Major Problems Confronting the United States
Update #9 — 7:10 pm ET
Geniuses, Both*
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#artwelve5225 #politicartoon
Dave Brown (b. 1957), “Peace Maker”. British painter, sculptor, drummer, writer and cartoonist for the Independent newspaper based in London. Multiple industry award winner including 4 “Political Cartoon of the Year” awards by Economist. It’s tomorrow’s for Independent.
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— Helge Hailaga (@helgehailaga.bsky.social) February 13, 2025 at 4:28 PM
I expect to post additional editorial cartoons either in the comments section or as manual updates to this diary.
Scroll down below my personal comment to see manual updates.
Some editorial cartoonists have moved exclusively to Bluesky, and others are on both Bluesky and Twitter. Most, however, remain on Twitter and until all cartoonists move to Bluesky, I’ll use both platforms to put this diary together. The ones on Twitter are also some of Elon Musk’s harshest critics. Why wouldn’t we use their work?
Thank you for supporting this diary series, which I first started in 2009.
In case you missed my recent diaries, here are the links.
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"Putin & the president" is Jeff Koterba's response to #DonaldTrump's attempt to bully #VolodymyrZelenskyy into capitulation to #VladimirPutin's Russian imperial aggression & genocidal war on the people of #Ukraine
Patreon.com/jeffreykoterba
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apnews.com/article/repu...
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— Pauline Park (@paulinepark.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Welcome to Vermont, JD
Happy Skiing
Two Sides of the Same Coin
The Ugly Americans — A personal comment
As I wrote in this 2019 diary
Foreign policy is the collective face a nation puts forth for the rest of the world to accept or reject; admire or detest; cooperate with or defy; emulate or ignore.
In the best of times, the conduct of American foreign policy is a delicate (some would say cynical) dance in which the United States must tread carefully between protecting its own national interest and promoting it self-proclaimed values of freedom and democracy.
For some of us who have spent considerable time studying international relations at home and abroad and worked in recent presidential campaigns, this past Friday represented a new low point in international diplomacy. On live television, the President of the United States, his deputy, and MAGA loyalists insulted and humiliated an ally and leader of a foreign country who has spent the past three years staving off an aggressor hell bent on destroying and occupying his country.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties, not to mention tens of thousands of civilian Ukrainian casualties and untold misery and destruction.
The same country, Ukraine, had signed a nuclear treaty in 1994, giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and respect for its sovereignty from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Most people also know that of all Holocaust victims during World War II, 1.5 million — or one-fourth of the estimated six million Jewish victims —
were murdered by the Nazis in Ukraine. It is worth pointing out that a decade earlier, almost
four million Ukrainians perished due to hunger in the Holodomor — part of a broader famine and political repression that engulfed the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.
Did one get the impression watching this travesty on television this past Friday that either Donald Trump or JD Vance were sensitive to Ukraine’s tragic past? For lack of a better word, their behavior was despicable.
The faces representing the United States in this unseemly display of low-brow behavior on February 28, 2025, were those of the “Ugly American." While the term often describes Americans misbehaving in other countries, the "boorishness and insensitive parochialism" by Donald Trump and JD Vance in the White House fits the bill.
What I wrote in this early 2021 diary still holds.
For a year, a disastrous, incompetent, and criminally negligent administration chose to play partisan politics, favoring unscientific remedies and solutions unfit for a country founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. The daily death toll kept rising, justified by a plethora of excuses offered that were unfit for this or any other democratic country.
For four long years, conspiracy theories — not scientific data — ruled the day with total loyalty demanded of civil service employees whose job it is to provide non-partisan solutions. Finally, violence, not the rule of law, was the path chosen by a group of losers on their way out. Are any of them going to pay a price for this outrageous, unconstitutional, illegal, and criminal behavior?
Most Americans know a different truth in their gut: we are a better people and country than what was on display early last month in Washington, DC.
We should all feel ashamed of such displays of blatant nationalism by Trump and his goons. I don’t state this lightly, as I’m using a loaded term: this behavior is un-American.
Manual Updates Posted Here
Left Out
The Ambush
- Update #9 — Scroll up to the top of the diary.
- Update #8 — 6:56 pm ET
And the Oscar Goes To…
South African Terrorist
The Unmasking
Defend Ukraine
The UK Strikes Back
Standing Tall Against Bullies
The Lap Dog Speaketh
No Surprise Here
Save the World from Trump
DOGE Cuts Very Unpopular in Rural Red State Kansas
The King and I
New York City Supports Zelensky
Touche
Misguided Priorities
Doing the Right Thing
Pathetic
It’s Not About the Clothes
Transactional Diplomacy — Tit for Tat
Attribution: Nick Anderson @andertoon.bsky.social
*The Original Cartoon by David Low (1939)
I first posted the original David Low cartoon in this 2022 two-part diary
A British editorial cartoonist for the Evening Standard, Low was loathed by Adolf Hitler and was targeted for execution had the Nazis defeated and occupied Great Britain in the early 1940s.
The diary focuses on four champion tennis players in the 1930s — two Americans, a German, and a Soviet immigrant in Berlin, who was trying to escape vicious anti-Semitism. Set against an impending world war, the German and American players hold secrets that could land them in jail — or worse. The German player is a tennis champion caught between his desire to excel in international tennis and the demands of loyalty made upon him by his country’s Fascist and rabidly anti-Semitic regime — one which detested people like him.
The Road to War
Two of a kind — Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. After the invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered World War II, the murderousness of Hitler and Stalin is acknowledged in this David Low cartoon but what gets highlighted is the ridiculous spectacle of two former and future foes greeting each other with the daintiness of prospective dance partners.
Although Adolph Hitler was a master of propaganda, he was continually flummoxed by one particular form of communication: the editorial cartoon. Perhaps because the Nazi leader had a high opinion of himself, he couldn’t stand to be caricatured. The very sight of an inky mockery of his goose-stepping gait and toothbrush moustache drove Hitler into a spittling, almost frothy, spasm of rage.
As Victor Navasky notes in his new book, The Art of Controversy, the New Zealand–born cartoonist David Low, whose political art appeared in England’s Evening Standard, was especially gifted at targeting the dictator’s most tender psyche spots… After the Second War broke out, Hitler took pleasure in composing a list of those to be executed after Britain was conquered. Low and other cartoonists had the privilege of a high rank on Hitler’s private hit list.
David Low, "Olympic Courtesy," Jewish Chronicle, July 10, 1936.
See this detailed comment I made in Part I of my 2022 diary — The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games as Nazi Propaganda. It explains the above cartoon and has background information on the 1936 Olympics Games.
Low’s strategy of making Hitler silly rather than scary pinched a touchy nerve. When the English government was pursuing the policy of appeasement before the Second World War, they found that one of Germany’s demands was that Low stop making fun of Hitler. As Lord Halifax, a leading architect of the appeasement policy explained to the publisher of the Evening Standard, “You cannot imagine the frenzy these cartoons cause. As soon as a copy of the Evening Standard arrives, it is pounced on for Low’s cartoons, and if it is of Hitler, as it usually is, telephones buzz, tempers rise, fevers mount, and the whole governmental system of Germany is in an uproar.”
Trump vs Zelensky, Part II — 14 Political Cartoons by The Cartoon Movement
The Cartoon Movement posted Part I of Trump vs Zelensky a couple of weeks ago with 19 cartoons.
That’s What Friends Are For
David Sanger: “After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America’s traditional sources of power — its alliances among like-minded democracies — and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?”
“The remarkable showdown that played out in front of the cameras early Friday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer.”
Too Late!
Erasing History
A Message from James Taylor
“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”
Trump’s Obsession With Playing Cards
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Cartoon on Zelensky/Trump meeting.
When Trump later told him he had “no cards,”
Zelensky replied: “I am not playing cards.”
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Support my art & Pre-Order my first graphic novel ‘You Must Take Part in Revolution’ 🙏 www.badiucao.com/book
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— Badiucao巴丢草 (@badiucao.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 1:50 AM
Pointing Fingers
How’d I End Up Here?
Maintaining His Dignity
Buffoons and Criminals
President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a remarkably fractious White House meeting, accusing the leader of the besieged country of not being grateful enough for U.S. support, the New York Times reports.
With voices raised, Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the news media, while Trump told the Ukrainian leader: “You’re not really in a good position right now.”
At one point, Trump said: “You either make a deal or we are out.”
The “American Putin”
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
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Trump appears to deny he'd said Pres. Zelensky is a "dictator", which triggered outrage from U.S. allies, given that they support Ukraine against Putin. When asked if thinks Zelensky is a dictator, he said: "I can't believe I said that." Cartoon: Dave Whamond)
www.rawstory.com/trump-starme...
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— JDB (@amistadsociety.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Confronting the Putin Gang
