Tom Toles for July 16, 2020

Where’s Hillary when you need to lock her up?

In this location, the “Bird Girl” sculpture would attract only Trump flunky cuckoos, shrikes, and carrion birds, so her seed bowls were detached as not needed. The Trump Administration and Campaign “hoodoo” clock has stopped and is apparently now stuck in the evil magic time slot between midnight and 12:30 A.M. (The cartoon references the 1994 book, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, by John Berendt.)

I realize that the ‘toon is referring to a book title, but Trump doesn’t have any goof heroes.

Our last chance to put an end to this nightmare will be in November, no if’s or but’s about it!!

It’s a long wait between midnight and dawn. A lot can happen. Brrrrr.

Regarding the Peanut Gallery comment in the lower right of the panel : I appreciate the question mark.

Because it’s also darkest before everything goes pitch black.

There are now reports of patients who have recovered from COVID-19, who have tested as virus-free, but have become re-infected months later.

And there are reports from scientists in Hong Kong suggesting that the virus mutates rapidly so that there may be half a dozen varieties active in Asia right now.

That would mean the new and promising vaccine, even if safe an effective, may only protect against one of many active varieties. And maybe for only a short time because :

Recovered patients who start out with a rich supply of antibodies have been seen to steadily lose antibodies with the passage of time… which could mean herd immunity is impossible— with or without a vaccine.

There is a growing contingent (even if very small) that claims that the pandemic and the disease itself are just a hoax.

Crazy distrust of medical experts is generating dangerous urban myths. The dumbest one I’m seeing this week suggests that the virus testing regime is bogus. The claim is that multiple individuals have gone to test sites, have registered, but then have given up on the long wait and gone without taking the test… only to receive text or email notice that they have tested positive for infection.

That’s only marginally better than the longstanding claim that the nasal swab is actually a way to implant the evil (Bill Gates invented!) tracking chip. Do I hear Mark of the Beast?

What’s weird to me is that I’ve seen all these different elements reported, but I’ve never seen them considered together as a dynamic driving toward…?

Because too dark (to return to that term) to contemplate?

Statues of Trump – {4 beats/line}

At his garden’s center, – some sculptures of Trump:

√ On the Statue of Liberty taking a dump.

√ Pinching a lady right there on her rump.

√ Calling Hillary a witch and a frump.

√ Treating a supporter as a gullible chump.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES” . . .The history of the Trump President and his legacy.

The book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil made me laugh longer, harder, and more often than anything else I’ve ever read.

I brought it home the day it was published, based on the cover/flyleaf text alone.

Seeing my convulsive laughter, my housemate and his girlfriend tried to take it from me to read for themselves, but I fought them off.

I’ve since met a couple of the characters in real life and they are as wonderful as they are portrayed.

The Clint Eastwood film version was only OK. I wish Robert Altman had directed it.

But I love the book unreservedly

This IS for sure!

Pigeons’ Takes on Trump – {4 beats/line}

The garden’s pigeons // will drop their smidgens

of poop on the hideous statue of Trump; -

- and then when on Donald their droppings they dump,

we’ll laugh in delight // that the pigeons are right.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I would suggest there is very little “good” in Mr. Trump’s garden.

If Trump wanted the memory of traitors and slavemasters to be preserved in a wax museum’s Chamber of Ignominy rather than honored with permanent public statuary, he’d have a point. Such a chamber is where he’ll end up, I suppose, along with John Wilkes Booth and others whose infamy will never end.

tRump thinks he is the ‘lonely little petunia’ in the onion patch from the children’s song.

The totally corrupt Republican senate is letting the lawless Putin loving Republican president kill the USA. If you value your life and your country you will never vote Republican.

We’ve been waiting for dawn for the last 3 1/2 years!

Hopefully the dawn is coming soon. I don’t like all this darkness.

Fake News – Trump’s garden only contains Evil “Heroes”. Well, only statues of himself – he is sure that only he is worthy of statueification – well, and Putin – and historical uber-racists.

“What the heck is happening to America?” Disaster Pumpkin need not go to the garden for answers when they’re staring back at him from the mirror.

I’m godalmighty sick of those lying criminal Nazis telling me it’s day when it’s night!

Don’t an out-of-control pandemic, associated economic slump, and provoking people to the point of rioting make America great again?

longest damn midnight I’ve ever experienced

The virus isn’t an enemy itself, it’s a natural force. The real enemy is willful stupidity, a history of exploitation of the weak by the strong, and really bad leadership at the highest levels.

I’ve wondered more than once (and, oddly enough, only in the last few years) that if “Hell is other people” might it not ALSO be that “Hell is when satire and parody can’t be distinguished from current events”?

Vote Biden, or consign us all to hell.

{Off-topic:}

Stunts and Affronts – {limerick}

His base it never confronts

the fact that their prez is a dunce

with nitwitted stunts

and verbal affronts, -

- tho’ Trump should be dumped at once.

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