The Sorensen Monologues
How to Get in the Holiday Spirit
To be clear, I do not actually recommend slipping into unconsciousness for the next twelve years. That’s probably not the way out of this mess. I have to say, though, the normal expressions of seasonal joy feel like an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
The Statue of Liberty in the ground is a reference to the ending of The Planet of the Apes.
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Big Fryer is Watching
This cartoon was inspired by a post from the cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, which refers to a study by a British consumer rights group called Which? (that’s their name), that examined unnecessary data harvesting by “smart” devices, including air fryers. Certain brands wanted permission to record audio on users’ phones and track precise location, and one brand connected its app to trackers from Facebook and Tiktok. None of this digital access is actually necessary for the fryer to function. While air fryers may not pose the greatest privacy risk in our everyday lives, they are part of a growing Internet of Things that I find extremely weird.
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Experts Explain Why America Voted for Plague
When you substitute “plague” for “Trump,” some oft-repeated post-election analyses become obviously absurd. At this point the whole conversation is starting to feel tedious, and I find myself getting annoyed by simplistic arguments.
The bird thing in the last panel is a plague doctor. When treating the plague in the 17th century, doctors wore a mask in the shape of a giant bird beak filled with aromatic herbs, on the theory that this would enable them to avoid scents that they thought caused the illness. The costume may have shielded them from bodily fluids and thus been useful, if in a slightly different way than they imagined.
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Cap-itulation
I’ve seen snippets of commentary from some Democratic officials and prominent opinion-havers suggesting, somewhat ominously, that the party needs to shift to the right culturally (sometimes expressed in the veiled language of “abandoning special interests”) in order to appeal to working class voters. But as I’ve noted before, nothing the Dems do is going to make a difference in this media environment.
All the rage that should have been directed at private equity, extreme inequality, the top-heavy billionaire class, union-busting CEOs, hedge funds buying up real estate and evicting renters, corporate consolidation and monopolies, and the lack of a national health insurance system for all, was redirected towards marginalized groups — women, people of color, immigrants, transgender people. Anyone who defends the old values of democracy, human rights, and evidence-based reality is going to be demonized no matter what they do or do not say. The GOP’s media juggernaut will always find something to hold up for mockery. The angertainment will never stop. We need to double down on decency or we have nothing left.
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From Dawn to Dusk
Post-election commentary has largely devolved into a circular firing squad aimed at various Democratic subgroups while ignoring the elephant in the room. I think the main question we should be asking is not “What did we do wrong?” so much as “How did something this depraved happen?” I found myself agreeing a lot with this New Republic article, which makes the case for the overwhelming dominance of right-wing media and how it sets the agenda for the national conversation. While Democrats have not always been great about messaging (though they made a pretty good effort this election cycle), it’s not like any improved messaging is going to be heard by a majority of Americans at this point.
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It Did Happen Here
I actually think Harris ran a good campaign. I give her credit for choosing a solid progressive in Tim Walz. This was a largely pro-labor, pro-union administration, not that most people know it.
This election was utter madness. If you want to point fingers, point them at democracy’s most powerful saboteurs: the oligarchs who destroyed reality through deranged media, and those who carried water for them. Also, misogyny didn’t help.
(And by “we,” I mean the nation as a whole blew it — not the people who worked hard to prevent this from happening.)
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Election Preppin’
This week’s comic was tricky since I had to draw it on Monday, but it won’t be published most places until Wednesday or later. This is a little professional challenge that comes up every four years.
The Roy Ayers album is a reference to one of the purchases Kamala Harris made at a DC record store, ultimately inspiring the “Kamala holding vinyl” internet meme.
I find myself thinking of the George W. Bush quote, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Let’s hope we don’t get fooled again.
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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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