Tom and Harry's Resistance in Gozaimasu, Ohio

I started to post my feelings about the current evolving state of affairs through dialogue between Tom and Harry.  I soon decided that was not a useful  approach for a couple reasons.  For one, the nature of Tom Duck and Harry was intentionally benign, to showcase a "kinder, gentler" humor with the same sort of relationships among the characters.  Also, the political zeitgeist of the strip had been centrist, pox on both your houses.  (See the section titled The Middle of the "Road Not Taken" farther down this page.)  So the three cartoons following immediately below might remain the near totality of resistance statements in the strip for the time being.  [Note that the second is an update on the first drawn more than a year later.]  Instead, I have focused my efforts into traditional political cartoons unrelated to TD&H and located other than in Gozaimasu, Ohio. 

Artificial intelligence is just one more existential threat on the horizon.  Assume it will remain so for a long time, at least until it perceives that humans are an existential threat to AI.

About a year after the first strip was posted, AI became a hot-button issue with some of its leading tech company moguls and AI creators publicly warning of the possible dire consequences of the medium running amok, out of the control of its overlords, including the annihilation of human life.  This second strip is an update 14 months after the first, as calls for slowing AI's growth, governing its capabilities, and "Gasp!" holding its creators responsible for any ensuing damages have been making headlines.  Trump's reaction:  It's safe!  Full speed ahead!  Change its name to Super Intelligence!  Coincidentally, I'm sure, the president and his family, as well as many of his buddies and backers, are heavily invested directly or tangentially in the development of AI, or rather, SI. 

At first this scandal seemed likely to be a short-term threat to the Administration, but their desperate attempt to bury the issue, even to the extent of shutting down congress and the government for an unprecedented period, belied that, perhaps as well as all claims of non involvement by the president.  Some argue that Trump's reckless plunge into war with Iran was to some extent an attempt to distract from further investigations into "the Epstein hoax."

On a hopeful note, I'm seeing more and more nationally syndicated comic strips posting occasional political jabs at the administration.  Chicago Tribune political cartoonist Scott Stantis went even farther.  He turned his daily comic strip Prickly City, which seems to have been a conservative-leaning commentary on politics, but definitely in defense of traditional American values, into a beacon for the resistance.  Trump appears often, as a heartless skunk, with one classic strip showing him editing "We, the People" in the Preamble to the Constitution to "Me, the People".  His minions in battle gear run rampant through the desert landscape carrying out his whims.  According to Wikipedia, Stantis retired from the strip as of June 22, 2026.  It now is written and signed by Marshall Ramsey, who had taken over a couple months before, and is drawn by Eric Allie, who has done so for the past few years.

Similarly to TD&H, the strip features a fond friendship between its main characters, Carmen, a conservative little girl, and Winslow, a liberal coyote pup, who apparently have abandoned any political differences in a desperate search for protection against existential threats.  I think Prickly City is also a nod to George Herriman's Krazy Kat, which has also been acknowledged in TD&H.  My strip also has references to and some roots in Walt Kelly's Pogo, although I'm not suggesting TD&H is anywhere near the level of either strip.

For some 55 years, Tom Duck and Harry maintained a history of middle-of-the-road political cartoons, starting with this 1969 strip published in the University of Maryland's student newspaper, The Diamondback, and perhaps best stated by this 2006 strip.  The remaining cartoons below are just a handful taken from the Tom Duck and Harry Sampler elsewhere in this website, where you can find many more of their political ilk.