Fascist Vacation

Depending on your interests, you either know Sean Duffy as one of the housemates on Real World: Boston, or as a Republican politician who was previously a Wisconsin congressman and now serves as Trump’s secretary of transportation. Last week we learned those two claims to fame have converged in a project called The Great American Road Trip, a Youtube reality series filmed over seven months that follows Duffy, his wife and Fox News personality Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their nine children as they traverse the country by car—all while American taxpayers paid his salary.

The show (which documents published by Politico is referred to internally by the entity producing it as GART) comes in time for the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, something for which the Trump administration has been planning garish celebrations and inartful branding. Per the trailer released by the US Department of Transportation, GART has everything: a Benjamin Franklin impersonator; Kid Rock; an original theme song; a pregnancy gender reveal; cliches about car travel; a kid getting a CAT scan. We’ve also learned the endeavor was sponsored by United Airlines, Toyota Motor Corporation, Boeing, Royal Caribbean, and Enterprise, and now watchdogs are calling for an ethics investigation. Good old fashioned fun.

While this news is just another notch on the administration’s wildly unethical belt, with gas prices continuing to rise and increased air travel accidents, it still managed to raise eyebrows. So when historian Kevin Kruse suggested an artist “mock up the National Lampoon's Vacation poster, but it's Sean Duffy instead of Chevy Chase and it's nothing but airport crashes and lines for $8 gas in the background,” I loved the idea and put out a call to commission someone to do it. Thankfully, artist Christian Dawson (ZeroAnd09) answered.

Behold Dawson’s “Fascist Vacation”:

Check out “Fascist Vacation” on Instagram here and share it! (You can also view the inspiration here.)

I hope you enjoyed The Handbasket’s first foray into editorial cartoons! Hopefully more to come.