Root Causes

Naming it and drawing it

January 6th, 2022. I was not able to watch all the news coverage on the day, but have been reading about it since, about all the worries that our democracy is in danger. I believe it. As a cartoonist who sometimes draws about the news, I want to draw about this but don’t know how. During the Trump presidency, my drawings often addressed this, often in terms of his attacks on the press.

Lady Liberty to me represents the best of America. But there is a horrible side to America bubbling underneath what she stands for, trying to uproot her, trying to topple her. How does one draw that?

Yesterday in a powerful speech, Biden said that Trump had a “dagger at the throat of democracy.” David Remnick of The New Yorker wrote about a possible civil war brewing. President Jimmy Carter warned us in a NYTimes Op-Ed.

After the election last year, I was relieved yet exhausted. I stopped drawing editorial cartoons, in part because I was tired of the news, but also in part because I am not sure what good editorial cartoons do anymore . I have written extensively on the beauty and positive impact of editorial cartoons historically, and in ways I still hang on…