Taxes for the Axis

A couple years ago, I bought Jacob some $1 DVD's as an impulse buy near the cash registers at Wal-Mart. They were compilations of old cartoons. They were cheap so I could buy a bunch of them and it just made his day. I also thought that it might be cool for him to have some cartoons from another time. I thought of all the old Road Runner, Tweety Bird, and Elmer Fudd cartoons and thought that I even might like to watch some of them with him.

Well, to my astonishment, one of the cartoons on one of these DVD's was complete war propaganda. The cartoon stars Donald Duck as an average American worker who gets paid and then is shown having only two choices of what to do with his hard earned cash. He can either spend it and support the Nazis or he can save it and make his tax payments. Once discovering this video, the DVD was taken away from Jacob and he hasn't seen it since, by the way.

The video is about 5 minutes long, but you should seriously watch it. There are several things that I find funny about it that I think you should bear in mind while watching it. They are:

#1 - The cartoon duck that convinces Donald to give his money to the government ironically resembles Scrooge McDuck. How appropriate is it that Scrooge should represent the American government?
#2 - The "Scrooge" character tells Donald "it's YOUR war." Polls show today that the vast majority of Americans think that we should bring our troops home. Yet, the majority of Presidential candidates think the opposite.
#3 - The narrator proclaims that all Americans "should proudly pay their taxes" while the video is showing the only alternative as being a Nazi.
#4 - Notice when Donald goes to pay his taxes, he holds back a single coin that he hides under his hat. Scrooge lifts Donald's hat and flicks the coin to the collector. Donald is now broke.
#5 - The video widely proclaims that the taxes pay for "Guns, GUNS, and MORE GUNS!!" and the like. However, if you were to do any study on where our income taxes go you would find that 100% of our income taxes go to pay off the interest to the national debt. Just the interest.
#6 - Last, but certainly not least, this is a cartoon. Who watches cartoons? If you answered "children" then you are right. Our government sure does condition them young, don't they?

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