orangutan

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 10, 2020

Trump’s narcissism has become the GOP’s Achilles’ heel

President Trump, days after losing the presidency by millions of votes and by a significant margin in the electoral college, still cannot admit he lost. There are a number of possible explanations for this. He may be such a raging narcissist that he simply cannot recognize failure and rejection. He may see the legal attacks as a money-raising venture (solicitations for the lawsuits in fine print reveal he can use the money to pay off campaign debt). He may see this as a financial strategy as he returns to the business world (no one wants to stay at Loser Trump’s hotels, but Martyr Trump has some brand appeal). As a political strategy, rejecting the election results keeps deluded supporters in a frenzy over a “stolen” election that was not stolen at all. (Have we found any shred of evidence of fraud or error that would change thousands of votes? Of course not.)

In any case, a range of conservatives — from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to talk-radio hosts to evangelical Christian patsies for Trump to potential 2024 Republican candidates — evidently think there is value in keeping up the pretense, which they know to be insane and anti-democratic. McConnell probably thinks it will juice up Georgia voters for the Senate runoff elections and stoke fundraising. The talk-radio jockeys and the rest of the unhinged right-wing media need new outrages to feed viewership. Trump-friendly evangelical Christian leaders have been selling white grievance for decades and likely see this as the latest reason to instill in their followers a sense of injustice, loss and anger. (It will also be fodder for arguments to intensify voter suppression based on the myth of rampant voter fraud.) And the 2024 contenders want to be seen as the heirs to the MAGA crowd, so they imitate Trump’s delusional refusal to accept the results.

The interesting question is not whether these people are behaving undemocratically, dishonestly and immorally; we know that to be the case. What we should be asking is why they are playing along with Trump. After losing a presidential election based almost entirely on conspiracies and white grievance, they seem determined to do it all over again.

The interesting question is not whether these people are behaving undemocratically, dishonestly and immorally; we know that to be the case. What we should be asking is why they are playing along with Trump. After losing a presidential election based almost entirely on conspiracies and white grievance, they seem determined to do it all over again. (Continued: Washington Post) 

---

Depicting Trump as an animal was going too far – Tuesday, Nov. 10, editorial cartoon

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, November 17, 2020

This editorial cartoon went too far and was unbecoming of a Canadian newspaper. I agree that American President Donald Trump has lost the respect of other world leaders, and that the entire world is watching his childish and unethical behaviour with disgust. He is racist, sexist and xenophobic. He fans the flames of unrest and inequity in his country. He is attempting to dismantle the very democracy that is the basis of American citizenship. However, he is not an animal; he is a very flawed and dangerous human with too much power. It is beneath The Hamilton Spectator or any respected Canadian newspaper to engage in the same kind of dehumanizing humour that has marred Trump’s presidency.