Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.
We missed this last week, as Dave returned to his old haunts—that is, the roof—at the Ed Sullivan Theater where with Stephen he managed to throw some melons directly into the CBS eye down below for revenge.
New NYT/Siena poll today finds Trump at lowest approval overall ever, at 37%, and with this much opposition to his Iran war:
Paul Krugman on U.S. and China:
The global scene right now isn’t dominated by a conflict between a rising and a declining superpower, because the declining power is led by a man who has no idea what makes great powers great, is easily distracted by trivia, is focused on self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement, and fantasizes about himself as Jesus. If you want classical analogies, think of America right now as the Roman Empire under Caligula, although Caligula didn’t do anything like as much damage.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity…..
Rather than basing the United States on religion, the nation’s founders and framers, as well as Americans of later generations, sought to instill in Americans reverence for the nation’s core political values, especially the right of self-government and the checks and balances that made that self-government possible. In speeches and memorials, novels and poems, they emphasized the sacrifices Americans had made to protect the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
That civic religion unified the nation, but it did more than that. It also instructed Americans on the rights and duties of citizens who live in a nation that rests on “We the People.” They must think for themselves, question elected officials, and take an active role in their government.
Replacing Americans’ civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects.
The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.”
But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America.
Today’s Hot Toons
And epic from Ann Telnaes:
Bagley:
Royaards:
Photo Finish
Hot bird-on-bird action….
I appreciate having such wisdom condensed here. along with the cartoons. Both the wisdom and the laughs sustain us in these dark times!
So great to see Letterman. I never missed his show. Thank you.