Here’s a link to a timelapse drawing video for this cartoon!
If you watch the timelapse videos, let me know in comments if you think they’re generally a good length, or if you’d like them to be shorter or longer. I can pretty much make them any length; it’s just trying to find a balance between going slow enough so people can see and enjoy the process, and going fast enough to avoid it being boring.
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An organization called Braver Angels, whose mailing list I’ve been on forever, is dedicated to encouraging and facilitating friendly conversations between left and right leaning Americans. They’re convinced this is important, nation-saving work.
I’ve been to one of their meet-ups. Since I live in Portland, most there were lefties (some considerably further left than me), so the few right-wingers in attendance were an in-demand commodity. Nonetheless, I somehow I got a turn with a right-winger and had a very cordial chat.
I didn’t get much out of it, because it’s never been hard for me to be affable with people I disagree with. (Which might surprise people who only know me from my cartoons.) I don’t have trouble understanding that they’re humans, that they have hopes and dreams and frustrations, that they love music and puppies and some of the same movies I enjoy.
And to tell the truth, if the other person is smart and willing to be civil and respectful, I enjoy a friendly debate.
But – contra Braver Angels – I don’t believe these conversations matter. Having a friendly conversation with a Trump voter isn’t going to restore USAID or give trans kids access to medical care or bring any of the women killed by pro-life policies back to life. It’s probably not even going to convince them to stop voting for politicians who support hateful policies.
(Don’t get me wrong – when I have these conversations, I try to persuade folks to stop voting for terrible people. But I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded. Daryl Davis I am not.)
In Time Magazine, a psychologist and a pollster wrote that “estrangement has become an epidemic in America.”
“Epidemic” may be hyperbolic, but I agree it’s happening more often lately. But the solution isn’t to tell left-wingers that it’s our responsibility to keep up loving relationships no matter what the other person supports.
When I get Braver Angels emails, I always want to ask them what they think they would have been doing in 1936. Would they have been urging people to maintain cordial friendships with Nazis?
I tend to avoid comparing contemporary politics to Nazism, for a host of reasons. But after seeing the entire right wing unite around the ridiculous premise that this and this weren’t Sieg Heil salutes, I’m realizing that as long as it’s presented to them in the right way, there is absolutely no limit to what the U.S.’s current right wing won’t defend and support.
And I can absolutely understand not being able to stomach being friends with that.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels, each of which shows two characters on a sidewalk. One is a man in a yellow polo shirt, the other a woman in a striped tank top.
PANEL 1
MAN: Why do you liberals make everything so personal? I know folks whose own kids have cut them off because they voted for Trump!
PANEL 2
The woman has stopped to face the man, and is listening with a little smile. The man is smiling and talking, but his face has begun to fall off, like a mask.
MAN: Sure, we’ve got political disagreements. But we shouldn’t let them stop us from being friends, right?”
PANEL 3
The man’s face falls off, and under it is a monstrous, open-mouthed creature. His speech balloon has a creepy, intense font. The man’s human face, still visible as it falls, is laughing.
MAN (monster face): Black illegals eating our dogs get out trannies are pedos fuck voting rights Sieg Heil
MAN (fallen face): Oops! Ha ha!
PANEL 4
The man pushes his face back into place. The woman is in shock, eyes wide and hands over mouth.
MAN: Anyhow, let’s not let politics come between us.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is unimportant details slipped into the art for fun.
Panel 1: Mickey Mouse, drawn in the style of “Steamboat Willie,” the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, is emerging from a hole in the ground, holding up a note that says “public domain ha ha!”
Panel 2: A gravestone in the background has “Floppy Disks 1971-2011” inscribed on it.
Tattoos: The woman has a tattoo on her bicep. In panel 1, it’s a tattoo of a nut (like at a hardware store). In panel 2, it’s a tattoo of a nut (a peanut). In panel 4, it’s a tattoo of Jerry Lewis as “The Nutty Professor.”
I dumped a lifelong friend and I dumped an acquaintance very publicly after 1/6. I don’t regret it because, even though the friend kept saying how much she cared for me, they are absolute fucking monsters who wholeheartedly voted for the monsters trying to eradicate my community.
Fuck them.
Neat, a Braver Angels experience out in the wild! I’m curious if you have any other anecdotes from encounters with them. I’ve seen Braver Angels advertising themselves in various places as a chance to “come together” and try to end negative polarization, usually on the theory that people on differing sides don’t understand one another and need to have honest, civil conversations.
Speaking for myself, I am extremely skeptical that their approach will provide dividends.
They’ve been doing and advertising variations of these “come together” workshops for at least two decades now. If they’ve made any helpful impact, it’s yet to be seen. Lots of factors make me doubt the utility of these exercises.
1. People can be two-faced
It’s entirely possible that somebody can act cordial and amicable towards other people in person and then vilify those same people and support policies and laws that persecute and oppress them. White people can act outwardly friendly with persons of color, and then spout racial epithets in private. I’ve seen individuals act friendly towards LGBTQ individuals in person, and then they post constant hideous homophobic or transphobic memes online. And if their LGBTQ acquaintances call them out about their duplicity and ask them if they genuinely believe the hateful propaganda they post, they respond with deflection or gaslighting.
2. Unequal and non-mutual burdens
Somehow, it’s always the liberals, left-leaning individuals or harmed and marginalized persons who are pressured and hectored to tolerate the right-wing individuals because tolerance is the one-way street and exclusive burden for the targets of intolerance. We never see workshops in which Trumpers and QAnon followers are urged to stop disowning their LGBTQ children or harassing their non-MAGA relatives.
And this isn’t just as a matter of courtesy in casual settings or family functions. They pressure such “tolerance” even for the most personal and intimate considerations. Trump supporters act all offended and aggrieved if people don’t want to date them.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/state/dating-new-york-trump/
Magazines clutch their pearls when women don’t want to date MAGA men, as if it’s some societal crisis.
https://www.newsweek.com/majority-women-wont-date-trump-supporter-1981708
https://www.newsweek.com/dating-rough-gen-z-especially-men-who-support-trump-opinion-1977574
Somehow it’s the burden of women to set aside their plausible fears and entertain MAGA males as mates. It’s never the burden of MAGA males to ask themselves why anybody might find their politics to be unattractive.
3. Political disagreement is often entwined with personal abuse
I have MAGA relatives and acquaintances. If I can’t avoid interacting with them, I try to avoid political subjects. When they bring them up in person or online, I tell them I don’t wish to discuss these matters. Then they act all offended and indignant that I don’t want to listen to them recite MAGA talking points and bombard me with texts interspersed with personal insults about being a “snowflake” and such. When I avoid them and don’t engage, they act all aggrieved and berate me for taking things so “personally.” I’m sure many people have had similar experiences.
Right-wingers and Trumpers support policies that harm scores of people and they constantly spew contempt and invective at scores of people, yet they still demand gracious interaction and engagement from the very people they harm and disparage. They want to “own the libs” but still expect libs to want to be their friends.
When somebody implores “let’s not let politics come between us,” it’s too often a demand for other people to forever suffer their contempt and abuse with a smile.
I wonder how that guy would react if his friend expressed the “political opinion” that the government should kill all conservatives?
Are all of you far-over-the-hill lefty Trump haters really that blind???
Musk is OBVIOUSLY putting his hand over his heart, and then symbolically tossing out his love to the audience! Even Hitler wouldn’t have been stupid enough to call that a Nazi salute!
I understand that you despise Trump, but that’s no excuse for spouting ridiculous nonsense like that.
Dreidel
Putting his hand over his heart, then tossing it out in a straight-armed gesture going diagonally up. Exactly as real Nazis do it nowadays.
It’s not an innocent wave that just looks like a Nazi salute when paused at the right moment. Watching the entire gesture on video, it’s unambiguously a Nazi salute.
A decent person who somehow accidently made a perfect Nazi salute, exactly as real Nazis do – something that I doubt has ever happened in real life – would, when they found out afterwards, be horrified. They would apologize. Elon didn’t do it by accident, didn’t apologize, and was clearly amused by the whole thing; just more trolling the left from people who don’t see anything wrong with imitating Nazis.
If you wanted to out yourself as a Nazi you could do the old seig heil, just like Elon did, or you could call people horrified by that Nazi salute names while trying to gaslight them with the absurd claim that Elon’s perfect seig heil wasn’t a Nazi salute.
I believe people when they tell me who they are.
I could post a dozen photographs showing Hillary and Obama and wife and Warren giving straight-arm high waves that look EXACTLY like Musk’s arm position, but I’m not going to the trouble, because you KNOW that they exist — and the only
difference in the meaning of their identical arm position is in the eye of the beholder: If a Democrat makes the motion, it’s just a friendly wave, but if Musk does exactly the sane motion, it’s somehow an evil “Nazi salute.”
Like Jacqueline the Squid lady, I believe people when they tell me who they are — and you Musk/Trump haters are in serious need of psychiatric help. Unfortunately. I’ve been retired from my clinical practice for almost thirty years. So you’re going to have to get the professional help that you need from another source. Good luck!
Dreidel
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Dreidel, as I already pointed out, there’s a big difference between a wave that, when taken out of context and paused at the right moment, looks like a Nazi salute – versus a full-on Nazi salute that’s clearly not a wave, that encompasses the entire gesture precisely as Nazis do it.
You can’t find a video of Obama et al doing that, because – like any intelligent, reasonable person – they wouldn’t do that, unless they were extras in a company of The Sound of Music.
“This whole video showing one of the precise salutes Nazis give, and a dozen still images of people waving which wouldn’t be Nazi salutes if I showed you the entire gesture, are exactly the same motion.” If you don’t take a still image out of context, they’re obviously not ‘exactly the same motion.‘
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command…” – George Orwell
FAKE NEWS! Some named characters in The Sound of Music also do it!
(Barry and Jacqueline already gave real responses to the Nazi so I don’t have to.)
Freudian slip? Has Musk ever actually made a sane motion? Well, if he did, it certainly wasn’t the Nazi salute.