Even when you begin to think that it can’t get any worse with Donald J. Trump as President of the United States the Orangeman does something that is so stupid and so reflective of a man who thinks only about himself that it makes one’s shudder in disbelief. Last week included some completely bizarre performances that could lead to nuclear war while also falsely promoting that our leader is a “man of peace.” That is in spite of the fact that it has become hard to imagine that Trump can even pronounce the word “peace” without an interpreter or the five letter word flashing up in boldface on his teleprompter screen. Let’s start with several recent developments about which there can be no real debate, though motive and expectations can be reasonably disputed. Consider for a moment the performance of a man who knows little beyond how to curse and harangue those who disagree with him as well as any skill beyond how to scribble a version of his own name in large letters with a marker pen.

I’ve been struggling to imagine Elon Musk might do if he gets his trillion-dollar payday. He could spend a million dollars a day for 3,000 years.  Or, more realistically, $100 million a day for 30 years. He could spend the $290 million he invested in Trump’s election and do it 3,400 times, wherever and whenever he pleases. Or buy more media properties, spending up to twenty times the $44 billion it took for him to buy Twitter and make it into a misinformation swamp key to Trump’s reelection.

But the money the Tesla board just handed Musk isn’t guaranteed. He has to meet goals like delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles and dramatically increasing Tesla’s stock price. Ordinary citizens can prevent that, but we need to take our efforts to another level.

For the most part, 2025 was a very good year for me. I took a trip to Chicago, and I saw the Cubs. I spent a couple of weeks with good friends in Southern California and got to see pelicans and sea lions. I went to Boston and attended the convention for the National Cartoonists Society for the very first time in my life, where I got to see old friends and make a lot of new ones. I spent a few days in New York City. And at the convention for the Association of American Cartoonists, I won the Rex Bab Memorial Award.

And then I had a stroke. And maybe this is partly why my doctors and nurses thought I had a very positive attitude throughout the process, because I don't think the stroke ruined my year. That's why I wouldn’t call it a setback. If nothing else, I learned from the stroke that a shit ton of people love me.

And the stroke did not stop me from cartooning. If anything, it caused a slight pause. When I asked readers on Facebook to pick their favorites of mine from the year, they collected cartoons before and after the stroke.

Karl Marx has been famously quoted as referring to religion as the opiate of the masses. His point being that religion, offering a future, better life in the by and by, narcotized people to endure the difficulty of their lives and work, rather than rising to demand change in the here and now. Religion now lacks the force or mass participation of the past, but it’s also pretty clear to me that it has been replaced as the critical agent for peoples’ pacification by the ubiquity of smartphones.

It’s impossible to ignore, so don’t tell me that you haven’t noticed this phenomenon as well. Some might argue that this is a teen issue. There’s heavy breathing around the United States about blocking cellphones from schools and classrooms and the reported benefits of these restrictions in attention and participation. Others might claim this is a relief from boredom. Waiting for airplanes or in lobbies almost anywhere these days, I sometimes find myself counting the number of people, old and young, who are buried deep in their phones. It’s always a majority, and frequently it’s nearly unanimous, as I find myself an outlier.