Toiling In Obscurity, Part Two

Recently, it’s occurred to me that there’s an aphoristic quality to cartoons in that an artist might compress a great deal of background material into a very small sample. I’ve also considered that explaining things in "Toiling In Obscurity" may have helped any possibly interested parties to see some of the thinking behind "Thus Spake Steve Bannon." So, I thought I'd publish some essays I began about a decade ago that now serve as backing information and inspiration for what I’m doing with the "Scum (Back) On Top" series. But first, I’ll elaborate on some of the themes and references in my most recent cartoon.

 

Panel 1:  The current president is represented only as 1) a mostly featureless orange head with a black oval for the mouth, a vertical black line in the middle top, a right ear with a 2" x 2" white bandage (as worn in public appearances after the assassination attempt), wearing the black Bearskin hat with MAGA in red letters given to him by Russian ruler Vladimir Putin in the first Trumprussian regime; and 2) an unattached right arm raised with fist clenched in the gesture he made after said attempt. (Along with his exclamation, "Fight! Fight!" this made some see him as a “champion.”)

He is lying in bed as his (now iconic) raised right arm unintentionally suggests that he is stretching while yawning. A recurring dream begins with him giving a great (of course) speech at a packed (of course) rally, with good people on both sides. (Alluding to his statement trying to condemn violence in the aftermath of the torch-lit rally of Brownshirts in Charlottesville, Virginia on 11-12 August 2017. He seems to have understood he was supposed to condemn violence as such but constantly gave away the impression that he mostly wanted to lay the blame on “the other side” -- i.e., the counter-protestors who were NOT Nazis and Klansmen.)

Panel 2: POTUS has bothered me for a long time; it's too reminiscent of Caesar (which was a standard, informal "title" for any Roman Emperor -- viz., "Render unto Caesar....") and is also an example of the "telescoping" of words (as identified by George Orwell) in twentieth century political language, of police states in particular -- viz., Gestapo, USSR, USA, etc.

The specific satire on "home schooling" involves it (along with "private schools") as symptomatic of conservative reaction against public schools in the United States, and mainly the racial integration thereof (under the guise of better school standards and "moral [religious] instruction"). So, such teaching might ensure proper spelling for specialized "Biblical" terms but not be so strong on civics. And of course, there’s an allusion to what the current president said during an "Access Hollywood" interview.

Panels 2-3: In September of 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of the US Congress to propose a national healthcare plan (which became the Affordable Care Act). Feeling provoked by the darkness he observed in the vicinity of the president, and further emboldened by Koch funding, a Republican Representative from South Carolina named Joe Wilson upset the decorum and respect traditionally given to the US chief of state by standing up and shouting, "You lie!" I've been highly amused at the idea of something similar (but perhaps ambiguous) occurring to the current president.

Scum [Back] On Top: Resurrection

 It's definitely not the resurrection we need, and I regret to inform you that recent events sort of necessitate returning to something I hoped would stay in the past.

"Scum [Back] On Top"

Twitter Moments Revisited

At least now I know what happened to the Twitter "Moments" feature. First, they put it in the "Creator Studio" (along with "Analytics"), then removed it altogether on 7 December 2022.

Not all moments last. As of today we're removing the option to create Moments for most users as we focus on improving other experiences.

Don’t worry, you can still see past Moments and follow Live events on Twitter. 

Most replies to the above notice seem to be complaints from those who liked to organize items for easy reference, things they were working on (particularly artists). That's understandable because the feature helped you put a bunch of tweets (and their links) under one topic heading. But there is a more critical issue. The "Moments" feature wasn't just something to promote your work; it could amplify messages throughout the Twitterverse. You can still see past Moments -- if you have the time and patience to scroll through entire timelines to find them. So those you created are not only not easy for you to see again; they are not realistically available to anyone who looks at your profile. That is another aspect of the general thrust of #NewTwitter since Elon Musk and Co. bought it.

In my case, the relevance of the issue is here.

So You Lost Some Twitter Followers..............

So you lost some Twitter followers, and now mean people are talking shit at you. At least you're not having bombs falling from the sky in your neighborhood. And you're not in prison for criticizing dictators. And you're not little more than a baby, getting shot to death in your elementary school.

Assuming (for the sake of the argument) that 44 billion US dollars is an awful lot of money no matter how rich one might be, how would it be worth buying Twitter if the goal were not to somehow make money off it? That is, in the short term, one could cope with losses in anticipation of long-term financial benefit, but if the thing goes under completely, how can a purchase of $44 BILLION be justified?

As someone pointed out, Twitter has brought lots of people together in many ways on a global scale. And whatever one can say about that in a critique (for instance, Western affluence affords greater access than that experienced by most of the people of Africa), it's simply true that I've been able to follow events in the Philippines and other places by following accounts from there, and even in less open countries by following human rights and journalistic and political opposition accounts. (And it's not all happy discoveries, either. Some of our friends in Hong Kong were very open to right-wing ideas – evidently, due to the PRC carrying the label "Communist" and their taking its ideological verities seriously.)

But while it would be a shame to lose opportunities to draw attention to Russia's War on Ukraine, how much impact have various Twitter campaigns had on the political situations inside certain countries? If one is inclined to say "very little," Turlough's point may strike at the heart of the matter. The ruling powers in Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Turkey, and so on, could be extremely uneasy at the continued prospect of a global network of humans no longer limited to having to "Think Globally, Act Locally." Why would various agencies try to disrupt such platforms (and their inhabitants) if they feared nothing from that direction? And as they've had their intelligence services attack and infiltrate those platforms to disrupt them in many ways, it would obviously benefit them to have a useful idiot to serve the same goal, especially if one says he's going to do things for positive reasons (like "liberating free speech").

But that's only for public consumption, yes? We can now see that the "positive reasons" are limited to a specific ideological stance (called "libertarian" – seemingly, more individualistic, but fringe right-wing in the US) with no objections to white supremacy and other ideas held dear in Far Right circles. And that's also in keeping with what various governments would like to see, whether only in shit-stirring, or in encouraging extensive social conflict, or in installations of friendly regimes like the one in the United States from 2017 to 2021. To some of us, all this doesn't seem so complicated. Turning Twitter into an updated, normalized version of 4chan or The Daily Stormer would serve both to "get the [Far Right] word out" as well as eventually destroy the "threat" that the platform represented all along.

"Thus Spake Steve Bannon"

An ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT comic strip from the House of Some Ideas! It may make you laugh! It may make you cry! It may make you Question the Values of your Peers! It's........

"THUS SPAKE STEVE BANNON"

 

In his rôle as a public intellectual, disguised as a mild-mannered pod-caster, he sets forth his dogma and stratagems in a never-ending battle for wrong, fabrications, and Far Right world dominion......

Kingmaker.    Chaos Bringer.    Übermensch.    Cyborg Bibliomancer.

He is.............STEVE BANNON!!!

Twitter Moments

Something else I worked on the past few years, under the illusion it might matter or even help, was to practice what the kids today call "Resistance" in the form of organizing social media posts on meaningful themes. Below are "Moments" I devoted some time and effort to in cataloguing postings about racism, Fascism, and our Total Trump Adventure.

The Illegitimate Presidency & the Pro-Putin Republican Party

 

The Last Gasp of the Confederacy? White Supremacy & its friend Donald

 

On Fascism