The unreal McCoy

Glenn McCoy, the cartoonist whose nauseous work I normally avoid lest my estimation of the human race be lowered beyond chance of redemption, has long been scraping the bottom of whatever barrel he uses as a source of wit. If he seems shrill and desperate, if he seems to be missing much while promoting little, perhaps it’s because the Republican establishment for whom he is a dedicated apologist has become so indefensible that he has had to retreat into irrelevant attacks, illegitimate criticisms and a disregard for truth.

By accident, I clicked on his cartoon, syndicated in the New York Times this weekend in which a teacher is querying her class: “Benedict Arnold aided the enemy in time of war by giving away national secrets. What do we call someone like that?” A student replies:”A Pulitzer Prize winner.”

Glenn McCoy is a shameless monarchist. He either knows little about the American Revolution, General Arnold or current events, or he does not care, knowing there are still people stupid, ignorant, dishonest and unpatriotic enough to constitute a following. The concept of a free press as a balance to government propaganda monopoly is alien to him. The concept of a three branch government with each branch acting as a brake on each other is alien to him. He would have, just like Arnold, supported King George in 1776 as he supports King George in 2006.

Evidence of criminal activity by our leaders; evidence that we have been mislead, tricked into a deadly conflict for reasons we are not allowed to know, may be national secrets, but if they are, they are secret only in order to cover up an iniquity. There is always “the enemy” and when freedom of thought and even justice itself can be called an aid to that enemy, we are indeed once again, a monarchy in the old style where the public is held hostage because of a conflict initiated for that very purpose.

The irony of course is that so many “national secrets” have been given away by the tyrants McCoy serves in order to punish those who insist on a free and just and open and democratic society . How ironic is it that in invoking the treason of a British Loyalist who was supporting the legal government against liberal democrats, he fails to compare his support of another corrupt autocrat to the same standard? Yet somehow, the Times feels it necessary to print his endless attempts to call the roots of freedom unpatriotic. Perhaps it’s only to provide the “balance” that idiots and Republicans and corporate owners of the press see as truth.

The founders of our country had as a prime objective, the creation of a constitution that would not allow a ruler to create endless wars that would enable him to invoke patriotism and national security in order to enrich himself and his friends, oppress and impoverish the country. Those, like Glenn McCoy who not only fail to see the wisdom, but portray it as treason, are the greatest enemy this country has and will ever have.