Prickly City by Scott Stantis for July 12, 2020

If only the two complementary ideologies would work together to create something bigger than either one alone instead of opposing each other and creating mostly useless results. I get tired of a House and Senate that each only produces about 50% of what they could … when they actually get around to doing their job.

If you are a Trump Disciple, you can lie about EVERY issue, repeatedly, without a second thought.

Don’t know why, but in that last panel, I heard the Beatles, “All you need is love,” and the line “It’s easy…”

Back when this strip began, I thought that it was going to be like today’s installment. It is what I come to Prickly City to see.

Condi Rice for president!

More than one thought at a time is fine, as long as it doesn’t devolve into doublethink.

Now we see growing ruin caused by so much lunacy coming from the highest office in the land. The GOP is becoming a Garish Opera of Paranoia.

In Colorado, an incumbent member of Congress lost a Republican primary to a candidate who embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory about a “deep state” child-sex ring plotting against Trump.

Believers in this craziness, who have been retweeted by Trump and display QAnon symbols at his rallies, include the party’s Senate nominee in Oregon and a Republican in a House runoff in Georgia.

✁ Republicans are finding it harder to identify “what is true and what is false about the outbreak.”

A similar proportion of Republicans — 48 percent — found it definitely or probably true that “powerful people planned the coronavirus outbreak,” while 57 percent believed deaths had been intentionally overstated.

Why the confusion?

Seventy-five percent of Republicans believed the White House presents accurate information.

We have been building toward this for some time, as Republican officeholders and commentators touted conspiracy theories as fact, first during the Clinton administration and then during the Obama administration: Vince Foster. Troopergate. Black helicopters. Benghazi! Hillary Clinton’s brain damage. Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood. Pizzagate.

✁

✁ But now he’s convincing his supporters not to mail in their ballots and not to protect themselves against the virus.

A president disenfranchising his own supporters and jeopardizing their lives sounds like the wackiest conspiracy theory of all. But this one is true.

~

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/10/trumps-gop-is-becoming-garish-opera-paranoia/

Yeah, who knew Stantis was Taoist? Who’s up for TaiChi?

Can relate this toon somewhat to Smerconish’s “Things I wish I knew before I started talking” last night on CNN. . . Although I found the documentary didn’t quite live up to the hype, it did explain the media and government devolving into extreme polarization, while at the same time Michael’s evolution to acceptance of the importance of cooperation and compromise for the greater good…

I try not to miss his Saturday morning shows..

Yep, ceptin’ if you’re a true conservative, you are and will be for a long time until education and death cleanses the ranks, swallowed by right-wing populists, a buoy in a hurricane.

Anti-Trump Republicans getting all “Oh why can’t we all just get along” just does not ring true. Mitt Romney (the only Republican senator not in lock-step against impeachment conviction) was a make-Obama-fail believer and never saw a tax cut for the rich that he didn’t love.

Two days ago tRump gave clemency to his long time cohort Roger Stone and commuted his sentence.

“Roger Stone has already suffered greatly,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”

Stone “was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!”

On Friday morning, Trump said he was “looking at” a pardon for Stone, who was “very unfairly treated.” So why not a pardon? Clemency lets the conviction stand.

Why? Because tRump knows he’s guilty and protected himself. Someone who gets a pardon can no longer invoke the Fifth Amendment as a justification for refusing to testify in court. With clemency the conviction stands, and the possibility of putting yourself in further jeopardy remains. Thus your Fifth Amendment rights stand.

It is easy. Just think. We’re all human. All humans are flawed. Try to understand a different perspective. You don’t have to agree with it.

Carmen’s yellow dot is her eye. Winslow’s pink dot is… wait, I’m sorry I mentioned it.

“If you are going to write, talk, comment or argue over any public question, don’t do it by reading just 1 newspaper….You can tell in a minute a person that only reads 1 paper” Will Rogers, March 18, 1934