That Orange Bastard

Though it may seem like some unprecedented new monstrosity issues from the Awful Orifice of the Oval Office practically every day of the week—excluding weekends because he’s too lazy to even pretend to work then—most of them arguably metastasized from fascist encroachments already made by his predecessors without reversal or interruption since at least Ronald Reagan.

After all, many of the alarms raised about his attacks on civil liberties should sound familiar to anyone who remembers the Presidency of brain-damaged, mass-murdering war criminal George W. Bush; I’ve already written about how Obama being given the title of “Deporter-in-Chief” was apparently taken by Trump as a challenge; and as for treason? Well, Reagan had that covered at least twice!

When looking for disturbing things about Trump and his current batch of miscreant cronies that are novel, one may instead make special note of how much they all literally stink. For instance, Elon Musk has personally reported that he rarely bathes, presumably because he’s too stupid to realize he doesn’t have to live up to his last name like that, and his mommy probably told him that he smells good, actually, even while stifling a retch.

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. surrounds himself with dead animals so habitually that it’s fair to suspect his previous wife’s death wasn’t really a suicide, and that she may have been just one of many other victims. Are there any cold-cases in his area that could perhaps be solved by tracing potential connections to him? Reporters and even his own children have described the interiors of his automobiles as being so putrid that they could barely breathe or even remain conscious while occupying them, though that apparently still didn’t stop at least one profiler who must have some truly horrific fetishes from trying to bang the leathery, Cyril Sneer-voiced freak.

And then there’s the Orange Bastard himself, who allegedly began routinely shitting his pants at least 20 years before he reached the age where that sort of thing becomes more commonplace even for people who aren’t notorious speed abusers who constantly gorge on fast food like they’re trying to turn themselves into the Gluttony victim from the movie Seven.

I didn’t start this cartoon planning to comment on this particular phenomenon, even though I’ve brought it up several times before. Instead, it effortlessly fell into place, as if the reference were purpose-made for the topic.

The initial idea came from an offhand joke of mine about how every member of the Trump Administration seems to look like a Dick Tracy villain, after I noticed RKF, Jr. bears a striking resemblance to the gangster Pruneface:

Then, reflecting on how that condemnation wasn’t strong enough, I revised my thought to say no, actually, every member of the Trump Administration instead looks like a Sin City villain.

One of those villains from Frank Miller’s acclaimed neo-noir graphic novel series was the titular role of the storyline entitled, “That Yellow Bastard.”

The Yellow Bastard is a sadistic pedophile and rapist whose hands and genitals are shot off during the story’s first chapter by John Hartigan, a stereotypical grizzled, old police detective investigating a kidnapping immediately prior to retirement—only that sadistic pedophile turns out to be the last scion of the Roarks, a wealthy crime family which has permeated and corrupted seemingly all social, cultural, and economic institutions throughout the city, as well as several in the wider world, and who serve as the overarching antagonists of most of the series.

Senator Roark, the pedophile’s father (who, as portrayed by Powers Boothe in the movie, looks rather similar to Donald Trump’s slumlord dad), uses his money, connections, and political power to pin his son’s crimes on Hartigan, suppressing all evidence to the contrary and forcing the detective to plead guilty by threatening to kill anyone to whom he divulges the truth.

Soon afterwards, we learn that experimental medical procedures Senator Roark has sought out to restore his son’s lost anatomy have had the side-effect of turning their subject into a grotesque, cartoonishly-jaundiced, foul-smelling ghoul.

The first time we see Roark Jr. in his new, Green Lantern-proof form, appearing without warning in Hartigan’s prison cell, the narration goes on at length about his revolting odor. Normally, I have to change at least a word or two when trying to connect a pop-culture reference like this to real-world political topics, current events or actual public figures, but this time I was able to just reproduce the lines verbatim, because they already fit perfectly, as-is.

Miller gets a lot of shit for how his writing, art, and ideas devolved after 9/11. Even before that, it was sometimes difficult to tell just how much self-awareness Sin City actually had, and whether some of its dialogue which sounds tongue-in-cheek was instead written in earnest. However, a lot of what I just described happens to be so on the nose when applied to the Trumps, who were up to the racist, criminal business that first made them nationally prominent around the same time Miller moved to New York, that I do wonder if any of this is beyond mere coincidence.

Then again, maybe Trump is just the latest, loudest, furthest-reaching and most depraved example of the same kind of criminality and corruption fictionalized by the mid-20th century pulp crime novels, comic books, and film noir which inspired Miller’s work.

Either way, one thing that’s certain is the next resident of the White House, assuming there is one, will have to fumigate the damn place and burn every single piece of furniture the previous one may have sat on if they want to avoid becoming host to The Beast.

Maybe they should also call in an exorcist for good measure.