The Tiniest Ray [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on March 28, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.” ~ Martin Luther

Master Marsh tipped me over the edge. He sent a basket-load of cartoon ideas and encouraged me to draw a few. Prior to the arrival of his basket I’d been considering channeling some of my national-dismay into cartoons. Drawing them makes me laugh. Laughter fills me with hope. Hope shines a bright light into the dark age in which we find ourselves.

The gift of the current administration (I use the term loosely) and the clown car of billionaire appointees is that they lampoon themselves. It’s a confederacy of dunces so cartooning comes easy. It’s why in only a few short weeks Master Marsh was able to harvest a full basket of material.

Sometimes laughter is the only path through despair to find hope.

Charles Dickens could not have created a line-up of more despicable characters. A president and an oligarch ravaging social safety nets to give billionaires a tax cut. A Director of Homeland Security infamous for shooting her puppy in the face.

Prior to Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense né fox television personality, spilling highly secret attack plans on a social media platform, my favorite evil-stupid-award was held by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire Secretary of Commerce who said, “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month — my mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain,” Lutnick told All-In Podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya. “A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining.” The Secretary of Commerce must not know that, “Based on a fact sheet published by the Social Security Administration, more than 7 million Americans 65 and older receive at least 90% of their income from benefits checks.” Since they paid into Social Security their entire working lives, it’s safe to assume the fraudster and crook in the equation is the billionaire attempting to take away their Social Security.

Socrates or Plato suggested that humor is often derived from the misfortune of others. The man slips on a banana peel. The woman walks into the glass door. Laughter based on the pain of others. Humor is also invoked from shared pain. We need to laugh at our communal misfortune: a rapist, felon, liar, grifter, lover of autocrats, tv personality, dancing to Rupert Murdoch’s fiddle, is elevated to the seat of power by the mega-rich and is surrounded by Congressional apologists and Supreme Court enablers.

If we stacked the malicious stupidity manufactured in just two months, it might reach to the moon and back. It’s too easy to lampoon. Baskets and baskets full of nonsense.

There are a few signs of hope. The thousands upon thousands of people attending Bernie Sanders rallies – people who do not find malice and ignorance funny – give me hope. The very few Republicans breaking ranks with the silently-stupid-and-complicit-republican-congress give me hope. May my rough drafts bring you a smile and, perhaps, the tiniest ray of hope: