The Last Firewall

Looking back at the past several years, the cascade of institutional failures leading up to this moment is nothing short of breathtaking. Remember that brief period after January 6 when nearly everyone was appalled at what had happened, and major corporations suspended their donations to House Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 election results? Now we have the Washington Post and the LA Times unable to publish endorsements for Harris because their multibillionaire owners with obvious conflicts of interest forbade their editorial pages from doing so.

After finishing this cartoon and trying to decide on a title, I Googled the phrase “It’s down to us” and found that Jamelle Bouie had written a similar opinion piece with that headline a few days ago. I guess a lot of people are thinking along the same lines. 

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Performance Issues

At the Lancaster, PA rally, Trump got on the subject of being interviewed for his mental fitness, and stated “I have no cognitive. She may have a cognitive problem, but there’s no cognitive problem… Got no cognitive.” 

I have been impressed with Harris’s campaign, and I marvel at her ability to remain so energetic and composed throughout it all. The fact that the contest is so close given Trump’s history of embracing violent extremism, his affection for Putin, and his obvious unfitness for office is not only unfair, but a damning indictment of our entire political system. This isn’t a “polarization” crisis, but an epistemological crisis. I just hope there’s enough reality left to save us.

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Swing State Confidential

With Pennsylvania being the must-win battleground state in this year’s election, I’ve found myself thinking about my formative years there (shout out to the Lancastrians on this list!). Trump has won Lancaster County handily in the past, which I find a little difficult to square with my memories of the place. Yes it’s a Republican area, but also a place of humility and decency. 

Hog Maw is a Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy (and a dish also eaten in the South) consisting of pig stomach stuffed with sausage and boiled potatoes. I served this at a family restaurant that still exists. Fasnachts are like hole-less donuts, often made from potato flour. They are primarily eaten on Fasnacht Day, which marks the day before Ash Wednesday.

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Project 1025

The Project 2025 paragraph about deleting the words “gender” and “reproductive health,” etc. from every government document veers straight into Year Zero cultural purge territory:

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Thinking about this for a moment, I’m not sure how you ban abortion without using the word, but I’m sure they won’t let that get in their way.

Also, as ProPublica revealed when they published Project 2025’s secret training videos, a representative of the group said “If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”

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Innovations in Hypocrisy

Electricity demand for massive data centers used for AI and cryptocurrencies is growing rapidly, and by 2026, may equal the power consumed by the entire country of Japan. A researcher quoted in the linked Vox article notes that generative AI can, in many cases, use 30-40 times more energy for the exact same task (such as an internet query) than earlier technology. Microsoft talks a good game about climate change and using AI to accelerate decarbonization, but at the same time, they’ve been marketing AI to ExxonMobil and Chevron as a way to find oil and gas reserves and speed up production.

Then there’s Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputing facility in Memphis. The area where it was just built is a historically Black neighborhood already suffering from high asthma and premature death rates due to pollution from other industrial activity. The data center requires so much power that some 18 portable methane gas-burning generators have been installed to run it, bathing the community in smog. The plant powers Musk’s chatbot called Grok, which is integrated with X/Twitter and has a “fun” mode that delivers mildly profane responses and, according to Vice, is prone to spreading inaccuracies.

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Actual Moms for Liberty

Most of you have probably heard of Moms for Liberty, the extremist pro-Trump group that has been pushing for book bans and anti-LGBTQ legislation for a while now. Last year, an Indiana chapter of the group infamously quoted Hitler in their newsletter (ominously named THE PARENT BRIGADE), featuring the line “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future” right at the top of the front page with an attribution to The Führer. The group apologized and condemned Hitler, for whatever that’s worth. This little faux pas came up recently on social media, which got me thinking about a cartoon idea I’ve had for a while, envisioning what actual moms for liberty might say. Because let’s face it, Hitler was the opposite of freedom for a lot of people. 

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Don’t Take the Bait

Vance admitted on CNN that manipulating news coverage was the whole point of the fake stories they were telling (while of course arguing it was “disgusting” to suggest that the ensuing bomb threats that closed schools and hospitals had anything to do with their rhetoric).

I recommend this excellent Jamison Foser post about how the press should cover the lies about Springfield. To quote Foser:

When Donald Trump lies that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets, that should be the hook for an article about Donald Trump’s long history of lying; about the fundamental lack of honesty, character, and integrity that this demonstrates. The result of Trump’s lies shouldn’t be articles about immigration, it should be articles about Donald Trump’s lifelong dishonesty and the consequences it poses, and articles about Trump’s lengthy history of directing hatred at racial minorities, and about his lengthy history of intentionally inciting threats of violence as well as actual violence.

It is possible to have a good-faith discussion of immigration policy, but this isn’t it.

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AI Gone MAD

This was inspired by an article about the Rice University study comparing self-consuming AI to mad cow disease, a topic practically begging for a cartoon. To quote one researcher:

“The problems arise when this synthetic data training is, inevitably, repeated, forming a kind of a feedback loop — what we call an autophagous or ‘self-consuming’ loop,” said Richard Baraniuk, Rice’s C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Our group has worked extensively on such feedback loops, and the bad news is that even after a few generations of such training, the new models can become irreparably corrupted. This has been termed ‘model collapse’ by some — most recently by colleagues in the field in the context of large language models (LLMs). We, however, find the term ‘Model Autophagy Disorder’ (MAD) more apt, by analogy to mad cow disease.”

He added that “one doomsday scenario is that if left uncontrolled for many generations, MAD could poison the data quality and diversity of the entire internet.” 

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Prairie Progressives

I find it extremely refreshing to see Tim Walz upsetting the lazy narrative that middle America and rural places are a monolithic bloc of Trump supporters. It is true that these areas tend to vote Republican, but the reality is far more complicated. Having lived in so-called red states, I am consistently amazed by the courage and expertise of public servants, progressive activists, and conservationists. Yet you might not know his from political analysis in national newspapers.

Moreover, some tired pundits are still childing progressives for criticism of these ideas under the guise of not insulting Trump voters. I do not think calling Trump or Vance “weird” is the same thing as insulting rural people. I grew up in rural Lancaster County and worked as a server in a Pennsylvania Dutch family restaurant and grocery store cashier. My co-workers at these jobs had a good sense of humor and were amazingly quick with a snappy insult. If anything, it’s an elite perspective to say you can’t dunk on MAGA nonsense.

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Critics to Ignore

The Democratic convention speeches I watched were very good, and full of intelligent reframing — especially the emphasis on freedom. I’ve seen some strange criticism of the theme of “joy” that several wove into their speeches. If you’re finding fault with that, then you’re really grasping at straws. Also, the idea that the Harris campaign is somehow light on substance because they’re good at social media or vibes or whatever is simply laughable.

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Vance, Friend to Women

Most people have heard about Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment, but did you know he has used it on multiple occasions, and rudely insulted people who don’t have kids at least 13 other times, including in fundraising emails? He’s called childless people “sociopathic,” and the Democrats a “childless cabal of people who don’t really care about the future.” Over and over again, he uses this line about “people who don’t have a direct stake in the country’s future,” as though it’s impossible to care about anyone else besides your own offspring. Which is just bizarre if you ask me. Ironically enough, it is fossil fuel-supported politicians like Vance dooming the earth for future generations.

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