This "political cartoon" is actually an optical illusion I created, based on an old optical trick that some of you may have seen before. The primary image is the Twin Towers in black silhouette, during the attacks six years go today, on September 11th, 2001.
But in the sky over the towers is a spectre that forms in the mind as an "after-image" when you stare at it.
To do the optical illusion, look at the top middle of the image -- in the weird shapes and symbols are two black "hearts" -- look at the four tiny black dots that run in a line between the hearts. Stare at the dots, very close, only about 6 inches from your screen. Keep your focus on the dots for 30 seconds. Then, look away from the monitor at a bright blank wall. Blink a few times and you will see the spectre that George W. Bush sees in the events of September 11th.
It was strange; while I was trying to create this image, I kept thinking about how it’s similar to the way the Bushista dead-enders view the so-called War on Terror.... One doesn’t think while viewing. It’s all in the eyeballs, not in the brain. You see the after-image best when you habituate on some arbitrary point, while maintaining an otherwise "soft" focus. I think this view of the world corresponds with that of the 26-per-centers. Bush tells them to focus on a certain talking point, and just keeps hammering on it, and one is dulled to other modes of thinking; one’s periphery goes "soft". Just as the after-image is burned into the retina, the unconscious messages of the propagandists are imprinted on the fearful and impressionable. Even if one were to seek clarity, the decaying lies still live like shadows in the back of one’s eyes.
It was a very clear, beautiful blue sky in New York that day, I remember it quite vividly. But when the leader of a nation, and his army of propagandists, paint the black shadows of a "Crusade" or a "Holy War" across that blue sky, and conflate the acts of a couple dozen box-cutter wielding kamikazes with an entire religion, then a sizeable percentage of the population can longer see the sky for what it is. It’s political hypnosis.
Through the exploitation of fear and hate, Jesus becomes his shadow. Peace becomes War. Forgiveness becomes Revenge. The Light becomes Darkness.
Cross-posted at Political Nexus and Left Toon Lane.