Political Memes, Comics, and other Shenanigans, Part 34

[GreyhoundFan]

 

"Door-to-Dorks"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

"Fascist Putter"

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Last night, I binged every episode of the brand new Netflix series, “How to become a Tyrant.” It’s not an indepth look at different regimes, but if you had to take a test on any of them, it would be a decent Cliff Notes on each of the dictators it focused on. It’s narrated by Peter Dinklage who did a really good job with it. If you’re a history buff, you will have already read about most of this, but there were still a few things that were new to me, like Walter Duranty. Who that? Walter Duranty was the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times from 1922 to 1936. He idolized Joseph Stalin, who gave him exclusive interviews and tours of how there was no famine in Ukraine…which Duranty proceeded to write about, basically echoing Stalin’s propaganda. For this, Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize. You also learn that Kim Jong Il invented the cheeseburger. Did you know Kim Jong Il invented the cheeseburger? They do in North Korea where they can’t even get cheeseburgers. When you watch “How to become a Tyrant,” you see so many tactics that were and still are being used by Donald Trump. While the series mentions several dictators, it’s focus is on the North Korea family dynasty, Gadhafi, Saddam Hussien, Stalin, Idi Amin, and Hitler, who we heard this week had been praised by Donald Trump. The one person the series never mentions is Donald Trump. It was six episodes. They should have made it seven.

When you watch “How to become a Tyrant,” you see so many tactics that were and still are being used by Donald Trump. While the series mentions several dictators, its focus is on the North Korea family dynasty, Gadhafi, Saddam Hussien, Stalin, Idi Amin, and Hitler, who we heard this week had been praised by Donald Trump. The one person the series never mentions is Donald Trump. It was six episodes. They should have made it seven.

To be a successful dictator, you need to be a narcissist. You also need to build a cult of personality around yourself, which you cannot do if you’re not a narcissist. You need to proclaim, “Only I can fix it.” Other tactics include attacking a free press, facts, elections, and science. North Korea claims the Kims are such perfect specimens, they don’t poop. Stalin suppressed scientific research and placed folklore beliefs over genetics. Donald Trump told us a pandemic wasn’t happening and we should all take hydroxychloroquine and bleach.

Most importantly, you need to make you and your people the underdogs who have been persecuted. You need a common enemy to blame all your woes upon. Does any of this sound familiar?

Idi Amin blamed the British, and he had a point. Then, he blamed Indians. When he had kicked them all out of the nation, he needed a new foil. He picked the nation of Zaire and he invaded their country…which backfired big time. America is a great foil which was used by Idi Amin, North Korea, Gadhafi and Saddam…who also blamed Jews. Hitler blamed people in his own nation for selling them out with the Treaty of Versailles…and Jews. Stalin was a big fan of describing anyone who criticized him, such as religious leaders, as the “enemy of the people.” Does that sound familiar? Donald Trump began his presidential campaign with attacking Mexicans. “They don’t send us their best. They send rapists and murderers,” is something I can hear being said by Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Gadhafi, and so many others.

The biggest thing you need to be a dictator is hate. When you follow a dictator, he justifies your hate, tells you it’s OK to hate, and you have permission to publicly reveal your hatred. Before Trump, we didn’t have Nazis parading through our cities.

With the cult of personality, the cult leader tells his people they can’t trust anyone but him…and then they believe him.

My friend, Gordon, called me a few days ago and said, “Hey, let’s get cheeseburgers.” Sounded good to me, so I went to meet him outside my apartment building, where there is a restaurant. Sitting on the patio of the restaurant while I was waiting on Gordon were three older people. The traffic made hearing most of their conservation difficult, but I heard the old man say, “I don’t trust anyone except Donald Trump.” How dare that fucker say that right outside of my home. You’ll be glad to know I let it go and didn’t walk over there and rub my liberal cooties all over him while shoving his face into his huevo rancheros. Oh, yeah. It’s a Mexican restaurant. Go figure.

That MAGAt probably believes Donald Trump won the election. He believes it because Donald Trump told him so. If you believe Donald Trump won the election, congratulations. You are in a cult. But, if you follow Trump, we already know you’re in a cult. We’ve known it for a long time.

The Trump cult describes its critics as “Never Trumpers” and anyone who isn’t a Trumper is the enemy. To be a Never Trumper is a sin. Donald Trump has supported claims he was sent by God. If that is true, then we are NOT God’s favorite country.

Do you think that cheeseburger claim by the North Koreans is ridiculous? It is but it’s no more ridiculous than believing Donald Trump won the election. It’s no more ridiculous than saying, “I only believe Donald Trump.” Donald Trump did everything he could to become a fascist dictator. He failed and he was only a fascist president (sic).

Donald Trump claimed an election he lost was rigged. He claims he won. He called state officials and told them to “find the votes.” Then, he ordered his followers, like brown shirts, to attack the Capitol and stop the Constitutionally-mandated certification of the election.

Now, there’s a report that Trump praised Hitler and had to be told by his then-chief-of-staff, John Kelly, not to do so in public. It’s pretty bad when racist John Kelly tells you not to praise Hitler. Trump denies this but keep in mind, he once held a rally where he told his supporters to raise their right hands and pledge their loyalty to him.

He also praised Putin and said he was a better leader than President Obama. He excused Putin’s murder of dissidents. He took Putin’s word over his own U.S. intelligence when the Russian dictator said he didn’t meddle in our election.

Trump praised Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte for being “tough on crime,” which often entailed dragging suspected drug dealers into the streets to be shot in the head. Duterte claims he has personally done this.

Trump praised Turkey’s Recep Erdogan after he basically made himself president for life and threw judges into prison. He also praised China’s Xi Jinping after he was made president for life and told him he was a “king.”

Trump tweeted Mussolini, praised Saddam for killing terrorists, and said Libya would be much better off if Gadhafi was still in charge. He said Egypt’s El-Sisi was his “favorite dictator.”

Don’t forget, Trump told Proud Boys, a white nationalist hate group, to “stand back and stand by,” on national television shortly before the election, and also said there were “fine people” on both sides in Charlottesville. Donald Trump believes “fine people” march with Nazis chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Just in case you’re a Trump supporter, let me make two things clear to you: Trump lost the election and fine people don’t march with Nazis. I don’t care if you love Confederate statues, you don’t march with Nazis. The benefit could be a Toys for blind deaf kids with cleft palates, you still don’t march with Nazis. I don’t care if it’s free taco night with Nazis, you don’t eat tacos with Nazis.

Watch “How to become a Tyrant” and you’ll see it contains everything Donald Trump tried to implement. It’s full of tactics Donald Trump used and praised. Did Donald Trump praise Hitler? I believe it because it wouldn’t be the first time he praised a Nazi.

Why is it so hard to believe Donald Trump praised a Nazi when he is a Nazi?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

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This is sweet:

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[GreyhoundFan]

 

"Cave-to-Cave"

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Last Tuesday, President Biden called on local communities to become more involved as his goal of 70 percent of the nation being vaccinated by July 4th was missed by three percentage points. President Biden said, “We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and oftentimes door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus.”

White House spokesperson clarified that they’re asking for volunteers on the local level and they’re NOT sending federal employees out to knock on your door. Naturally, this is the brand new outrage, crisis, and freak-out for MAGAt America and it was all the rage at last weekend’s CPAC convention in Dallas and Jacksonville Walmarts.

The convention in Dallas was the SECOND annual CPAC convention to be held this year. In case you’re a Republican, and I really fucking mean it this time, “ANNUAL,” you stupid dipshits, means ONCE A YEAR. It means “one” NOT two…or three, or seventeen, you knuckle-dragging troglodyte morons. Seriously, how many more annual CPAC conventions do you plan to conduct this year? Is there one planned for a Jacksonville Walmart parking lot?

Anyway, Republicans are really upset over this door-to-door thing. These are the same people who politicized wearing face masks, declared the shutdown and mask wearing to be attacks on their liberties, tried to “liberate” Michigan and kidnap that state’s governor, and has been on an unholy campaign of anti-vaxxing and attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci for trying to save this nation from a pandemic.

If you listen to these goons, you’d think the vaccine awareness people were going door-to-door with harpoons dipped in Pfizer.

South Carolina governor, Henry McMaster, sent a letter (probably in crayon) to the state’s Board of Health and Environmental Control on Friday requesting that it “issue direction to agency leadership and to state and local healthcare organizations prohibiting the use of the Biden Administration’s ‘targeted’ ‘door to door’ tactics in the State’s ongoing vaccination efforts.” He wrote that “enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring” citizens to get vaccinated would undermine trust in the government. 

What about peer pressure? Is Joe Biden sending Fonzies out to let America know all the cool kids are being vaccinated and if you’re not one of them, then you’re a nerd? Maybe, up your nose with a rubber hose…full of Johnson & Johnson.

In Missouri, a state with the highest increase in covid cases, and like South Carolina, one of the lowest rates of vaccinations, Governor Mike Parsons warned that a door-to-door campaign isn’t welcome in his state.

It gets better, and by “better,” I mean worse. Oh, so much worse.

The House Fucknut Caucus, I mean…Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs said it’s a “blatant abuse of government authority.” Marjorie Taylor Green, who recently apologized for comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust, called vaccine outreach workers, “medical brownshirts.” Never mind the fact the government is NOT keeping a list of unvaccinated Americans. That doesn’t stop Michelle Bachmann from lying about it.

Bachmann said, “There is a database. There will be a database, and everybody will be in that database. And it’s not just vaccine status, it will be your entire medical history. It will be connected to your finances. This is going to get bigger, bigger, bigger, so you stop it now, and you don’t give any information to any government questioner at your door.”

Also, while they get all your medical information and plant a chip inside you, they’re going to document your penis size, put that on a government list, and post it on a billboard outside your house. Fortunately on the billboard, the text will be as tiny as your penis so nobody’s going to be able to read it. The billboard will be less of a giveaway than your gun collection.

Republican and outed liar, Madison Cawthorn said at CPAC that if the government can go door to door to talk about vaccines, then they can also go door to door and seize your guns and bibles. No, they can’t. But Matt Gaetz asked if any of the vaccine awareness door knockers will be high school girls.

During the CPAC shitfest, one speaker gloated about the decreased numbers of vaccinations…and the audience cheered.

I counted nine cartoons by my conservative fucknut colleagues (I really shouldn’t use that word to describe them. You know…”colleagues”) on this door-to-door outrage. They’re trying to give the impression that someone knocking on your door is a violation of your civil liberties. Bachmann even said, “what they’re wanting all of us to do is to check our Bill of Rights, our civil liberties, at the door.” I saw one of these guys post on Facebook that he’s going to answer his door with a gun. One of the cartoonist claimed he’d rather open the door to Jehovah Witnesses than to vaccine advocates…which makes sense as he’s already in a cult.

Here’s the thing, kids: If someone knocks on your door, you can tell them to leave. This is America and you don’t even have to answer. Oh, I almost one crucial detail: It’s probably not going to happen. The truth is, I don’t think anyone’s eager to come to your house and try to educate you. They’d have a better chance of changing your mind through a debate on Facebook…as in, zero chance. Based on this fucknut logic. my civil liberties are violated every time someone calls to talk to me about my car’s warranty. A greater violation than someone knocking on your door to give you information that may save your life is my having the Kars-4-Kids jingle blasted from my TV. How dare that song enter my home…and my brain.

Bachmann also proposes getting “no soliciting” signs for your yard, but I don’t think that’s clear enough. What you need to do is just get rid of your door entirely. No door, no knocking. Ha-ha, that’ll own the libs!

Nobody can come to your door and force you to buy anything, not a vaccine, not a vacuum cleaner, not a bible, not a religion, and not even Girl Scout Cookies. I take that back. You can’t resist Do-Si-Dos. Or, are Tagalongs your jam? Girl Scouts scare me more than Vaccine advocates…but oddly enough, Girl Scouts knocking on his door doesn’t scare Matt Gaetz. Go figure.

Hey, is there a way we can secretly transmit the vaccine to the coronavirus into Girl Scout Cookies? Also, Girl Scouts, please don’t come after me for starting a new conspiracy theory involving your delicious cookies.

Creative note: Yes, I did this subject for CNN, but my clients can’t use my CNN cartoons and I wanted to do this subject for them too.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

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[GreyhoundFan]

[thoughtful]

 

[smittykins]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I take that back. You can’t resist Do-Si-Dos. Or, are Tagalongs your jam?

Thin Mints FTW!

[GreyhoundFan]

12 hours ago, smittykins said:

Thin Mints FTW!

I am one of the few people who can't stand Thin Mints. Give me Trefoils/Shortbread instead!

[GreyhoundFan]

 

"Texas Libre"

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Protests erupted in Cuba Sunday, spurred by the economic crisis left from the pandemic, shortages in basic goods, and clampdowns on civil liberties. Cuban protesters are demanding that President Miguel Diaz-Canel step down. Cubans are demanding to live in a democracy. Meanwhile, Democrats in Texas are also demanding to live in a democracy.

Cubans want democracy to come to their island nation. Democrats in Texas are also on an island. Democrats are fighting to keep Republicans from stealing our democracy.

Democracy is in danger in the United States.

The Donald Trump presidency was an attempt to establish fascism in the United States. Even while he was in the White House, Donald Trump claimed he deserved a third term because Democrats “spied on him.” He downplayed elections and told us they would be fraudulent before they even happened. He and his supporters created the Big Lie he won the election and it was stolen from him. Finally, they tried to overturn the election. These people who call themselves “Constitutionalists” attempted to stop the Constitutionally-mandated certification of the election with a bloody coup to install Donald Trump as a dictator. White nationalist MAGA terrorist fucknuts attacked the Capitol because democracy worked and it didn’t give them what they wanted. Donald Trump is currently trying to make a martyr out of the terrorist Capitol Police shot and killed while she was trying to break into an area to attack members of Congress.

Ashli Babbitt was an anti-American terrorist.

And now, the GOP response to a democratically-held election that’s been judged as the most successful of all time, is to decrease democracy.

Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote based on the Big Lie there was rampant voter fraud in 2021, which is bizarre to claim since a lot of Republicans won races in that election too. Republicans are trying to make it harder for black people to vote.

When Republicans defend these voter-suppression laws, they only talk about voter IDs and they leave out all the other restrictions like limiting voting hours, days to vote, limiting mail-in voting, and even making it illegal to hand a voter a bottle of water. While being crazy in love with voter IDs, Republicans do NOT want a system of federal voter IDs.

What happens when you demand that every dark-skinned voter have an ID in order to vote…and then they fuck everything up by actually getting IDs?

State Republicans aren’t just trying to make it harder for minorities to vote. They’re also giving Republican-controlled legislatures more power over election results. They’re taking control away from local election boards in cities and counties, and giving it to Republicans. So let’s say in 2028, Kamala Harris beats Ivanka Trump in a specific voting district that wins her that state. With these laws, a Republican legislature might say, oh there’s fraud in that district so let’s just go ahead and give it to Nepotism Barbie. As Donald Trump screamed while committing election fraud in Georgia, “Find me the votes.” In the future, Republicans will “find” the votes.

In Arizona right now, they’re still recounting despite the fact it won’t overturn that state’s results. Who’s doing the counting? Republicans who are part of a fucknut company full of Trump supporters. While Republicans are screaming there shouldn’t be a “partisan” investigation into the January 6 terrorist attack, they’re fine with there being partisan recounts. Partisanship is bad, partisanship is good, partisanship is bad…make up your fucking minds, fucknuts. The ballots in Maricopa County have already been recounted…twice before. This current partisan recount has been going on for over three months which means they keep getting the same results. Joe Biden won. Trump lost. Three months!

Another big lie is that Republicans care about democracy. They do not. They care about the cult. Democracy did not give them the fascist dictator they wanted so the response is to get rid of democracy. One way to do this, when not storming a capitol building, is to hire a partisan investigation firm with no actual experience counting ballots to spend three months counting ballots. To be fair, they are Republicans for whom counting may be difficult. I would trust a count from Sesame Street’s The Count (and a one, ah-ah-ah) more than I’d trust a count from a Republican (duh-duh-duh).

Texas Democrats have fled Texas to stop Republicans from killing democracy. The state legislature needs a quorum to conduct state business. If the Democrats are not there, Republicans don’t have a quorum and they can’t vote to kill democracy. Governor Greg Abbott, who also wants to use state money to finish Trump’s racist border wall instead of rebuilding Texas’ energy infrastructure, is threatening to arrest the Democrats when they return…which is a sure fire way to convince them to return.

Democrats, don’t forget what happened to Alexei Nevalny.

Texas Democrats are also hoping to appeal to Congress to pass a voting rights measure to kill the democracy-killing efforts in Texas. Republicans in Congress are using the filibuster to prevent Democrats there from passing anything, like saving democracy. If you’re a Republican and you’re upset that Texas Democrats ran out of the state to prevent Republicans from having a quorum, think of it like a filibuster.

Democrats are trying to save democracy while Republicans are the bad guys trying to kill it. Republicans are horrible, vile, disgusting, racist, ugly, nasty, despicable, knuckle-dragging democracy-hating cult-worshipping fascist troglodytes…and they smell too. Ew.

Cuba, here’s a piece of advice: If you get democracy, keep Republicans away from it. They ruin everything. Will Cuba have more democratic freedom in the future than Texas? Probably, as long as they prevent those Trump MAGAt goons from conducting three-month recounts. Ah-ah-ah.

Creative note: I normally hate cartoons like this. You know, where one thing is mistaken for another. You can usually see the punchline coming from a mile away. But, I gave into it this time because I really liked correlating democracy in Cuba and Texas.

 

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