Auchtoon!

It will help if readers are familiar with slapstick movies from the early 1900s — Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Three Stooges, and the like. Specifically the classic bit with a guy carrying a long board on his shoulder and — as he navigates safely through a construction site — unknowingly and repeatedly clobbering people with the back end of the board.

That’s kind of how I see Trump — he’s carrying a board though our country looking out only for himself and either unaware of or uncaring about the collateral damage. It’s funny in a movie. Not so much when it’s happening in real life.

It’s natural for political parties to evolve. Over the course of time, they adjust to meet the realities of their current era. A century ago, the Democratic Party was primarily a combination of Jim Crow southerners and working-class northerners. Sixty years later it started shifting more toward the party of minorities and women. And today, it’s the neurotic, often self-defeating mishmash that we all know.

Of course, the Republican Party evolved over time, too. But these past couple of decades, it’s been not so much a shift as an astonishing, mind-bending leap. I think Ronald Reagan, and especially Gerald Ford, would find the current GOP absolutely unrecognizable.

Case in point, the willy-nilly, money-is-no-object acquiring and transforming of warehouses into detention centers for (let me check my notes) anybody potentially opposed to them! Their plan is to spend $38.3 billion. Give or take. (The modern GOP doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about budgeting.)

As part of this, there is a proposed detention center in southeast Michigan that is being marketed as a job creator and an economy stimulator. Where have all the fiscal conservatives gone? Where have all the strict constitutionalists gone? Where have all the rational adults gone?

Last week, President Donald Trump threatened to delay the opening of the new, $4.7 billion Gordie Howe Bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. Chalk this one up to “didn’t see it coming but not at all surprised.”

Most folks around here already know the backstory: The Detroit/Windsor crossing is the busiest international commercial border crossing in North America. The existing bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, has been privately owned (!) by the billionaire Moroun family since 1979, which has gone as badly as you might imagine.

So after many years and much negotiation, a new bridge was agreed upon — with actual, thought-through, legally binding plans. Canada financed the whole thing and will recoup costs over a long period of time through tolls. And so it was jointly built with materials from both countries, and it will be jointly owned.

To seal the mutual deal, it was named after Gordie Howe, a Canadian and a Detroit Red Wing hockey legend. He was a remarkable combination of talent and toughness, something both Canadians and Michiganders appreciate. It is said that Mr. Howe rarely started a fight on the ice, but was highly effective at finishing them. Trump is quite the opposite. I’m looking forward to the bridge opening very soon

We humans are wired to recognize patterns, which has come in handy. For example, being able to observe when and where a hungry bear or lion might show up, our ancestors were able to avoid them and survive long enough to become our ancestors.

So it’s always at least a little jarring when we cannot detect a pattern. It’s these instances that are an endless resource for political cartooning in particular and satire in general.

In Michigan, communities are coming together to figure out ways to prevent developers from building new data centers. Whatever you feeling may be about the data centers themselves, it is heartening to see people unite for a shared cause with the intention of ensuring the future health of their common community. That should be the expected pattern.

But at the very same time, there is a surprisingly strong counter-community current when it comes to vaccinations for our children. Despite overwhelming evidence of vaccines ensuring community health, an alarming number of people don’t seem to care at all about the future health of their common community. So despite measles outbreaks (a disease once thought eliminated in the United States), St. Clair County here in Michigan is trying to make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccines.

It kinda feels like they are leading their community right into the path of a hungry bear.