Political Cartoon - Corrupted Justices

In this political cartoon, the nine future justices are shown; two of them look like power-hungry politicians, five of them are elephants, and the remaining two look to be sane and logical. There is the presence of the balloon bubble that says, “Okay, let’s take a vote.”

My first reaction to this political cartoon was that in the future, our government is going to be corrupt; the so-called balance of powers will be shattered and corrupt politicians will rule the country. The U.S. will then become a power-hungry country and wage war against multiple countries because our new policies would make other countries mad at us. The people that actually know how politics work and how to handle such problems are few to none, and even so, they would get outvoted by the people who want power, as seen in this political cartoon. The two reasonable people among the justices are outvoted two to seven by the other justices. If this is the future of our legal system… then it does not bode well for the U.S. in the future. We’ll probably impeach the president because he or she littered or something minuscule like that, thanks to this flawed system.

This political cartoon seems to present the idea that something is wrong with the U.S. government and the artist or creator wants its audience to recognize that as well. Here in the picture, there are elephants as justices. Considering this is part of a system where to even be a justice, high experience and credentials are needed, it seems to be mocking the current system that we have place. Elephants are not exactly the most intelligent when we think about animals to personify humans with, and they’re also not exactly the most serious either; the audience can’t take them seriously when they see them on a Supreme Court justice bench. This is one way the artist depicts the system as flawed; by putting some of the justices as elephants, the creator is making a point that some of the potential future justices may have sketchy credentials and have a status not really befitting of a justice. With the smirking politicians, the creator is making a point that while there are some who may be qualified to be a justice, there is also the power factor; some justices in the future could be biased in their opinions and lend support to a case that favors them more, even if the opposing side technically has a stronger case. The political cartoon evokes distrust for the government from the viewers, and makes them look at their government and question the capabilities of their personnel and wonder if they can be trusted or not.

This political cartoon does use a couple of techniques to coax its viewers into distrusting the government. The smirking politicians and the elephants alone suggest to the readers that something is wrong with the government. The two normal justices looking in awe are the people that the viewers can sympathize in and feel sorry for; in other words, they are an appeal to the audience’s emotions. The audience knows that they can’t win the vote that one of the elephant justices suggested, and therefore, they think badly of them for playing such an underhanded trick.