The State of the State - Speaking Out

Tom Duck and Harry has a long history of middle-of-the-road political cartoons, starting with its first published strip in 1969.  The underlying message might have been "a pox on both their houses." 

Today, there's no longer a question of right vs left or Republican vs Democrat.  It's right vs wrong; democracy vs autocracy; freedom vs enslavement; humanity vs insanity.

I've been further inspired by revisiting a book I wore out as a youth, The New Order, by Arthur Syzk - more about it below - and I'm putting out my own political cartoons both within and outside of TD&H - again, more below.  Frankly, Tom Duck and Harry is not the best vehicle for political commentary, although Scott Stantis, a nationally known political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, has begun to publish some biting critiques of the current administration in his daily strip, Prickly City.  His desert denizens and friends, Carmen, a little girl, and Winslow, a coyote pup, have lately abandoned their respective conservative and liberal personas to wonder together about the destruction and confusion being sown by the Trump White House.

7/24/25 - Hopefully, we'll continue to add more such strips until we're deported to Gozaimasu, Ohio

Sadly, there is no shortage of irony, hypocrisy, fraud, corruption, or abuse oozing out of the present administration.  The above may lack subtlety and artistry, but those may be expendable luxuries in today's political economy.  Besides, when you work quickly in Microsoft Paint, you're willing to cut corners.

 A take-no-prisoners assault on the readers' complacency.  Scroll down for more.  As we face the same growing evil about which Syzk's cartoons were warning, we need as forceful a voice.  Picture a cartoon like this one but about Trump and immigrants.

This is the front cover of my father's, now my well worn copy of the 1941 volume The New Order, by Arthur Szyk, a Polish Jewish artist.  This is an astounding collection of biting, incriminating political cartoons aimed at the leaders of the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as the Soviet Union during the duration of its non-aggression pact with the Nazis.  The book appeared in July '41 prior to the December attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was apparently designed to alert Americans to the growing world-wide threat to freedom and humanity.  

This is the back of the slip cover, worth a read.

 Is it time for a similar rendering of Trump demonizing of immigrants? 

While there are many anti-fascist allusions in his compositions, there is also his use of racial stereotyping. 

WWII began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, which brought Great Britain and France into the war against Germany.  The German Blitzkreig quickly took France out of the fight, while the British army narrowly escaped capture and destruction on the continent in its evacuation at Dunkirk.

Up until the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was strong opposition in the United States to getting involved, although the Roosevelt Administration was providing considerable material aid to Great Britain.  There was a nativist American Nazi Party in the United States, which quickly fell into disfavor after Germany declared war on the US following the establishment of our state of war with Japan.

The Nazi leadership was artfully presented in a less than complimentary fashion...

...whereas the Allies were portrayed in a more heroic manner.

I don't recognize all the caricatures in the book, but I do know many of them.  Even so, the least universal cartoons still project the author's intentions.