When this past election began, and all the candidates began campaigning, I felt a sense of déjà vu… I had seen this before, but instead of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, and all the other people in politics that none of us really like but for some reason they keep getting elected. It was little blue, gender-less creatures and a freaking wizard. Yes, this déjà vu came from the cartoon show, “The Smurfs,” which debuted in 1981… 35 years before this travesty of American politics.
Originally, this parallel was noticed when I made a Twitter joke and realized that Ted Cruz looks just like Gargamel, the evil wizard. But now Gargamel is representative of the portion of the country committing the awful and ugly hate crimes in the name of Donald Trump, and the outdated policies the Republican Party promotes as their political platform. Secondly on the republican side, Gargamel’s cat, who does all his bidding and aids in his dirty work… who is also orange like our president elect, Mr. Trump. If you can’t already tell, I’m calling the Republican party a farce and an evil travesty of an organization.
Now we move to the Democrats. The smurfs are blue! The first of many similarities they have with the democratic party. The smurfs are also genderless, which is representative of their gender identity beliefs and their stance on gay marriage. And then there is Papa Smurf, the head smurf, who at the time of the release of the cartoon was 553 years old yet still geriatric. Papa Smurf is the man, the myth, the legend, Bernie Sanders himself. Papa Smurf’s practices in magic and potion making portray his ideals of universal healthcare. All the smurfs live in similar mushroom style homes. They also work for no pay, and their service is solely for the benefit of the community, this economic policy is representative of Bernie Sander’s democratic socialism ideal.
All that’s left is Smurfette, the only “female” smurf. She is technically not female because smurfs have no gender. So how do we get a female smurf when smurfs have no gender? Smurfette was originally a creation of Gargamel’s to infiltrate the smurfs and aid in their demise. Who might this represent? The hip, and cool candidate that sparked the interest of the politically elusive millennials (after Bernie got boned in the primaries), Mrs. Hillary Clinton herself. Hillary was a Republican at the beginning of her career. She infiltrated the Democrats as an original creation of the Republican party, just as Smurfette was meant to. She adopted their practices, their beliefs, and began a new life and joined their little thriving community.
Obviously, this is a stretch on connections, but I feel that the fact that one can draw these parallels from a cartoon, to modern American politics which is supposedly the strongest and “best” government in the world, is just downright ridiculous. In the primaries, we had two people who have never held an elected office run for the Republican nomination… for PRESIDENT. As for the Democrats? They couldn’t get enough voter participation to pass an actual politician into the general election. Yes, Hillary is technically an actual politician, but President is not the job for her for obvious reasons, and the fact that she can’t maintain a solid political platform for more than 2 years. Maybe in 2020 we can use a different cartoon and keep this newfound tradition alive, maybe Donald Trump will get re-elected and I’ll be able to connect him to Johnny Bravo.
