One of my least favorite habits of mainstream comic strip artists is the holiday greeting strip. The worst of them come at Christmas time, but the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and sometimes Halloween bring this out of American cartoonists, too. Usually they assemble their cast, have the cutest member do something cloying, and every character is drawn with a stupid grin in their face. Certain American holidays encourage a militaristic patriotism by invoking the service of soldiers without ever questioning the purpose of putting them into service in the first place. It’s just assumed that our “freedoms” are being “defended”, regardless of the war or other violent actions of the government, or the profiteering by defense contractors and energy companies. On a weekend when the Pentagon and the Obama White House have released laughably low estimates of civilians killed by the Predator Drone targeted assassination program, this kind of cartoon seems ghoulish and obtuse.
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