The Whole World is Still Watching – The Daily Cartoonist

Arcadio Esquivel reaches for one of my least favorite images, the notion that cavemen mated by bopping women over their heads and dragging them away. This fits no primitive society I’m aware of; in all the hunter/gatherer societies I’ve read about, women are the cornerstones and they make the decisions about who will marry whom, often overtly, otherwise through behind-the-scenes pressure.

I’ll grant you that abduction of women is a frequent male fantasy, and the Rape of the Sabine Women is a frequent subject for artists. Livy tells this story, which is taken from the Aeneid and is certainly a myth, not history. The story goes that Romulus realized his all-male Rome would die out, so had his men kidnap Sabine women as wives. But we’ll discuss Elon Musk’s bizarre fantasies another day.

The more pressing objection to Arcadio’s cartoon is that the world is not being dragged unconsciously into a trade war, and is attempting to resist, with China becoming both the main defender of the world economy and preparing to use growing annoyance with Trump as an opportunity to expand its influence in Africa and Latin America, being already poised to dominate Southeast Asia.

It’s not just the trade wars that have the world looking askance at Trump. Ramirez compares his Ukraine policy to Neville Chamberlain, who met with Hitler and came back to Britain with a worthless agreement, having handed Hitler the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge not to expand further.

He’s right that Trump’s idea of conceding the Crimea and parts of Ukraine is unlikely to quench Putin’s thirst for lebensraum, but Chamberlain negotiated on behalf of the free world sincerely, and Trump’s efforts in Ukraine are not viewed that way.

First of all, as Morland puts it, Trump is seen as highly untrustworthy and a threat to both the world and to his own people. It’s gone well beyond “Would you buy a used car from this man?” and much of the world most certainly would not.

His publicized meeting with Zelenskyy was over-the-top rude, and, as Baron puts it, this hostility has killed chances of peace in Ukraine, and is being done in partnership with Vladimir Putin.

Note that we don’t see who has crushed the fertile egg of peace until the final panel, and the rudeness simply confirms that Trump is in league with Russia.

Bundy is more specific, accusing Trump of letting Putin put words in his mouth and thus set America’s agenda, moving towards sealing Ukraine’s fate, along with — he implies — whatever territories Putin may want to add to his collection later.

Patrick Blower sees him not as a compliant servant of Russia but as an active participant in a grotesque shakedown.

Some in America wonder what grip Putin has on Trump, but you’ll note that none of these cartoonists ask that question. They deal with what is, rather than speculating about why. And if you ask why Trump is so fond of Putin, you also have to ask why he is so fond of Victor Orbon and why he so admired Duterte?

The pattern renders the question moot.

Matt Pritchett has this character explain the wider implications of Trump’s alleged peace plan. It seems unlikely that the rest of the watching world finds any surprise in this suggestion, though they may appreciate the dark humor.

As Homer Simpson would say, “It’s funny because it’s true.”

The relevant question is “What are you going to do about it?” and Telnaes depicts the current state of our three branches of government: A rightwing dictator heading the executive branch, a group of superheroes in the judiciary and a pack of weenies doing nothing in the legislature.

She may overstate the invulnerability of that superhero, though we’ll see how the overall coup plays out for them, but she’s right about the legislature.

Ramirez is more specific in his condemnation, drawing on an incident during a recent earthquake in which the elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park instinctively formed a protective circle around their calves.

Ramirez accuses Republicans of failing to have those same instincts to protect the Constitution.

Murphy, himself an attorney, suggests we stop looking for explanations and get down to dealing with the reality, specifically the number of large, wealthy law firms that have kissed the ring and donated millions of dollars worth of free services to the administration rather than marshalling those legal resources to fight the harassment of nuisance lawsuits.

Zyglis notes the parade of cowards who have bent the knee, in contrast with Harvard’s refusal to knuckle under to the administration’s bullying.

I’m hardly first to say that handing your lunch money to the schoolyard bully only guarantees that he’ll want it again tomorrow, while punching him in the nose at least has a chance of resolving things.

If nothing else, Harvard’s willingness to tangle resulted in another demonstration of the chaos in the executive branch, as various White House sources declared the letter unauthorized, or maybe sent early, or maybe authorized after all.

I guess in this case, the next move depends on whether the weenies gain some spines and whether the elephants remember how to form an alert circle, because the superheroes seem ready to rock-and-roll, but they could use some back-up.

Meanwhile, the bully has found yet another way to take people’s lunch money. It would be funny if it were satire, but Dear Leader invents outrageous ideas faster than the Onion or Andy Borowitz can keep up.

Littleford makes a suggestion about the danger of setting precedents that ought to frighten any Republicans who expect the United States to survive as a democracy, because what if the Democrats came back to power?

Ask Bob Jones University, which lost its tax-free status in 1983 over its rules against interracial relationships, or other schools that lost theirs over whites-only admissions. The Supreme Court upheld the matter 8-1.

But that was a different Supreme Court, and an executive branch that hadn’t formed a group to prevent discrimination against Christianity.

Now the current court is about to hear a related case on a long-argued topic.

Stay tuned, folks!