by Oui
Sat Jan 25th, 2025 at 07:10:54 PM EST
Looking in the wrong places to lay blame ... how I hate such politicians ... a generation unwilling to accept responsibility ... great orators to deceive and command a false narrative ... further demise ahead. European citizens are exhausted and correctly call out their leaders to set priorities and self-interest to solidify Europe before any further expansion ... the vessel Brussels has been capsizing and taken in a lot of water as capitals are feasting, drinking as if there are no crisis to be reckoned with.
Europe is in trouble. Multiple, long-simmering external and internal challenges are coming to the boil. Taken together, they comprise the modern EU's biggest existential test since its creation in the early 1990s. But strong, united leadership is lacking. Questioning Europe's will to survive, Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned last week of a "spiritual crisis", of a "palpable mood of uncertainty, of loss."
The EU's borders, democracies, laws and liberties are threatened by an aggressive Russian nihilism. Relations with the US, transatlantic blood brother and key Nato partner, are coming under unprecedented strain. China, an expansionist, authoritarian superpower, circles like a predatory foe. The economies of leading countries, notably Germany, are contracting or stagnating.
Same can be said of a number of European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark. Sweden, Germany, France and The Netherlands. Fascism coming from the right ... the United States of America. The progressive left has been successfully attacked since fin de siècle by expanding corporate media and populism fed by xenophobia and Islamophobia ... wars of choice in the Middle East led to instability in Europe ... the UK tried to escape responsibility by voting for BreXit ... falling flat on its face.
The Road ending with Trump ... again
ALGORITHMS IN META AND MEDIA
'More to the right! More! Then we'll right this ship.' by Matt Wuerker (@wuerker)
The Role of Satire in U.S. Elections | US State Department - 16 July 2016 |
MR WUERKER: Thank you. Hi, everybody. I also want to also emphasize that not only do my comments not reflect the U.S. Government, but they also don't reflect the political position of Politico. I work as the editorial cartoonist for Politico, and as such I am entitled to express my opinions in my cartoons, and they're not the opinions of my editors or the people at Politico.
I've been here at the convention. I was also in Cleveland, doing a slightly different thing. I've been doing live cartooning at the Politico hub, and I'm - it's sort of a combination of a campaign sketch diary and stream-of-consciousness cartooning as things happen around the convention. And we've been posting that on Politico. We're calling it a cartoon cloud. And I've got one up for each day from Cleveland at the RNC, and I'm trying to keep up with one each day here at the DNC.
And I'm not alone. There's - in America, we like to refer to the cartoonists as the ink-stained wretches. And there's a contingent of us here, maybe 12 different cartoonists from different publications around the U.S., who've all come to cover the shenanigans of the convention from a cartoonist's point of view. My friend, Ann Telnaes, from The Washington Post is here, Rob Rogers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, KAL from the Economist. I know I'm leaving a bunch of people out. A bunch of people from a great new cartoon publication called The Nib, which is part of the Intercept media venture. In fact, the Intercept people have a gallery space for The Nib over on Cherry Street and Third with a bunch of cartoonists - Jen Sorensen, Tom Tomorrow, other people who are chronicling the convention. If you want other cartoon points of view, there's a bunch out there.

"Washington rolls up its sleeves", one of Matt Wuerker's Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoons. (Credit: Matt Wuerker/Politico)
Editorial Cartoons Are Stale, Simplistic, and Just Not Funny | Slate - 2012 |