The Orange Mule

 

For those olde Sci-Fi readers from ages past. It struck me today that the Orange Menace is playing the role of The Mule from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. A disrupter that no one anticipates, who brings with him destruction and decay. 

Actually, there are scores of memes in social media warning about the dangers of someone like Trump. Here's a favorite from Alexander Hamilton:

"When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'"

And I'm not the first to draw the Mule to Trump connection, as far back to 2016 The Electablog saw it.

​Donald Trump is playing the role of The Mule from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy | Eclectablog

But my favorite is comparison is this visual.



Outdated Cultural Depictions

 

I am personally not fond of the nanny state. This is not a rant but rather a reflection on how far we have not come.

I was surfing the 'higher tv channels' the other night. You know up there where we never go. Where infomercials are actually more entertaining than most of the shows. Anyway, I paused on a screen that read:

THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM DEPICTS IMAGES OR CHARACTER PORTRAILS THAT REPRESENT OUTDATE CULTURAL DEPICTIONS.

Well, you know, one just has to hang around to see what evil, not PC enough show was about to scandalize the nation.

Before you scroll down, here are a few hints. You get one guess per hint. 

1) A network television series ran from 1959 to 1973.

2) Family drama. 

3) Set in the Western United States.

4) Ponderosa

Yes, the warning for Outdate Cultural Depictions was for Bonanza.

Care to take a guess why?

Scroll down for the "correct" answer.

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It was/is the character of Hop Sing, the Chinese cook on the ranch.

In addition, Disney has added the same sensitivity warning to films such as Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo and Peter Pan. Can you say Woke? I knew you couldn't.