The Sorensen Monologues

Holiday Harangue

This cartoon is about the Texas abortion case in which 31 year-old mother of two Kate Cox had to flee the state to end a non-viable pregnancy that threatened her ability to have children in the future and possibly her life. I’ve been thinking lately about how extreme things have gotten, and how if you’d told me about some of these developments back in the ’90s, I’d have been skeptical. Also, there is this flawed idea that abortion is a “cultural” issue that is secondary to real, “material” concerns, like the economy, which I find infuriating because it doesn’t get much more real than your own body, or having to financially support a whole new human being. 

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Climate Newspeak

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the president of COP28 who also happens to be CEO of the UAE’s state oil company, made this and other disturbing remarks while speaking with three women at a She Changes Climate event. “Polarization” has become a weasel word for bad actors to stop legitimate criticism. The fact that we’re seeing it used by an oil CEO to deny climate science should set off alarm bells. The term erases differences in power, places dominant and marginalized groups on the same plane, and implies a false equivalence between violent movements and vulnerable people trying to defend themselves. In this case we see it being used to provide cover for corporate interests that are harming all of us. 

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Kissinger Karma

I find myself both deeply disturbed and morbidly curious about Kissinger’s philosophy of putting the world in the “correct” order without regard to human rights or international law. Isn’t this exactly how all brutal dictators think, from Putin to Assad to MBS to Xi and pretty much anyone else committing crimes against humanity? This “order over justice” approach only seems reasonable if you’re sure you’re never going to be on the wrong side of it. That’s what led me to draw Kissinger as the victim of his own doctrine.

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