War & Peace Quote by Garry Trudeau

A Garry Trudeau line like this works the way a raised eyebrow works: it signals fatigue with bad-faith debate and invites the reader to notice who is still pretending not to notice. “In any event” is the polite throat-clear before a pivot, but it also carries a faint shrug, the tone of someone who’s already watched the same argument loop for years. Trudeau isn’t re-litigating his stance; he’s establishing that the record exists, and that anyone acting surprised is either new or performing.

The phrase “not exactly a secret” does double duty. On the surface, it’s modest, almost conversational. Underneath, it’s a jab at the culture of forced neutrality that often gets demanded of public artists: the expectation that political commentary should arrive as a “reveal,” a scandal, a breach of decorum. Trudeau flips that. If you’ve been reading, you already know. If you’re outraged, you’re outing your own selective attention.

“Regular readers” is the quiet power move. It draws a boundary between an ongoing relationship and a drive-by pile-on. Trudeau’s comics have long treated war not as an abstract chess match but as lived bureaucracy, PR varnish, and human cost; this line implies continuity, not opportunism. Contextually, it reads like a preemptive defense against accusations of bias: yes, there’s a point of view here, and it’s been consistent. The subtext is almost tauntingly simple: the only surprise is that anyone still expects me to pretend I don’t mean it.