Auchtoon!

There is so much going on in the country and the world right now. And, as you may have noticed, most of it not good. War, starvation, grift, economic turmoil, constitutional crisis, rising authoritarianism — well, you get it.

It’s awful. But it’s also compelling. Cable news and social media are a constant feed of train wrecks, one after the other (with an occasional cat video), and we can’t not look. Which is a problem because while we’re locked in on that stuff, we can miss the local stuff that we actually have degree of control over.

So the cartoon is a bit of a self-own. As much as I like to think of myself as above the fray, I most certainly am not. I just realized that we have an election next week! It’s all local stuff — city council members and school millage requests — but that’s important. It’s where I live.

Hopefully, you are not playing catch-up like me and have thought ahead about what’s on your ballot, done your due diligence, and are planning to make (or have already made) an informed vote. If you haven’t, there’s still time. Don’t worry — all that terrible news will be waiting for us when we get back to it.

It can be very difficult to understand why people would consistently vote against their own best interests — why they would support policies over and over that create financial hardships. What could possibly be the motivation?

President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, using the vernacular and best example of the time, explained it this way:

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pockets. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Earlier this week, I had the idea for this cartoon percolating in my head. I felt the “history lesson” would fit well with the No Kings events this weekend. And then Politico broke the story of the Young Republicans leaders and their hateful, disgusting “I love Hitler” private messaging, with Vice President JD Vance subsequently coming to their defense. So now it’s so topical I kind of want to throw up.

If you are not already familiar with Father Charles Coughlin, you can check out the Wikipedia article. But in short:

“Dubbed ‘The Radio Priest ’ and considered a leading demagogue, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned in to his weekly broadcasts.”

Coughlin was sort of the populist podcaster of his day. I learned about him from Mr. Winchester in my American History class junior year at Flint Powers High School. What’s more, I remember the actual takeaway from the lesson: We Americans had our own demagogues, authoritarians, and fascists in the 1930s. But we ultimately had the good sense not to put them in charge of things.

Today, I’m afraid and ashamed to say we’ve lost that good sense.

Yes, yes — I think we can all agree that the way in which Michigan’s budget for 2026 came to be was probably unconstitutional, needlessly divisive, and ridiculously and dangerously opaque. In short, a disaster and counter to how representational government should function.

And yet, as bad as it was in basically having only three people (Governor Gretchen Whitmer, House Speaker Matt Hall, and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks) with total control of the final product, they did manage to get it done without technically shutting the government down.

The federal government and its budget, on the other hand, is shut down because its functions are determined entirely by the whims of a president whose only motivations appear to be grift and retribution. Oh, and having his ego stroked.

So things here in Michigan could be worse. But it’s such a low, low, low bar to clear.

Unless you listen to the likes of Stephen Miller (and nobody should), you know that people are essentially the same all over the world. We are all human and susceptible to the worst human inclinations: hate, fear, willful ignorance, bigotry, racism, toxic ideology, etc. And, unfortunately, a common consequence is violence.

So what makes violence (political and otherwise) so much more harmful, so much deadlier, in the United States than in, say, the rest of the so-called industrialized first-world countries?

Guns. We have lots, lots, lots more guns. And whether you like guns or feel safer with guns or believe in the divine right to own them, the statistics are undeniable. Guns and gun culture makes violence deadlier in our country.

So after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, after the mass murder in Grand Blanc, we have yet again the opportunity to ask the question: Is it worth it?