I’m generally against “bothsidesism,” but one thing I believe conservatives and liberals have in common in the U.S.: We both find the other side’s choices completely, utterly incomprehensible.
And nothing is harder to comprehend, in the lefty (a.k.a. my) mindset, then why so many Americans support goddamn fucking Donald Trump. He’s lost some supporters, to be sure, but he seems to have a solid core of followers who will not be shaken off, no matter what he says or does. Even Trump has sometimes seemed impressed by his followers’ loyalty, famously joking, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Nearly all of the reasons given in this cartoon – although I’ve written them in an exaggerated and mocking way – are real reasons I’ve seen Trump supporters give. The exception is the white supremacy panel – I’ve never seen someone outright admit that white identity politics is why they support Trump. But research shows it’s a major factor.
It’s not the deepest cartoon I’ve ever done, but it’s always fun to draw one of my “Nine Jerks” cartoons (as Becky calls them). Not needing to keep characters or settings consistent from panel to panel is so relaxing and frankly makes it faster, making it practical to do nine panels instead of my usual four. And drawing over-the-top angry expressions never fails to be fun.
Also, lots of room for chicken fat, even though it slows me down. Doing the chicken fat has added a lot to my enjoyment of my work.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has nine panels.
PANEL 1
A grinning man stands in his living room.
MAN: That TV Star billionaire son of a billionaire is an underdog like me!
PANEL 2
A woman standing behind a fence gestures at her phone.
WOMAN: Trump kills random Venezuelans on boats with no trial or evidence… But Democrats seem smug, which is much worse.
PANEL 3
A man in a suit is overcome with fury and shouting.
MAN: Because filthy pet-eating invaders are poisoning America with their dirty blood! (But I’ve got nothing against immigrants).
PANEL 4
A man in a compound surrounded by barbed wire hugs a gigantic gun and yells.
MAN: Because Democrats wanna take our guns!
PANEL 5
This central panel contains the title, “Reasons To Support Trump.” Below that, a nice looking smiling woman talks, and in the background a Klansman adds something.
WOMAN: Not because I’m a closet white supremacist! Heck no!
KLANSMAN: Same!
PANEL 6
A housewife in an apron, surrounded by children, happily talks.
HOUSEWIFE: I like that the President has traditional family values! Like Donald with Ivana Marla Melania.
PANEL 7
A man looks up from reading a newspaper.
MAN: Because Trump is fighting “cancel culture” by getting people we don’t like fired or deported!
PANEL 8
A man in a suit gestures towards a teacher in the background, who looks indignant.
MAN: Because woke “teachers” indoctrinate our kids into being trans!
TEACHER (thought): Yeah, right. I can’t even get them to use deodorant.
PANEL 9
An woman in her living room talks to us angrily.
WOMAN: Liberals are evil terrorist loving pathetic loser cucks who hate freedom! And they say such mean things about Trump!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken Fat” is long-dormant cartoonist speak for irrelevant details we stick in because it amuses us.
Panel 1: Igor, Marty Feldman’s Young Frankenstein character, is peering in the window. (He’s drawn in black and white, like the film). There’s a framed picture of Montgomery Burns on the wall. The man’s sports shirt says “42,” a reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy novels.
Panel 2: A flyer taped to the tree says “WANTED: A poem as lovely as this tree. Contact Joyce.” A groundhog wearing a top hat and a scarf has popped out from the ground.
Panel 4: A poster taped to the wall shows an adorable mom holding a gun; the caption says “My other mom is the NRA.” One of the gun crates has a sign on it saying “Caution: Bang! Bang!”
Panel 6: A surprised looking infant hangs from one of the hooks on the wall. One of the children is smoking a cigarette. One is Little Orphan Annie, as she looked early in that comic strip. One has a t-shirt with a superhero named “I.P. Man.”
Panel 7: The newspaper, entitled “The Right News,” has a giant headline saying “Is Zohran Secretly Hamas?” A smaller subhead says “We imply yes!”
Panel 8: On the blackboard, below a complex looking algebra equation, it says “You’re right. You’ll never use this math in real life. Ha ha suckers!” Elsewhere, it says “E=M.C. Hammer” and, in a list format, “1. Fee 2. Fie 3. Foe 4. Fum”.
Panel 9: The cat is a pirate, with a big loop earring in one ear, an eyepatch, and a wooden leg. The vase has Charlie Brown’s shirt’s stripe on it.
I like the comically oversized gun in panel 4.
That’s easy: because they’re evil. They elected him knowing that he’d crash the economy, destroy public health, set up concentration camps, and act like as much of a dictator as he could get away with. He’d already done a lot of that in his first term. They voted for him anyway. This is the future that the right wants.
Yes, I know the whole “misled” argument, but Trump’s overt, bragged about position was that he was going to harm immigrants or anyone he thought looked like an immigrant. That was his whole platform initially and it remained his major selling point. They knew what they were voting for.
And yes, I would like to be talked out of this position. It’s uncomfortable thinking this way about half the US. It’s just…what else fits the facts on the ground?
I’m mostly a lurker but I wholeheartedly agree with Dianne here. I think the biggest misconception that people on the left who spend most of their time with other people on the left have is that “people are fundamentally good.” Most lefties who grew up in and around conservatives, this one included, have been thoroughly disabused of that notion. People are neither fundamentally good nor evil, they are what they choose to be. And conservatives have chosen to be evil. They could have chosen not to. They may not fully understand what is happening, but they like that it’s happening. They are celebrating concentration camps, war crimes, murder, and kidnapping.
As someone whose Senator (Tom Cotton) is celebrating the murder of people at sea, hard agree with both Dianne and Kirklas. I have no idea if Cotton is truly gleeful that the Trump regime is bombing ships, and then bombing the survivors of those bombings. But he clearly believes that cheering about it will get him re-elected here in Arkansas.
@delagar: And just this morning they decided to kill some more babies by removing the hep B vaccine from the vaccine schedule. There is no reason to do that other than to be evil. Yes, the ACIP is full of extremely unqualified people, but they know enough to understand that babies will die due to their decision. That’s enough for me to call it.
If this is true – what is the optimal political strategy? How can a country where a very large minority choose to be evil be governed?
The allies take it over and restructure the government and society so that evil is no longer rewarded? That more or less worked once.
The popularity of Alternative fur Deutschland, along with the strongly neo-fascist tendencies in the Christian Democrats, implies that that was only a medium-term solution.
All too true. It’s always there in the background, ready to come out again. Laws that keep power and wealth from becoming overly concentrated can be helpful, I think, but they’re the first thing that fascists target…which is probably why business owners support fascists. They think it’ll be great for them and don’t see the trap until it’s way too late. Apparently none of them have ever studied history. Or something.
I dunno, I mean there were plenty of business owners in Germany (and Italy and Japan and Spain) who made plenty of money out of fascism and only ended up losing money when they lost the war (and in Spain, not even then).
Good point. I don’t think Krup, for example, ever lost their money, even after losing the war. However, more business owners did lose their money or were unable to make money due to the capricious nature of fascist governments and the need to placate them constantly. It wouldn’t be the way I would want to do business, even if I ended up being one of the “lucky” ones who didn’t end up broke or in a concentration camp. Way too much risk and uncertainty.
The odd thing, given that Trump voters often appear to be pure ego, is that I can’t imagine what they actually want. I mean, yes, they want guns and power and often sex, but what is their vision of utopia. Most progressives have one, even if some are as realistic as “everyone will live in harmony with rainbows and unicorns”. Most real conservatives (as opposed to Trump supporters who have no desire to conserve anything), seem to have one, even if it’s “life will be like a 1950s TV show but with internet” which is about as realistic as the rainbows and unicorns. But Trump voters? I could list any number of things that they want to destroy, but for visions of what they want, I’m coming up blank. I mean, maybe Musk read “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and thought it was a utopian novel, but that’s about all I’ve got. (And I don’t think it’s in any way a shared vision.)
I think a lot of Trump voters – not all, but a bunch – are convinced that Democrats want to use public schools to force their unwilling kids to change sex, shut down the churches, eliminate almost all tech to prevent global warming (which we made up), have people hired and fired based purely on “identity politics,” and raise taxes on all red states to pay for free healthcare for undocumented immigrants.
If you believe that, Trump looks less bad. Plus, of course, they believe all sorts of untruths about Trump’s benevolence and competence.
I don’t know, that last one doesn’t sound bad to me. Make health care available for free to everyone who is in the US, no citizenship or documents required. Much less paperwork and lower risk of infectious disease spread. Also, if your taxes are raised, but you no longer have to pay for health insurance, that’s probably a win. Of course, it wouldn’t be a rise in taxes in red states per se, but in all states. The idea that Democrats would raise taxes selectively on red states is pure projection.