Baby Screams

I must admit that I didn't do this picture out of my revolutionary spirit. A friend of mine challenged me to do it and I came up with the idea and drawing...in a coffee house of all places. She risks her reputation and possibly even her health and life going into Trumpistan, D.C. to participate in protest marches. She has a whole library of protest signs, some of which I calligraphed in nice block letters. Some of them, worded by family and friends, are funny, some clever, and others are too intellectually complex for a street parade.

But here's the question. Do I really believe that this cartoon Presidential character should be mocked and even removed? Do I share the same contempt for him that so many of my friends and fellow Americans do? This is harder for me to answer than you might think. Sure, in many ways he is loathsome and worthy of disgust. But as a world-builder and fantasy artist I also think of the Turnip as a "mythical" figure, created by some collective imagination that has made a hero out of a con man. If you've read Ayn Rand, you know what I'm talking about. Turnip is someone who has deliberately created his own version of Randian sainthood. She used to complain that businessmen were never portrayed as positive, heroic figures. Now, finally, the "successful businessman" (despite the bankruptcies) has grabbed the soft center of imagination. The mercantile messiah has finally achieved his golden goal. Rand's heroes are beyond good and evil. They can bribe, threaten, even do violence to advance their towering self-interest, and they will succeed. Can we readers do that? I want to be a success! I want to win!

There is a problem though, and that's because this Ayn Rand hero is a twit. Rand is grandiose, but Turnip is petty and small. The celebrity insult games don't give me that Randian rush. Therefore I feel justified putting the Baby-in-Chief in his crib for someone in a milling protest march to hold up high.

Markers on construction paper, worked on with Photoshop, 20" x 16", June 30, 2017.