American Extremists: "Dumbstruck"

[Welcome Glenn Greenwald readers! Update: note added, below]

American Extremists webcomic archive:

http://americanextremists.thecomicseries.com/


Recommended reading on this topic: Petraeus and the signature of U.S. terror

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Note:

Twice (to date), Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money has wagged a finger at Glenn Greenwald for linking to my 'toons, protesting that my talking heads are straw men. Perhaps he'll go for the trifecta here, so I'll rebut that argument in advance.

As I've explained to Scott in comments at his blog, the cartoons are not documentary (shocking, I know, and so unlike other cartoons—even the ones by people who can draw). They dramatize and comedize political hypocrisies, notably on the ObamaDem left (in hopes that progressives will stop chaining themselves to rightwing Democrats like Barack Obama).

The point of this 'toon is not that this precise dialogue occurs in real life. The point is that Obama is, as Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report has observed, is "the more effective evil," a president who does countless horrible things that left/liberal/progressives would deem unacceptable if Bush did them. In this case, the topic is how debased the "left's" standards are re: drone-killing and other slaughtering of purported terrorists, and how much lower those standards may go.

As Glenn cites in his post, "Democrats overwhelmingly support the drone program," i.e., Obama's use of flying robots to kill people throughout the Middle East, and coming to America soon. And as David Swanson notes via Twitter, ongoing dubiously discriminate drone-killings in Pakistan don't raise much of any American's pulse in the Age of Obama.

Unless, against all reason, Scott claims the drone-killings would be so accepted by Democrats under Bush, how can he avoid recognizing the considerable existence of Obama apologism, the butt of those "straw man" cartoons of mine?

Among Democratic voters, there is at best deliberately ineffectual grumbling about Obama's many Bush-like and worse-than-Bush policies. Foul is fair… or fair enough, if Obama does it.

This, I think is an enormous problem, one that makes voters of conscience continue to support policies they ordinarily would spot and decry as retrograde and wrong.

Mr. Lemieux takes umbrage at mocking this foible, to such an extent that he pillories me for taking note of it (and Glenn, as well, for shamefully linking to me), with his spurious "straw man" argument.

As an ironist, denials of denialism are rather entertaining, especially for something as plainly visible and commonplace as Obama apologism.