Whoops
First: This cartoon idea came to me moments after I read one that Wayno did some weeks ago. Remember this timeless classic?
Second: As a person who has been in the comedy-writing business for over 30 years, I realize that many if not most people have no interest in my political opinions. I’m often told by certain readers that I’m “supposed to make people laugh,” not drone on about politics. I understand that opinion, though I don’t agree with it.
The whole reason people take freedom of speech so seriously in the U.S. is that the ability of each citizen to speak out against their government without fear of legal retribution is historically rare on this planet and utterly essential to a free society. Wishing to destroy the media is to wish for a dictatorship. Criticizing the media and quashing peaceful protesters with military force is precisely what the First Amendment prohibits and precisely what all authoritarian, fascist governments throughout the history of the world have done. Especially those disguised as democracies. This is exactly what it looks like before governments topple and freedom disappears, as Salman Rushdie eloquently points out here.
That’s why I speak out and why you should, too. Life was never as predictable and as under control as we’ve been telling ourselves so that we can sleep at night. We could lose this right tomorrow and President Donald J. Trump and his toadies in the senate would not be the least interested in giving it back.
So, while I’m still legally allowed to say it, the best news of recent years, in my opinion, has been the country-wide, and now worldwide protests against police brutality. I am very encouraged by the force, size, and passion of the crowds that are demanding that authority figures treat those in their charge fairly, no matter who we are or what we look like, and that we as a society stop tolerating racism.
Even though white privilege is largely invisible to us white people, I believe a majority of white folks in the U.S. want to end the self-destructive madness of racism. We may not know how best to achieve that or how we may be unwittingly participating in it, but we want it to end. And that’s part of why these protests have been so large, multi-cultural, and pervasive; a lot of people of all ethnicities are sick of the toxic culture of Trump and his racist base. I firmly believe that most Americans want more from their leadership than bogeymen and finger-pointing.
History has shown that racism propagates and perpetuates misery and danger for everyone. It does not, as many modern Republicans believe, contain the danger posed by “those people.” It doesn’t take a college degree to understand that a friendly community is a safer community.
I’ve long thought the U.S. needed a major change of direction or it was going to hit the rocks and go down. I’m optimistic that enough good souls will come together to oust the charlatans and authoritarians at every level of government and make some positive changes of direction before that happens. Fingers crossed!
Now let’s share a chuckle or two over Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from this week…
I’m tempted to feel sorry for this guy but then I realized how phenomenally satisfying that gigantic hand would be when you wanted to flip someone off in traffic.
I believe that’s Apple’s iCricketbat—not sold in the U.S.
When my kids were little, their grandmother sent them a tadpole via the U.S. mail (I know) and we plopped it into an aquarium and watched it turn into a frog over the subsequent weeks. It was among the strangest things I’ve ever witnessed. BTW: That frog lived something like seven or eight years, as I recall. And it would sing at night.
It’s even worse than you think. His middle name is Farty.
If you’re longing for a weekly cartoon post that employs fewer vulgar words that I just did, check out Wayno’s more brief and less political cartoon post right here. Don’t forget to come back!
Some of you are thinking that “handtime” with a computer usually means something else but we’re not going to go there.
And how would he react if the snowmen in the globes were black? I’m kidding, of course, but…
Are there good cops and bad cops? Yes. Can you expect perfection from a group of people as large as the sum total of America’s law enforcement agencies? Of course not. But should we forgive cops who kill or injure citizens unnecessarily, shrug it off and say it’s bound to happen now and then? I say no. We have a right to expect that NO cop abuses their authority the way we have a right to expect that NO teacher molests a child in their care. Positions of authority and/or public safety must be judged more stringently than others or you find yourself on a slippery slope; before you know it, we’d have a president who destroys anyone who disagrees with him and accepts the aid of hostile foreign governments to keep him in power.
We’ve hit the wall at the end of the crash test, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for coming along for the ride. I’ll be launching a new website for my graphic novel, PEYOTE COWBOY soon, and right now it looks like this.
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Until next time, be smart, be grateful, be kind, and talk to people about where you’d like America to go from here, while you still can.
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