Finger on the Pulse of America
It is not known whether taking the pulse of political opinion via political cartoons is statistically valid, but it is kind of fun—fun in a way that makes your teeth grind in righteous indignation.
At a time when the U.S. and all the nations that followed it down the rabbit hole of pirate/casino capitalism are suffering massive hits on all fronts, it takes real dedication to turn one’s laser-like focus from the U.S. economy to criticize Hugo Chavez for choosing socialism instead. Mort Walker, however, manages it, leaving us to assume that the other, non-destroyed cars in the lot represent the shining examples of free-market capitalism that an idiotic Chavez deliberately ignores. Because he’s an idiot, you see. Gotcha. The international press, on the other, gets it just right with their depiction of a grave for capitalism right next to communism and feudalism.[1]
[1] Don’t count feudalism out yet; the powers-that-be are working hard to bring it back. It’s the next logical step from the plutocracy we have now.↩
Nationalizing the banks is clearly the final step on the descent to socialism from the lofty heights of casino capitalism. Though the proposals on the table are far more aptly described as neo-feudalism, the media is more comfortable with describing anything that doesn’t involve trickle-up (poor-to-rich) fiscal flow as socialism. The primary argument here seems to be that the government would be horrible at running the banks. To the untrained eye, it would seem that anyone could run the banks better than the passel of crooks currently in charge of them. But that’s why yours is an untrained eye.
Even those sympathetic to Obama see the job of fixing the economy as nearly impossible to accomplish. Not because Obama and his team are necessarily incapable but because the scope of the problem is so gargantuan that there isn’t much that can be done at this late date. It’s the equivalent of looking away once you’ve already seen the mushroom cloud. Go ahead and do it if it makes you feel better, but it’s not going to help.
Regardless of the solution to the fiscal disaster (or catastrof%*k, as Jon Stewart of the Daily Show calls it), it’s agreed that Obama is spending too much money, is not spending enough on tax relief, is generally to blame for all that has gone wrong in 2009 (despite the obvious beginnings before his term) and that he is solving problems entirely too slowly. Americans want things fixed and they want them fixed now. The idea of inevitable collapse has not penetrated the national psyche yet. It will.
Another extremely hot topic is the subject of AIG bonuses. The focus is almost entirely on the AIG executives and Larry Summers’ idiotic statement that contracts can’t be altered or broken. Only Obama has dared to mention that it was not his administration that signed the sweetheart deals with AIG under which they get to do whatever they want with their bailout cash, no strings attached. It was Geithner (Sec. Treasury), Bernanke (Fed. Chair) and Paulson, but that’s also mostly glossed over by both sides. The media has agreed to leave the doings of the Bush administration in the past, where it belongs. There’s no sense dredging up all of that ancient history and playing the “blame game”. No sense at all.
The first two cartoons are at least pretty funny, unlike some of the others.
At least some opinion is taking notice that the current situation for both America and the world is almost wholly to blame on policies often identified with Republicans. Democrats are also wholeheartedly for these policies, but they’ve escaped more of the scathing rhetoric because they’ve at least paid lip-service to being “for the worker”; the Repulicans have been unashamedly for the rich for so long that they have considerably more backpedaling to do. That the Republicans were executing exactly the big government policies that they publicly reviled is almost never mentioned. It doesn’t make it any less funny to see a cartoon so aptly summarizing the neo-con approach of “no regulation, no enforcement and tax cuts” as a car wreck. Similarly, the metaphor of handing control of an airplane aimed squarely at the ground at the last second is apt for pretty much everything and not just health care.
Finally, at least one cartoon points out the failings of the American people to express indignation for those aspects of their society that are truly offensive. Stagnating wages for almost the entire working class, a disappearing middle class, and the emergence of a super-rich class doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but the payout of bonuses that amount to 1/1000th of the most recent AIG bailout gets Americans sharpening their pitchforks. Other companies that got bailouts have also given bonuses (like Goldman or Merrill Lynch), but those were ignored. It’s the typical tendency to focus on a single issue or scapegoat in order to keep things crystal clear. Instead of recognizing that the system is fundamentally broken, people are much more likely to be satisfied with attacking a single target. This has at least as much to do with the state of media in America and the voluntary propagandization thereof, but that’s a story for another day.