The T. S. Eliot poem “The Hollow Men” talks about the disappointing nature of human beings and ends with a dire four lines quoted more often than any poem’s end in the history of poetry.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Now I have revealed this particular truth more than once. I am not prescient. I am an idiot. And the only things I know for certain about the future are that I will die one day, and so will everyone else. But knowing those things is wisdom. Especially the idiot part.
And I can see how things are progressing. I know what people are like at their core. If humanity is doomed to die out in the next century, or even the next decade, it will not be because of nuclear war. It will be something sneakier, quieter, and more permanently lethal.
It will be the fact that people are capable of heartlessness and cruelty. Adolf Hitler turned the full power of government-focused hatred on those he defined as less than human; Jews, gypsies, gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the mentally handicapped. He used that focus to burn those peoples out of existence. But many forces in the human character rose up to shield the victims, saving some and avenging the others. Hitler learned the hard way that he was not the end of the world… from a bullet, in a bunker, having lost an empire.
Now, the Republican clown show in the United States is turning into Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
They show lack of concern for anything but corporate profits. They will undo Medicare and cancel the Meals on Wheels program because, according to evil leprechauns in charge of the budget, we can’t afford to feed people, or educate people, or do anything to dry up the painful ocean of poverty capitalism is creating. No, we must bury our pots of gold and any magic they have left in them.
They have changed the laws on environmental protections to allow themselves to profit by pouring pollutants into rivers and water supplies. They pull out of world-wide agreements to work towards saving the environment from climate change.
They may have found a way to focus hatred through the lens of indifference. Hitler’s mistake was in thinking most humans could be manipulated only through fear and hatred for those who were different. Trump’s troll army has added stupidity and greed to the lenses the light can be filtered through. And so, they may well succeed where Nazis failed.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Bitter Black Hearts of the GOP
Yes, this is another pitiful attempt by Mickey to be a political cartoonist fighting the good fight by slaying the bad guys with really weak and awful satire. But I can’t help it. Just as Popeye had a powerful urge to sock goons in the puss with his spinach-fueled twister-sock, I have to throw some derfy toonage at the vile and heartless members of the GOP (Greedy Old Perpetrators).
After all, they are easy to make fun of. Republican job applications all start with the question, “Which cartoon Dick Tracy villain or comic book Batman villain are you most like?”
They do things like organizing an Oversight Committee for the sole purpose of spending millions of dollars to point fingers at Hillary and shout the name of a North-African town where diplomats died basically because of budget cuts to security ( a Republican budget) and shout it loudly until people begin to think Hillary must have had something to do with it because men with heads shaped like sports equipment are shouting it so much.
And Republicans are able to do this stuff because they know how to win elections and control the government.
Basically what I am saying is that Republicans cheat. They get to rule even though they generate fewer votes in the country.
And what do they do with that power once they have it in their tiny, tiny hands? They use it to make more money. The rise of the billionaire class in the last thirty years is evidence that they are insanely good at it. Do they use that money and power to help their neighbors and better the lives of everyone? Of course not! Why would you think that?
Republican priorities are obvious when you look at the first things on their agenda. They want to roll back environmental protections and pour more pollutants into rivers and into the air. They want to do away with Obamacare to eliminate the extra taxes that wealthy people have to pay. They want to prevent people from immigrating from lands where people don’t have white skin, because the only part of a Republican that can be black with the full approval of their party, is the heart. Yes, that part can be jet black and rancid.
Take that, evil Republicans! Wait, why are you laughing? Didn’t my satire slay you?
Oh, well, another day, another cartoon.
Oopsie! Wasn’t that heart supposed to be black?
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Filed under angry rant, cartoons, commentary, humor, pessimism, politics, satire
Tagged as cartoons, cheating, gerrymandering, Jason Chaffetz, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, political humor, rants, Trey Gowdy