Feeling Oppressed by Paper

American lefty editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger takes a refuge for the detestation of his countrymen regularly in Pouriel International. Like many of his ilk, going over the top with his arguments is never quite enough. This month, he feels his liberties are dwindling away because of... the watermarks in his passport:

On the third page, opposite my picture and personal information appears an enormous head of a bald eagle, a ear of corn, a flag, and the preamble to the Constitution. The eagle has a curiously empty expression. For some unknown reason the federal government, which uses it everywhere and even affixes it post office trucks and medical warnings, is not able to decide to give to the bird a furious expression, slightly irritated, or a paternal look. This eagle, which glances at my photograph where I have little expression has a more tolerant air than usual.

I don’t think the paper mean it personally, Jeff.

But this part takes the cake:

The final result is that any feeling of affection which one could have for the country or its’ history is transformed into a joke. These oft used symbols, these common scenes, these paste board versions of our heroes and these there whirring quotations are presented as the real America. We have, of course, a lesson to be learnt owing to the fact that this setting in scene was conceived under a government which is without question the worst in recent history. But I do not dare to imagine which.

He probably wants to be the one – the single one – or maybe among the very few with whom he shares a common view, a minority to be sure, to tell us all what that “true America” is, but he can’t.

Nor should he if he is so much more misanthropic than the population itself, and yet has so little meaningful to say about his country that the rest of us are supposed to identify with when considering images of its’ identity. I doubt he would put his choice of symbols to a popular vote. He thinks Bison, Totem Poles, and the Rockies are kitsch. Of course it would seem that way if you can’t identify with anyone who doesn’t live in the intellectual gulag of east-coast urban leftism which has failed miserably in the agora of ideas for 4 decades. He has probably failed to notice that a pluralistic society is more than that.