Today has been something out of my normal routine, and these pictures above come from an unexpected stroll through Park Ridge, New Jersey. I’ve been helping a friend by working at her house and watching her dog while she’s away on a business trip. I decided to go for a walk to take a break from the computer and get some fresh air, and my stroll took me into Park Ridge.
As I’m walking down a quiet local street, I see some “Trump 2024” signs nailed to a tree, somewhat high up, about 10-15 feet in the air to make sure that people can see them from way down the street. As I get closer, I see this humorous cartoon-like cutout of Donald Trump by the front door, and couldn’t resist taking a picture.
Then, a few blocks later, I see a similar-sized figure, also in someone’s front yard, and the blond eyebrows and mustache grab my attention, and makes me laugh, thinking that this character has blond hair, just like Trump. So I get closer and take this picture, but while I was vaguely familiar with this character, having a feeling it was either from a cartoon or a childrens’ book, I couldn’t quite place him while I was on the walk.
So when I get back to my friend’s house, I did an image search, curious who this second character was, and find out that it’s Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax.” Again, somewhat familiar, but I didn’t remember the story, so I looked it up. And that’s when I started to wonder if the presence of these two characters – Donald Trump and The Lorax, just a couple blocks away from each other – was a coincidence, or serendipity, or someone’s attempt at political commentary?
In my quest for a refresher on who The Lorax is, I see that The Lorax is a proponent of nature, who confronts another character called “The Once-ler,” who is a “business magnate who causes environmental destruction.” Now consider that Donald Trump, in his second term as president, has already repealed all climate-focused executive orders from the Biden Administration, wants to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty to limit global greenhouse gases, and just recently ordered all electric vehicle chargers at federal buildings to be shut down and removed, and all government-owned electric vehicles to be sold. All in all, Trump is sounding a bit like “The Once-ler.”
Here’s another odd coincidence: in Dr. Suess’ book, the Once-ler’s business operations grow into a large industrial complex, and he vows to continue “biggering” his operations. A made up word like “biggering” sounds a bit like Trump when he famously said in a campaign event back in 2016 that he was “going to cut taxes bigly.” Biggering bigly is not something that finds its way into too many sentences, so I thought the fact that the Once-ler and Trump are both thinking big, maybe we’ve got something here.
So is the Park Ridge homeowner with The Lorax figure in his front yard making a political statement against the homeowner with the Trump cut-out? What do you think?