooked some of the other elections taking place in the fall of 1925, the most prominent of which in the U.S. was for mayor of New York. I presume that since William Randolph Hearst supported the incumbent, John Hylan, cartoonists for his New York newspapers were obliged to do the same; I unfortunately do not have any examples of them. Brooklyn Daily Eagle cartoonist Nelson Harding, on the other hand, attacked him relentlessly throughout his term in office.

"Trimming His War Bonnet" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 9, 1925

Hylan, a somewhat dull-witted fellow who was not a particularly good public speaker, lost the Democratic Party primary in September to flashy man-about-town Jimmy Walker, a protegé of Governor Al Smith. Charismatic and benefiting from a smear campaign out of Tammany Hall, Walker easily bested the Republican candidate, pen magnate Frank Waterman, by 35 percentage points, and would go on to be one of the city's most colorful, albeit not ethical, mayors.

"Washington Bedtime Story" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 1, 1925

Updating this page's cartoons of Wisconsin's special election of Robert M. La Follette, Jr., to succeed his late father in the U.S. Senate, we have a belated Hallowe'en cartoon by Ed LeCocq. "Young Bob" was elected as a Republican, but with the active opposition of the national GOP. Republicans grudgingly accepted his landslide win as at least adding to their numerical majority in the Senate, trusting that, as the Senate's most junior member, he wouldn't be as much of a problem to them as La Follette Sr. had been.

"Nathan Hale—Mitchell" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 2, 1925

Wisconsin has a tie to one other news item that I've overlooked: Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was demoted to colonel, then court-martialed for insubordination in November of 1925. A commander of all American air combat units in France during World War I, he advocated after war publicly and strongly that the next war would be fought in the air, necessitating the creation of a separate Air Force.

"Chief Witness for the Defense" by W.A. Rogers in Washington Post, Nov. 3, 1925

This antagonized Army and Navy brass, who were more interested in beefing up the nation's fleet of battleships, particularly because he accused them of "an almost treasonable administration of the national defense."

"Did I Get Him" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. Nov. 14, 1925

Convicted of insubordination in December, Mitchell resigned his military commission the following February. Later events would vindicate Mitchell's views, although the Army refused to reverse Mitchell's court-martial conviction on the grounds that, right or wrong, he had still been insubordinate. World War II led to establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

By then, Mitchell had been dead for eleven years. He is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city whose international airport has borne his name since 1941.

Q Toon; A War of Words

One would think that having his partner caught up for months in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime's lawless concentration camp program would have soured MAGA Max's enthusiasm for anything associated with the Felon-In-Chief.

But then how would I be able to address the very destruction of the Republic in an editorial cartoon feature that is supposed to be about LGBTQ+ issues?

I created these two as a device to discuss the sharp political divisions in this country, which the present regime has worked diligently to widen.

Strike that. What the present administration is working overtime to achieve is not to widen political divisions, but to crush dissent. Pardoning the January 6 rioters who sought to overthrow the duly elected government in Trump's name, purging everyone in the Justice Department and law enforcement who worked to bring them to justice; strong-arming any media into obsequious servility that might challenge their distortion of the truth; hauling those who have ever stood up to him into court on trumped up charges; the mawkish spectacle of cabinet officials assembled before cameras for the express purpose of heaping flattery upon the boss — the Trump regime models itself not on our Founding Fathers, but on the worst tyrants history has to offer.

One need look no further than that mandatory assembly of all the nation's admirals and generals in one auditorium to be harangued by Trump and his martini martinet at the Department Formerly Known As Defense. Much attention has been paid to the military brass refusing to whoop and holler the way ensigns and privates will at these events, the applause lines that fell flat, and the meandering blather of a president who never has an unspoken notion.

But what was chillingly important about Trump and Pete Hegseth's diatribe duet was their central message: this regime is declaring open war on anyone, anywhere, who stand in their way.

Hegseth declared that this regime will "untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

Trump made it clear that those "enemies" include all American citizens with the temerity to dissent from his rule: "We have war zones on both coasts — blue areas. The real enemy is more dangerous than China, Russia… [it is] the enemy from within.”

"These people don’t have uniforms," Trump bellowed. "At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out... We can’t let these people live.”

Calling this fascism is not exaggeration, hyperbole, fear-mongering, or stoking division. And it's definitely not fake news.

It's recognizing a clear and present danger.

Like shouting "fire" in a burning theater.

Not Suitable for General Audiences

With apologies to Charles Addams...

...and to anybody lacking an encyclopedic knowledge of his work.

I'll explain later.

On the Parade Reviewing Stand

 Crappy birthday, too.

Q Toon: What's In a Name

After three weeks of cartoons with little or no text, it was inevitable that this week's cartoon would be laden with logorrhea.

The shock and outrage over last week's leak from the Defense Department that Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to change the name of the USNS Harvey Milk has certainly been overshadowed by the shock and outrage over Usurper Trump sending the National Guard, Marines, Gestapo, and Jem'Hadar to Los Angeles this week.

But my bailiwick is LGBTQ+ issues, so this is where I'm venting my shock and outrage today.

In spite of all the text in today's cartoon, I couldn't even squeeze in all the U.S. Navy's ships to be renamed pursuant to Trump policy erasing LGBTQ, women, and melanin-forward people from U.S. history. I had to leave out the USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Harriet Tubman, and USNS Lucy Stone.

Hegseth will no doubt prescribe gender reassignment for each of them.

Meanwhile, the Trump regime's commitment to Straight White Male Supremacy has reversed the Biden administration name changes of U.S. Army bases that had been named for Confederate Army Generals. You know, guys that fought against the United States of America, Like General Braxton Bragg, known for his short temper, shooting his own soldiers, and for losing the Battle of Chattanooga.

We are told that the rechristened Fort Bragg, where Usurper Trump held another of his Reichsparteitage in front of carefully selected MAGA troops this week, is not named for Braxton Bragg, the General who wrested defeat from the jaws of victory at Chickamunga and Perryville, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. No, the Fort is named for Braxton Bragg, the current pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, lifetime ERA of 2.81, 1.1 WHIP.

And the Soviet-style military parade in the nation's capital this Saturday has nothing to do with it being Generalissimo Donald "Old Blood and Bone Spurs" Trump's birthday that day, either.

So, to the servicemen (just men, thankyou) who will soon be assigned to duty aboard the USNS Col. William Simmons, USNS Hiram Evans, USNS S. Glenn Young, USNS David Herold, USNS George Atzerodt, and USNS John Wilkes Booth, just tell your loved ones not to Google those names. Your ships are probably named someone other than the first names that show up.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.