Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-28-2017, 01:46 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-28-2017, 12:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 11:54 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

As with many of your posts, the above is a good example of demonization.  Obama was depicted as a muslim terrorists and as a monkey.  A hostile press with repeated propaganda can try to poison the public's mind, to build a vile stereotype of what a politician is really like.  Alas, such efforts can to a great degree succeed.  Extreme partisans are willing and ready to make any excuse to present their own leaders and being, wise and dignified while believing the worst of the other side's politicians.

I don't have a lot of sympathy with Trump when he presents the press as hostile.  Hostile?  If anyone opposes him in any way, be they press, beauty pageant contestants, gold star parents, whomever, he will attack, insult and demean.  To a great degree he has earned a hostile press and deserves what is coming.

But as a continuous barrage of hateful propaganda seeps into a partisan group, the conversation is poisoned.  Does the above caricature of Trump have any more merit that Obama as a terrorist?  If the above reflects the alternate universe you live in, is there no wonder you can't deal with reality?

He's using a cartoon created by someone else. President Trump may not be physically ugly, but his language, personality, and  sentiments are ugly. He is easy to debunk. Show a federal employee in an agency for which people have much respect (I have been to three National Parks -- Yosemite, Isle Royale, and Petrified Forest) and expect to visit more of them (where I live, most likely Mammoth Cave, Great Smokies or Shenandoah) as a normal person doing a job that one expect (of course the samizdat is done on free time and not on government property)... and Donald Trump looks stupid and extreme by contrast.

If it was easy enough for the Right to smear Barack Obama with images as a witch-doctor or terrorist, such took some twisting of reality. (He has been the worst President to face as an enemy if one is a terrorist or pirate) With Donald Trump the fault is his and that of his supporters and flunkies. He has no authority to negate science, mathematical methods (including basic statistics), or the historical record. We all know that he will not be on the scene forever, and much that we thought established truth before he was inaugurated will be basic truth again to most political figures.

Comparing him to fascists whose murderous careers have come and gone? OK -- I'd rather that Pilsudski or Schuschnigg, neither of whom had much blood on his hands, came back to life and supplanted Donald Trump as President. But Donald Trump has yet to suppress the unions, outlaw opposition parties, or compel an ethnic or religious minority to wear badges that make them easy targets for abuse. There has been no Reichstag Fire, and no Night of the Long Knives yet. No significant opposition leader has been assassinated. There has not yet been established any new police force with unlimited powers, and there is no private and politicized militia getting overt support from the Trump Presidency. If anyone raises his right arm and shouts "Heil Trump!" then such is unwelcome mockery.

Do I trust him with respect for my political views, my civil liberties, or my dignity as a worker (whether white-collar or blue-collar)? Hell no! I expect to use my First Amendment rights as long as I can against the President who acts more like a dictator than any prior President. I heard enough lies from him as a campaigner and see much the same now that he is President. Would I trust a military coup? No.  We could end up with a Pinochet if such happened, and in that case we would be in deep sewage.

Since Thomas Nast took on Tammany Hall, there has been a place for demonizing political cartoons in our political system.  To me, however, there is a line somewhere between propaganda and honest reporting.  The recent proliferation of alternate news sources, including the internet, has allowed people to find news outlets that tell them what they want to hear.  Too many people want to listen to people making a living by demonizing others.  This has contributed to a nation disunited, where large parts of the population perceive the world distinctly differently, where many are incapable of understanding or listening to the sincere beliefs of the other half of the country.

You live in one such alternate reality.  I can quite understand how you got there.  I've just got little to no interest in listening to biased propaganda.