The Sorensen Monologues
The Great Regression
Like many Americans, I marvel at the speed with which we went from the historic election of Barack Obama to the brink of fascism. Clearly these events are not unrelated; racial resentment exploded in reaction to Obama’s presidency. But this moment of reactionary politics goes well beyond that historical first and now seems to permeate every aspect of life, anywhere some degree of social progress has been achieved. What we’re seeing is a broad-based backsliding on many fronts, with rights that took decades to achieve — or even hundreds of years — disappearing before our eyes. It’s important to keep in mind that this is largely a top-down movement, driven by billionaires and corporate interests. Plenty of them are lining up behind Trump.
Receive my weekly newsletter and help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Growing Hypocrisy
I’ve noticed that some people who seem fine with rampant development — and in some cases have profited mightily from it — suddenly become very concerned about growth when the need to build affordable housing arises in their own neighborhood. I do think that growth without any thought to the kind of dense development being created can also be a disaster. Are the new buildings ugly and so cheaply constructed that residents can hear everything their neighbors do through the walls? Are we allowing vehicle size to increase enormously at the same time we are trying to put people in ever denser spaces where they walk and bike? Are we regulating vehicle noise (and leaf blowers!) so people can live and sleep in these denser spaces? Are we keeping some nature? It seems to me that we need to do a number of things differently if we are to create livable cities that accommodate more people.
Receive my weekly newsletter and help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Where’s the Crisis?
Only a few weeks ago, the world was aghast at Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in three separate vehicles, and an investigation revealed the IDF’s AI targeting system that tolerated enormous numbers of civilian casualties. It’s no mystery why students are protesting. While many politicians and journalists vilified the protesters and openly discussed denying them future employment, displaced Gazans in Rafah thanked them with signs and spray paint graffiti on the sides of their tents. One such message read “Thank you, students in solidarity with Gaza. Your message has reached (us).” Yet in American media coverage, the fact that these kids are protesting is treated like the far greater crisis, worse than the actual death and destruction being rained down on real human beings.
Since I finished this cartoon, people occupied a building at Columbia, and pro-Palestinian students at UCLA were violently attacked by counterprotesters — it’s hard to keep up with the news cycle.
Receive my weekly newsletter and help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Virtual Spring
I truly don’t understand how anyone accepts the constant wailing of leaf blowers as normal. It’s like sitting on a plane with a screaming baby, except an internal combustion baby. I read a little while ago that Portland, Oregon is phasing out gas-powered leaf blowers starting in 2026, with the goal of “improving public health and quality of life for landscape workers and other residents.” Now THAT’S civilized.
Receive my weekly newsletter and keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
America’s Most Wanted Librarians
GOP-controlled statehouses have been cranking out reams of preposterous and frightening library legislation. One proposed bill in Louisiana, HB 777, would make it a crime for librarians to use public funds to join the American Librarian Association or attend an ALA conference, punishable with prison time and hard labor for up to two years. I think Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the ALA put it best: “This is not a culture war; it’s a threat to our democracy.”
Receive my weekly newsletter by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
If media talked about the donor class the way it talks about college students
Insulting college students is part of a long history of right-wing demonization of academia. Many current pundits, appealing to a lefty-hating donor class, continue this long tradition. It seems like hardly a day goes by without a hand-wringing article about those CRAZY COLLEGE KIDS appearing somewhere in the mainstream press. Obviously there’s been tension over the last year due to the Israel-Gaza conflict, including some ugly incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia that should be condemned. But to take a wider lens, it seems to me that college protesters have mostly been on the right side of history — from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War to apartheid in South Africa. The draconian crackdown on student protests by university administrators (and the doxxing and bullying we’ve seen from right-leaning donors over this and other issues) has been an appalling attack on the First Amendment.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
The Dirty Food Dilemma
This Guardian article lists various foods that tend to be high in toxic PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” which are used to make products stain- and water-resistant. To quote from the report, “Among the main sources of food contamination are tainted water, greaseproof food wrappers, some plastics, pesticides, or farms where PFAS-tainted sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer.” As for microplastics, where to begin? They’re everywhere, from human placentas to the oceans to Mount Everest.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
What can we do about a Supreme Court packed with corrupt extremists?
To be fair, some Dems have made an effort to expand the court. In 2023, a group of senators and representatives including Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Tina Smith, Hank Johnson, Jerrold Nadler, Cori Bush, and Adam Schiff reintroduced legislation to increase the number of justices to 13. Schiff made the case eloquently:
Schiff, a congressman from California, said: “This is not a conservative court, not in a legal sense. A conservative court would have some respect for precedent. This is instead a political and partisan court with a reactionary social agenda and the only question, Mitch McConnell having packed the court, is will we do anything about it or will we subject an entire generation of Americans to the loss of their rights?
“Dirtier air and dirtier water and dirtier elections? Is that the fate we would have for the next generation? My kids are both in their early 20s and I am not satisfied that they should have to live under a reactionary supreme court for their entire adult lives and I don’t want anyone else’s kids to have to suffer that fate.”
If you’re still not convinced about expanding the court, the nonprofit Demos has an excellent explainer, a key takeaway being that concerns about violating norms need to be weighed against the fact that those norms have already been destroyed.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
What Did We Learn From Covid?
These days, a conventional wisdom has settled in that we somehow overreacted to Covid. That our response went too far, and we are now past those silly times. Here’s the lesson to take away: we didn’t do enough. Trump’s response was idiotic and catastrophic (does anyone remember him saying blue state governors “have to treat us well” if they want coronavirus help?). In the last four years, over 1.1 million Americans have died of the illness. Countless lives have been shattered by Long Covid. The immunocompromised and other vulnerable populations are barely an afterthought. We let the virus be politicized by opportunists, and allowed false narratives about governments “controlling” us to dominate our media. The hard choices that were made to prevent even more death and suffering are now, ludicrously, seen as mistakes.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Electric Vehicles Gone Wrong
For a while there, I was somewhat willing to indulge the idea of gigantic EVs as a way to wean Americans off of fossil fuels. But my patience has worn thin.
I appreciate that the new Dodge Charger EV does not have a ten foot-high grille; however, it comes with an obnoxious feature called “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” which creates fake engine-revving sounds through a system of woofers and speakers and acoustic chambers, with a volume up to 126 decibels. According to the CDC, “loud noise above 120 dB can cause immediate harm to your ears.” We’re not talking about the soft, whirring spaceship sounds that some electric vehicles emit as a safety feature. The last thing we need is more noise pollution, especially totally unnecessary sounds from an EV!
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Floored
This is the second time in fifteen years or so that I’ve gotten stuck in an airport overnight. Passengers were sprawled out in every possible spot. Some were snoring loudly, a feat of sleep unimaginable in those circumstances, especially given the twice-hourly announcements to NOT LEAVE YOUR BAGGAGE UNATTENDED.
I’ve been to Seattle and San Francisco in recent months, but somehow the inequality in DC seemed more pronounced than I was expecting, and greater than I’d seen on previous trips.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
“Cryogenic Nursery”
I’ve done so many cartoons over the years about blobs of cells being regarded as full human beings that it has become a challenge to find new ways to satirize this idea. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, the Alabama Supreme Court provided some new fodder with its recent ruling that IVF embryos are people. In a case involving the accidental destruction of frozen embryos, the court disturbingly referred to the embryos as “extrauterine children” kept in a “cryogenic nursery.” Needless to say, this is wreaking havoc on Alabama’s IVF clinics and upending the plans of many would-be parents.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
