Ludicrous Comparisons And Allusions

With an unwavering adherence to the party line, several political cartoonists giddily convey far-right talking points word-for-word, promulgating a severely twisted—and context-free—view of history and the world. Let’s take a look at a sampling from the last couple of months.

The Failing economy proves that Social Security doesn’t work

With Bernie Madoff’s admission that he’d been running a Ponzi scheme for decades, astute commentators asked whether there was a difference between Madoff’s investment fund and much of the derivatives sector that had also appeared in the last couple of decades. Some commentators ignored the obvious comparisons to the deflation of the Ponzi-like debt bubble in the major financial markets and instead focused on Social Security, an age-old enemy of the right. The comparison is appealing on the surface, but falls flat because the Social Security program is stable out to dozens of years and will require only minor adjustments and modest investment returns, unlike a Ponzi scheme, the viability of which disappears in a puff of smoke upon closer scrutiny.

Democrats are big spenders, unlike Republicans

Next up is the “Obama as Big Spender” meme. Since Obama has announced his plan to spend between $850 billion and $1 trillion, it’s been clear that he’s just another big-spending Democrat, unlike his predecessor, whose tight-fisted approach to government epitomized the Republican party’s “small government” approach. The cartoons depicted to the left attempt to subtly illustrate this distinction. Half of the $700 billion Paulson-era package has been delivered into the hands of the long-suffering financial institutions that bore the brunt of their own idiocy and they seem to be doing much better now, thank goodness. Unfortunately, the Congress and Bush administration didn’t extract sufficiently stringent conditions—stringent is perhaps the wrong word—to ensure that they have to tell us what they’ve done with the money at all. But, as you can clearly see, it’s Obama—who has, as yet, paid out nothing—who is the big spender.

Muslims are unfathomably insane

This one’s really good, so pay attention. The president of the United States bangs the war drums for an invasion of Iraq, using false accusations of weapons of mass destructions as well as links to the 9–11 terrorists to build up popular support. After 6.5 years of occupation, over 2 million internally displaced persons, over 2 millions external refugees and over 1 million dead, an Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush. This clearly shows how singularly unreasonable Arabs & Muslims are. As the cartoon depicts, they would have spun completely out of control had anyone thrown a shoe at one of their leaders; the U.S. can take the high road as they pre-emptively destroy a country before it’s done anything at all.

If one Democrat is a criminal, they all are

Caroline Kennedy has since withdrawn her name from consideration as senator of New York State. Instead New York state will get a gun-loving, anti-abortion senator who is a Democrat seemingly in name only. She was nominated by Democratic governor David Paterson, who appointed her in some half-assed bipartisan attempt to appease upstate voters, who elected a gun-control–loving, pro-life senator the last anyone bothered to ask their opinion. Be that as it may, there were many things you could say about Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications—almost all of them bad—but comparing her to Rod Blagojevich? He’s accused of trying to sell a senate seat; the comparison between getting a seat because you’re well-connected and getting a seat because you bought it is not only specious, it’s probably libelous.

Obama and Osama are working together

We get it: the names are really close. No-one who has discussed politics in the last two years has avoided the slip because the human mind is not infallible. Those that aren’t jerks apologize and move on; those that are jerks make cartoons like the one on the left, depicting Obama’s to appease Osama’s worldview.[1] This is again content that must be stepping over the line of libel as it accuses the new president of conspiring with known terrorists. One could argue that the premise is so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe it—qualifying it legally as satire—but America is not composed of reasonable people and this author feels safe in predicting that more than half of America would believe it. Instead of appeasing Osama bin Laden, Obama has been busy of late appeasing the Republicans, who the American people have clearly and convincingly said should take a back seat for a couple of years. It is this betrayal of the mandate of the American voter that should concern us, not the fictitious association-by-nomenclature promulgated by idiots like this cartoonist (who is far from alone in his views).

The rule of law is a luxury we can’t afford

Due Process is a JokeClosing Guantánamo is NaiveBush Freed MuslimsAnd then there’s the hatred of a core principle of America, due process. Due process, for those beginners in the audience who haven’t followed along in civics class, is the legal notion of using a legal process to ascertain the veracity of an accusation. It’s kind of Legal Stuff 101 in the civilized world and ranks right up there with Habeas Corpus, which grants the accused the right to know the nature of the charges, which was also revoked under Bush the 43rd. Some straight-thinking judges finally shot that revokation down near the end of his term, restoring Habeas Corpus, but Due Process was still missing in action.

Without due process, the government can accuse and arrest anyone of anything and is not obligated to prove it. What’s the downside, you say? Sounds like just the tool we need to fight terrorists, you say? Get your ass to a dictatorship then and get the hell out of America, which is nation of laws.