Sunday, August 24, 2025

"Roll Over, Orwell" Toons


It was a bad week for reality.
As a person who favors socialism a bit more than Zohran Mamdani these days, I repost conservative cartoonist Chip Bok's screed about T-Boss' shift away from free markets. If Republicans don't really give a shit about democracy, do you think they'll care about capitalism?

Statism is the idea that the state should wield sweeping control over economic and social policy. It shows up when government stops being a referee of private enterprise and starts acting like a player -- or worse, the team owner. While a dose of state involvement can exist inside democracies, left unchecked it slides quickly into something darker: centralized power, political favoritism, and an economy run at the pleasure of whoever happens to hold office.

And through statism, Trump has finally discovered his inner socialist -- but only the part where the government seizes industries while he gets to play CEO-in-Chief. The administration’s latest brainstorm: Uncle Sam buying golden shares in Intel, U.S. Steel, and rare earth companies.

The irony is rich: the same GOP that once worshipped Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is now paving over it with taxpayer money and MAGA logos, and the only Hayek that Trump is familiar with is Salma.

Republicans used to warn that government meddling would strangle freedom. Now they’re arguing over which cabinet secretary gets the corner office at Intel. It’s Soviet-style industrial policy, except instead of five-year plans, we get five-minute rants on Truth Social.

Trump insists it’s all about “national security”, but really it’s a chance to steer boardrooms the way he steers golf carts: recklessly and off the path. The right spent decades mocking Democrats for picking winners and losers. Now Trump is literally picking winners -- and the losers are free markets, competition, and ultimately consumers.

So congratulations, Republicans. You’ve gone from Reagan’s 'government is the problem' to Trump’s 'government owns the problem'. Hayek warned about the road to serfdom; Trump just slapped a toll booth on it, painted it gold, and put his name on the sign.

Coming soon to the Smithsonian, replacing the current exhibits on enslaved Africans in America: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folklore of the Old Plantation.
The unhoused in D.C. have a very reasonable request.

Noting the 80th anniversary of the publishing of George O's Animal Farm:

(The book) reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, a period when Russia lived under the Marxist–Leninist ideology of Joseph Stalin. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Barcelona May Days conflicts between the POUM and Stalinist forces during the Spanish Civil War.


Indeed some animals -- and some malignancies -- are more equal than others.


T-Pain wants to get into heaven, and he thinks his negotiating skills in stopping ten wars (sic) and counting can get him there.

With all of the news that's been coming out of the Lone Star State's capital this past week, something happened which may have dodged your notice.
"Yes, we starved and bombed Palestinians but they had pre-existing medical conditions and were dying anyway" is not the flex that the Israeli government -- or should I note, the majority of Israelis who elected these criminal psychopaths -- think that it is.

But what will the neighbors think? Candidly, I just don't want to know.
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