Toon: He Calls It As He Seized It

I was considering drawing a cartoon naming Donald Joffrey Trump as Vladimir Putin's "Apprentice" (get it? get it?). Then I decided I'd rather go with a more up-to-date reference.

Brevity being the soul of wit, I'm sure that if this conversation between Trump and Putin ever occurred, Trump would go on and on about how nobody knew that dumb has a "B" in it and he's so surprised that he hadn't thought of this clever wordplay before now; and then he'd repeat the joke and congratulate himself for being such a stable genius, much better than that Jimmy Kimmel fellow who gets such lousy ratings and ABC ought to lose its broadcast license, just like CNN and the failed New York Times because everybody says Trump should have gotten the Nobel Prize for bringing peace to the Gulf of America but they refuse to report it—

All the while, Putin would have shut off the portion of his brain that translates English to Russian much earlier.

Dispatches from the Workers Paradise

Today's Graphical History Tour brings us to October of 1926.

Detail from "A Week in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily World, Chicago, Oct. 9, 1926

We have a couple stops in this week's Tour, starting back in the U.S.S.R. 

Last week's post closed with an overly optimistic cartoon by A.G. Racey on the promise of lasting peace (a view shared, to be fair, with several other cartoonists). Marvin Bales's cartoon reminds us that there was no cessation of international rivalries in Europe, nor any shortage of bilateral pacts in defense against them. 

"The Cause of the Pause in Disarmament" by James North in Washington (DC) Post, Oct. 3, 1926

Fears of Russian expansionism, however, united governments in Europe and the United States. James North depicted the League of Nations' Disarmament Conference interrupted by the Russian bear reaching to grab Poland, the Baltic states, and China.

It's interesting that North included Turkey as also threatened by Russian domination. The countries actively discussing taking over and dismembering Kemal Attaturk's Turkey at the time were Italy and Greece.

"These Must Be Heard" by A. Jerger in Daily Worker, Chicago, Oct. 2, 1926

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) held its annual convention in Detroit, in an atmosphere of  alarm over Soviet influence in the worldwide labor movement. Anti-communist prosecution had largely hobbled the "Wobblies" of the International Workers of the World union; the AFL, on the other hand, shunned communist involvement.

"Not the Sort of Recognition I'm After" by Clifford Berryman in Evening Star, Washington DC, Oct. 14, 1926

The 1926 convention unanimously passed a resolution denouncing "the Soviet regime of Russia as the most unscrupulous, most anti-social, most menacing institution in the world today. Between it and our form of political and social organization there can be no compromise of any kind." 

"Through the Red Internationale, which is controlled by the Communist Party of Russia, the Soviet regime has continued its efforts to undermine and destroy the Democratic-Labor movement of the United States. Its lack of any progress in that direction is due, not to any lack of determination on its part, but to the strength and deep determination of the membership of the American trade union movement." 

A competing resolution urging U.S. recognition of the Russian government was not brought to a vote.

"Putting on the Lid" by Fred Seibel in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Oct. 20, 1926

A similar resolution against the fascist regime in Italy received less attention from American editorial cartoonists. It read in part, "In fascism we find only another form of dictatorship and autocracy, a principle of government that can never find anything but opposition in the minds of free people."

"The Big Parade" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ca. Oct. 11, 1926

A more controversial stand taken at the AFL convention was advocating for a five-day work week. At the time, most workers were expected to be on the job six, even seven days a week, for ten or more hours each day. Workers rights organizations had been calling for shorter hours for years; AFL President William Green noted that the five-day work week had already been adopted in some branches of the printing and building trades, and during the summer in some department stores.

The most prominent convert to the five-day work week in 1926 was a big name in the automotive industry.

"Can He Make the Grade" by Dean O'Dell in Dayton Daily News, Oct. 9, 1925

Henry Ford instituted the five-day, 40-hour work week at his automobile plant on May 1, 1926, believing that it would benefit both the company and its workforce — and not incidentally, dampen any enthusiasm among employees for joining a union. His public explanation was that “Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation.”

"The New Commandment" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 6, 1926

"Ding" Darling cited the biblical command to labor six days out of every seven. I would note that by phrasing its caption as a question and drawing a car in danger of overheating, Dean O'Dell's cartoon casts a shade of doubt upon the success of Ford's five-day work week.

"Out of Order" by Jesse Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. Oct. 13, 1926

A feature story by L.L. Stevenson for Detroit News marking the 80th birthday of Elbert "Judge" Gary, Chairman of United States Steel, summed up his opinion on the five-day workweek and other labor issues:

For the steel industry, he holds that such a week would be utterly impractical since so many of the operations are continuous. He does not think much of the proposal to unionize the automotive industry. Labor unions when they attempt to dictate when and where a man shall work are in the wrong. English labor unions have become too radical.  Prohibition has increased the efficiency of the American workingman.

"I don't absolve the bad features," he continued. "You must average up things. On the whole, the workingman is better off. If I had been writing the law, I would have excluded beer and light wines, though in my opinion, neither benefits the workingman in any way."

And yet, the five-day work week soon became the norm in much of the industrialized world. For younger generations, it was all they knew since childhood.

"A Popular Movement" by Harold Talburt for United Feature Syndicate, ca. Oct. 9, 1926

Q Toon: A Gentleman in Moscow

Gay Republican operative Richard Grenell is reportedly interested in snagging a prominent foreign policy position in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™, including the post of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, vacant since last June.

"He had an interest in the job – or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues," one anonymous source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail of London, while acknowledging that "Putin's regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ."

Thirty years ago, Republicans' objections to President Clinton's nomination of James Hormel to be U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg included the claim that the fact of Hormel being openly gay would be an insult to Catholic Luxembourgers. If the citizens or government of Luxembourg were truly upset, however, I don't remember hearing anything about it, and I'm certain that the U.S. Senators who raised such a stink about Hormel's nomination would have been sure to point out any complaints.

Two decades later, during the First, Almost As Corrupt Trump Administration, Ric Grenell raised his hosts' hackles as U.S. Ambassador to Germany; but it was because he insisted on meddling in domestic German politics. It had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. 

Trump's State Department is apparently in no hurry whatsoever to put anybody in charge of our embassy in Russia. Trump crony Michael Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been Trump's de facto conduit to the Kremlin (when he isn't getting his instructions directly from Putin), operating without the nuisance of having to get confirmed by the Senate. The two are likely to play a more important role in U.S.-Russian relations than whoever eventually becomes the next official ambassador, anyway.

As for the former Acting Director of the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Grenell just wants to get any foreign service appointment at all. He appeared most recently in my cartoons in March, when he was reportedly angling for a position with Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas."

By the way, if anyone has heard from Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas," please contact the Bureau of Missing Persons.

text?

Q Toon: Tea and Bessentpathy

You have, of course, heard about Donald Joffrey Trump bleating on Trump Social, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” (Unless you’re a Fox Noise junkie.)

There is no bottom to the depravity of the nasty, brutish, and short-tempered man befouling the Oval Office and the nation. Many have come forward this week to condemn this indefensible shitpost.

So instead, I'm condemning the lickspittles who are defending it.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker concluded a contentious interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on March 22 by asking him about Trump spitting on Mueller's grave before the body was even cold:

Kristen Welker: "Do you think it's appropriate for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who's a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?"

Bessent: "Kristen, I was with the president in the green room at Davos and there was a video playing of the — what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye, and I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family."

Welker: "But to the question of the president’s post, I mean, Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid. Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen –"

Bessent: "Again —"

Welker: "– Mr. Secretary –"

Bessent: "I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through."

Welker: "So, you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the post, saying, 'Good. Robert Mueller’s dead.'”

Bessent: "Again, I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family."

Welker: "All right. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, thank you as always for being here."

Think about that one for a second. Retired FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 to conduct the investigation into candidate Trump's collusion with Russia, and published a report in 2019 that was immediately mischaracterized by then Attorney General William Barr as exonerating his boss. Mueller had nothing to do with the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago when Trump was refusing to return presidential papers illegally stored there.

By the way, kudos to whoever it was at the 2026 Davos seminar whose brilliant idea it was to have video of the Mar-a-Lago raid playing on the television in the green room while Trump was in it. Well played! Maybe next year you can put together a montage of courtroom sketches from his 2024 fraud trial.

So anyway, Mr. Secretary Bessent behooves us to muster up some empathy — which I thought was one of those woke mind viruses Republicans want to stamp out — for the most amoral, ill-mannered, foul-minded, self-absorbed, overgrown brat ever to escape the clutches of the law and the Peter Principle to ascend to the Presidency of our late Republic.

Personally, I hope that Donald Commodus Trump lives long enough to see the next occupant of the White House demolish his precious ballroom; and if a giant sinkhole swallows up Mar-a-Lago at the same time, that would be bonus. But I have wondered many times over the past couple of years what we editorial cartoonists will draw (if there are any of us left) when he at long last faces the Grim Reaper like nobody has ever seen before.

Now I know.

An Oliphant Gallery

If you happen to be in Washington D.C. looking for something worthwhile to do, "A Savage Art" The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant" premieres today at the DC/DOX'25 film festival. Bill Banowsky's documentary examines Oliphant's career through interviews with the cartoonist himself, his family, and colleagues. We are told that the documentary also features several of his cartoons.

Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca., Feb. 12, 1966

I can't be there (and if the AAEC convention organizers get permission to screen it at our convention in Baltimore in September, I'm afraid it appears unlikely that I'll be able to be there, either), so instead, today's Graphical History Tour highlights some of Oliphant's amazing work. 

A collection of my favorite Oliphant cartoons would require a sequel post or seven, so I have limited my choices to cartoons that do not include caricatures of actual persons. I would like to focus on the artistry that inspired so many cartoonists of my generation to mimic his style.

by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, March 3, 1970

Compare his 1966 depiction of Vietnam, atop this post, with this one four years later. The sarcasm is the same, but the tone is entirely different.

Not only is the setting much darker, the clean-shaven kids in the first cartoon have been replaced by grizzled, war-weary adults, even though the soldiers would be about the same age in either cartoon. (The best and brightest guys in the white shirts and skinny ties are gone entirely in the 1970 cartoon.)

by Pat Oliphant  in Denver Post, April 18, 1972

Here Oliphant demonstrates an adeptness in portraying the ravages of age on his cartoon character as a parallel with the ravages of war on her country. The forty years between France reclaiming Indochina from its (brief) Japanese occupation after World War II to North Vietnam's conquest of the South three years after Oliphant drew this cartoon wear heavily on her, successive liberators notwithstanding.

By Pat Oliphant in Washington Star, Nov. 6, 1980

Here’s a theme Oliphant revisited more than once, but this is his most impressive depiction of the American Electoral Machine as something massive, complex, and somewhat antiquated. Its engines, gears, fly wheels, pistons, and furnace occupy almost every square millimeter of the frame, save for the exhausted Uncle Sam dwarfed by it in the lower right corner. You can almost feel the heat and smell the coal, soot, and metal in the air.

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, March 22, 1982

Ronald Reagan, complaining about TV news reporting of the recession early in his presidency, griped, "Is it news that some fellow out in South Succotash who has just been laid off should be interviewed nationwide?" Pat Oliphant took that dismissive, elitist remark and created this excellent cartoon. 

Neatly divided by the railroad, we have dirty, downtrodden, and darkly satanic South Succotash on the wrong side of the tracks. Layoffs and welfare frauds (a longtime Republican byword) combine to outnumber the population. You wouldn't want to live there.

The White House sits perched high on the hills of North Succotash, home to a pleasant golf course, and lovely trees. Its 500 residents pull down millions yet somehow pay no taxes.

And it all fits in one 3-by-5 panel. No animated panorama. Not even color.

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, Feb. 24, 1983

Upwind of South Succotash, Oliphant’s Burfordville, named for one of Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency administrators (incidentally also the mother of a current Supreme Court Justice), cannot possibly exist in the real world. But Oliphant has rendered it in such rich detail that you would swear that it must be real. 

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, June 6, 1983

A horse cannot roll around on the ground convulsed with laughter, but if it could, this is exactly what it would look like.

Credit the portion of Oliphant's career living out West perhaps. He is a master at drawing — and sculpting — horses, and you can tell how much more loving care he puts into drawing horses than, say, cats. For years, I struggled to depict horses that appeared to be capable of motion; I credit Pat Oliphant as a reference point for every horse I have drawn successfully.

Now, I would have liked to include some more recent cartoons in this discussion, but I had a problem finding examples of superior draftsmanship that didn't include caricatures. So compare this cartoon from 2001...

by Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, Feb. 6, 2001

...with a similarly themed cartoon from 1980:

by Pat Oliphant in Washington Star, Oct. 30, 1980

Both cartoons convey the wind and chill, dampness and dreariness outside their respective pawn shops. The earlier one, however, is meticulously rendered, whereas the later one appears rushed and cursory. The elevated perspective of "Lee Iacocca Sent Us" is visually arresting in a way that the Presidential Seal cartoon isn't.

Of course, there's no point in drawing the same cartoon twice, right?

Oliphant's eyesight has betrayed him these days, and there could be some of that showing up by 2001. His having rejected the use of duoshade since 1980 also makes a difference; yet I would point out that the South Succotash, Burfordville, and Western character cartoons are all drawn without it.

With that, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. 

Cartoon Like a Lion, Out Like a Light

Having learned last week more than you'll ever need to know about the guy who didn't become Calvin Coolidge's Attorney General, today's Graphical History Tour rummages through my basement in search of new and interesting takes on my own old cartoons.

If we're lucky, we may even find some.

March, 2015

Before there was Project 2025, there was the ALEC Agenda. The corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 to create cookie-cutter right-wing legislation for state governments from one end of the country to the other.

The Wisconsin politicians in my cartoon are Assembly Leader Robin Vos, then Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald, and then Governor Scott Walker. Walker is out of office now; Fitzgerald has gone on to Congress, and you may have seen him as one of the congresscretins confronted by angry constituents at his town hall meeting last week.

The character having the ALEC Agenda rammed down his throat — a term usually used by Republicans to vilify marriage equality, abortion rights, health care reform, and anything else they despise — is the laborer from the Wisconsin state flag.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, March 25, 2015

I didn't get to draw hard-hitting cartoons of Republicans ramming their agenda down Wisconsin throats during my stint illustrating the editorials of the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. Once in a while, however, I got to have a little fun with a topic, such as this one.

Investor Mark Attanasio purchased the Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team from Bud Selig in 2004. The team, which hadn't made the MLB post-season since 1982, had a brand new ballpark, and Attanasio wanted to find out what else it was going to take to attract fans to the game.

The fourth panel is an homage to Richard Guindon, whose self-titled cartoon was a beloved feature in the Minneapolis Tribune when I was in college in Minnesota. Not that any regular readers of the Business Journal had any reason to know that; to my knowledge, Guindon's cartoons never appeared in any Wisconsin newspaper.

While lutefisk night at the ballpark might plausibly be a real thing at Target Field (yet certainly isn't), a more appropriate homage to Richard Guindon would have been for the lady in panel four to have cited her enthusiasm for Bring Your Carp to the Ballpark Night.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 6, 1995

Jumping back another decade, here's another cartoon that would never have run in the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. 

This was the first installment of a two-parter, satirizing some image-polishing television advertisements by a certain multinational corporation. Unlike the weeks that have passed between my current episodes of the Max & Leo Show, the student newspaper at UW-Milwaukee published twice a week; so readers could follow the sequel to the Exxtron commercial three days after the first episode.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., March 7, 1985

Finally, let us take a moment to honor the memory of Soviet General Secretary of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party, Konstantin Chernenko. 

Chernenko died on March 10, 1985, just shy of thirteen months in office, of cirrhosis of the liver, chronic emphesema, and congestive heart failure at age 73. He had come to office upon the death of Yuri Andropov, who had succeeded another elderly Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, only sixteen months earlier.

State-run media in the U.S.S.R. had consistently downplayed reports of the three leaders' declining health. On February 25, 1985, aides hauled the obviously ill Chernenko out of his hospital bed so that he could vote for himself (as candidate for Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) on live television. His last television appearance was three days later to read a brief victory statement celebrating his election.

In completely unrelated news, Donald Полезный Идиот Trump is older today than any of those three Soviet leaders were when they checked into their respective mausolea. 

Meanwhile in Europe

It has been a busy week Chez Bergetoons, so today's Graphical History Tour will just be a quick run-down of 1925 getting underway over there in Europe. To start, let’s check how the armistice is holding up, shall we?

"Open All Winter" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 30, 1925

"Digging Out the Old Stuff" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. Jan. 4, 1925

Yes, prospects for peace were pretty dim, according to Rollin Kirby at Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and Nelson Harding at the Gennison family's Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

"Das Nuejahrsprosten" by Erich Wilke in Kladderadatsch, Jan. 4, 1925

Munich cartoonist Erich Wilke depicted international relations as a soap opera. Whenever all the characters gather together, plot twists are in the offing.

You'll notice that Wilke hasn't yet updated his character stock book in a while; Uncle Sam is still Brother Jonathan.

"They're Out Again" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 25, 1925

U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes resigned after successfully negotiating an agreement on postwar reparations between Germany and the Entente nations, leaving it to his successor to get the agreement past the isolationists in Congress. Fortunately for President Coolidge, the Progressives were personae non gratae among their more orthodox Republican colleagues just then after their disappointing showing in the 1924 election.

"Zangengeburt" by Thomas Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 19, 1925

December elections in Germany — the second in seven months— produced a coalition government of multiple parties from left, right, and center. Nazis and Communists lost seats in the Bundestag. The Social Democratic Party had the most seats, but far from a majority, and without any of the right-wing, Catholic, or monarchist parties willing to join with it.

After lengthy negotiations and bargaining among party leaders and dissidents, a coalition government was led by Centre Party, the radical nationalist German National People's Party, the conservative German People's Party, and Catholic-centered Bavarian People's Party.

"Getting Away with It, Too" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 12, 1925

In Italy, Benito Mussolini launched his dictatorship in a speech to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. He took responsibility for his Blackshirts, who had rioted and attacked newspaper offices, resulting in three deaths. Mussolini dared anyone to try removing him from office, and promised to restore order to Italy within forty-eight hours.

"Retreat from Moscow" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 25, 1925

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin fired Leon Trotsky as Kommisar for Military and Naval Affairs. Trotsky was well known outside his country, but few American cartoonists were learning how to draw Stalin yet.

There will always be an England. 

"And Still Poor Old Decadent England Leads the World" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Jan. 3, 1925

And according to A.G. Racey, there has always been a faction lamenting that Old Blighty's best days were behind her.

It's a lovely exercise in period costumes, however..

Christmastoons

Welcome aboard today's Graphical Holiday History Tour, working backward in time through some of my December cartoons from years ending in four.

Our first stop: 2014.

for Q Syndicate, December, 2014

Vlad the Defenestrator has been on his antigay crusade for over a decade now, harnessing the power of the state against any perceived threat from "homosexual propaganda." 

Among the musical sine qua nons of the Christmas season (besides "All I Want for Christmas Is You") is the Nutcracker ballet of Pyotr Illych Tchaikowsky. It no doubt irritates Mr. Putin that Tchaikowsky was gay, although the fact that the composer was miserable about it probably mitigates Putin's pique.

The Nutcracker ballet has not yet been banned in Moscow, but I wouldn't expect to see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo's rendition of it there any time soon.

for Q Syndicate, December, 2004

In the dawning days of the 21st Century, there was no Grindr, no Scruff, and no Chappy.

What gay men had way back in 2004 were on-line chat rooms. Well, everybody had chat rooms; but as was the case with gay bars before them, specifically gay chat rooms were around for those who knew how to find them. A few operated as places, as one would expect, to chat — about theater, or cartooning, or politics, or drag pageants, what have you. But nearly all were used sooner or later for the same thing as their successor apps: hooking up. 

Early on, chat room users couldn't see what the guys they were chatting up looked like except by asking for a pic to be sent. Nor, unless a hometown were in the chatter's screen name, could they tell how many feet away the other guy was. I imagine that finding out that the other guy was all the way up at the North Pole would have been a deal-breaker for most men.

Santa, however, would have been at an advantage. Not only could he get to your place really, really quickly if he were up for it, he had already seen you while you're sleeping.

✍

Departing momentarily from the Christmas theme, this next cartoon comes with a trigger warning that it's about deadly serious criminal activity and might stir up unpleasant memories for some in the greater Milwaukee area. But it's a propos in light of the lionization — herofication, if you will — of  Luigi Mangione, Daniel Penny, and Kyle Rittenhouse.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Dec. 1, 1994

On November 28, 1994, a fellow inmate at the maximum security Columbia Correctional Institution attacked and killed notorious serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson. Anderson's case had received much local media attention; he had murdered his wife and sent police and media on a wild goose chase by claiming that two unknown black men had done it.

There were some people who promptly hailed Dahmer's and Anderson's killer, Christopher Scarver, as a hero. He was no such thing, and it surely must have grieved the family of Steven Lohan, the man he was convicted of executing in cold blood during a robbery at the Wisconsin Conservation Corps, to see Scarver lauded as such.

Would I be happier if Dahmer and/or Anderson were still languishing in prison today? No. Nor do I find any pleasure in that Scarver remains in prison, with two more murder convictions added to his sentence.

I had forgotten about this cartoon and only ran across it while trying to find the date of another cartoon I was considering for today's blog post. The original drawing of this cartoon might have gotten lost before I returned to the Post office with the following Tuesday's cartoon; it's not in my files and I can't recall pulling it out since. But since my mother was saving all my printed cartoons in a scrapbook I now have, here it is again.

Okay, folks: the trigger warning is no longer in effect. I'm going back to lighter material and you may resume reading. 

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 13, 1984

Here's a cartoon I did for the UW-Parkside student newspaper's last issue of 1984, as printed on its front page. 

The hearth in the cartoon is based on my parents'; in the living room between two bookcases, with a stone Viking ship mounted over the mantle. But that is not our dog.

I'm not sure why there's a teaser for "1982 reviewed" on the top of the page. I don't believe that the Ranger had any AARPgenarians on staff who still couldn't wrap their heads around it being 1984 already, let alone that it was soon not to be.

Well, that brings us to the end of our tour. Please return your tray tables to their upright position, make sure you have all your personal items with you, and have a happy holiday of your choice! 

Q Toon: Couples Therapy

This week's cartoon was inspired by a pair of articles I had read recently. One, in Time magazine, claimed that Americans left and right aren't as diametrically opposed as your social media feed would have you believe. The other, in the New York Post, gave voice to complaints of "MAGA gays" who feel shunned and dissed by others in the LGBT movement — including their favorite bars and even their own spouses.

Mark Dorman, a retired teacher from Hell’s Kitchen, said he has been all but blacklisted from the Atlas Social Club, his local gay bar, since he spoke positively about the former president there last summer.
“I’m almost anti-gay,” a frustrated Dorman, 64, told The Post. “It’s an embarrassment to see this kind of behavior… I’d really invite them to go to Iran or Gaza. See what that does for you. See how fast they throw you in prison or kill you.”
“It feels like the Soviet Union, Marxist environment now,” he said. “With the gay community, they feel that Republicans on the far right have an anti-gay thing. ..."

The "Go To Iran or Gaza" is a common meme among Magazoids who deign to advise the LGBTQ+ community to ignore the chapters pertaining to us in Mein Trumpf: The 2025 Project. Yet somehow, I don't think that when Mark Dorman cites the Soviet Union, he has been following events in the Far Right Paradise that Russia has become under Trump's buddy Vlad the Defenestrator.

It's Dorman in the Post article whose marriage nearly ended over Trumpism (frankly, Dorman is their source for the whole article). Their marriage only survived because they agreed to stop discussing politics. So I hope for Dorman's sake that his husband never, ever, ever reads the New York Post.

I think we all have some family member/s with whom we have reached an agreement not to mention politics any more. Which is where the Time article comes in.

And divided we certainly think we are. The only thing Americans seem to agree on is that Americans cannot agree on anything. It’s hardly worth summarizing the headlines about doom and radicalization. In the prelude to a November ballot featuring the candidate synonymous with polarization, all the dapple and nuance of life is once again being reduced to a binary. Choose a side: red or blue.

Yet in the wintry interval between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day 2021, that Populace survey, dubbed the American Aspirations Index, found “stunning agreement” on national goals across every segment of the U.S. population, including, to a significant extent, among those who voted for Donald Trump and those who voted for Joe Biden. On the few points where the survey registered disagreement (notably, on immigration and borders), the dissent was intense. But intense disagreement was the exception, not the rule. 

Oh, you could probably add abortion to the list of points where the dissent is "intense." But is not talking about divisive issues really what it takes to keep this country together?

Or is that just what they want us to think?

"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," [Heritage Foundationführer Kevin] Roberts told host of "Real America's Voice" Dave Brat, a former congressman who spent his brief time in government claiming the attendees of the Women's March are much more dangerous than white supremacists.

On the other hand, if Team Edward and Team Jacob can bury their differences now that nobody talks about the Twilight series any more, maybe there is yet hope that we will all meet again some sunny day.

Not the vampires, of course.