Make America Go Backwards Again

🤡A new animation about robber barons, Epstein & toilets...🧐

Even though it seems like yet another silly distraction tossed to the masses by Donald Trump, changing the Washington Commanders’ name back to “Redskins” is emblematic of so much else America’s rising autocrat is doing.

Trump clearly wants to go back to an era when calling people derogatory names was acceptable, but of course that is just the tip of the iceberg.

The president and his cultists want to go back to a time before the Department of Justice had to worry about civil rights, the EPA didn’t worry about climate change and government workers got jobs based on fealty, not merit.

Political patronage of the 1800s is in full swing.

And if you don’t like statistics, find someone else who will report numbers more to your liking.

We laugh when Trump rails against water efficient toilets, yet he treats toilets the same way he treats long-time, apolitical employees at DOJ — he demands the high-flow kind that get rid of his messes just like they did in the old days.

If we were wondering whether we’re in the early stages of an autocracy, what’s going on in media, science, education and law leave little doubt that the darkness has begun.

Which is why it’s more important than ever to speak up and fight back now.

My friends who have lived under repressive regimes point out that it will only become more difficult to stick your neck out once authoritarianism becomes more established.

On a different, yet related, note: now that I have finished my John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford, I’ve begun to incorporate some new technology into my animation. Some of the backgrounds in this animation were created using an AI image generator trained on my artwork (not stolen from other artists), more on that later!