What Freedom Looks Like

Another collab between me and Nadine Scholtes.

I have a big and overwhelming project with a deadline in just a bit over a month; I don’t expect to be participating much in Alas comments until it’s turned in, or  at least until I’m close enough to the end that I’m confident I’ll make it on time. I’ll still be reading comments, of course.

Think I’m exaggerating? Well, sure, I am – but not as much as you think.

The Cato Institute’s David Kopel once wrote that “the gun prohibition movement is ultimately based on an authoritarian wish.” According to Kopel, the real question of gun control is “whether the American people are the sovereigns in their own country.” J.D. Tuccille in Reason Magazine wrote “Obamacare is fascism.” Anti-trans bigot Meghan Murphy wrote that “preferred pronouns” are a way “of grooming people to accept totalitarianism.”

These are prominent people – but thoughts like theirs are echoed all over MAGAworld, on Xitter and Reddit and whatever the Hell Trump’s social media site is called. For the most part, they are considerably more sanguine about Trump’s masked ICE troops grabbing people off the street.

It’s hard to express how disappointed I am in the right wing of America. I’ve been furious at them for decades, but for most of my life I believed there was some limit to what they’d support, some basic common denominator that we could all agree on. An unaccountable police force going around masked and disappearing people off the streets – surely that’s something we’d all oppose, right?

Guess not.

I wonder why they’re not bothered by the massive expansion of the President’s powers under Trump – after all, Trump will not be President forever (although it kind of feels like he already has been). Are they confident that a Democrat would never use these powers against them? Or are they just confident that no Democrat will ever be allowed to win the White House again?

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, all showing the same two people talking in a park.

PANEL 1

A bearded man wearing a red MAGA cap is talking to a earnest young woman. The MAGA man is angry, waving his hands in the air.

WOMAN: If guns are legal at all, they need to be regulated.

MAGA: GUN REGULATION IS AUTHORITARIAN!

PANEL 2

An older man with a cane is handing out fliers; the same MAGA guy, furious, slaps a flier to the ground.

CANE MAN: We’re holding a rally for universal health care.

MAGA: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IS FASCISM.

PANEL 3

A nonbinary person wearing a pinback that says “THEY / THEM” is a bit bewildered as the MAGA guy points at the pinback, hiding his face like he’s frightened.

MAGA: PREFERRED PRONOUNS ARE TOTALITARIAN!

PANEL 4

All three of the characters from the previous panels, looking panicked, are yelling in unison. The MAGA guy calmly laughs it off.

THREE CHARACTERS: MASKED GOVERNMENT AGENTS ARE DISAPPEARING PEOPLE!

MAGA: That’s what freedom looks like.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken Fat” is a long-dormant cartoonists’ term for unimportant but perhaps amusing details.

Panel 1 – In the background, a pigeon paints an owl’s portrait.

Panel 2 – The pigeon, painting tucked under one wing, runs away from a cat. The MAGA cap now says “Make ‘Merica Mate Mermen.” The flier the MAGA guy slapped says “Reading this tiny print makes you special & smart!”

Panel 3 – The pigeon has stopped to show the painting to the cat, who is surprised and impressed. The MAGA cap says “Make America Grout Again.”

Panel 4 – The cat poses as the pigeon paints its portrait. In the tree above, the owl sits next to where it’s hung the pigeon’s painting of the owl. The MAGA cap says “Erica’s A Hen.”