Comics Archives - Page 24 of 57

Play by the Rules

A wave of anti-Trump demonstrations is sweeping the country. Demonstrators are marching in NYC, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Boston Portland, and other cities.

The latest demonstrations are undoubtedly legitimate ones (the peaceful ones at least). Demonstrations are an important tool in a democracy. But what is the purpose of the latest demonstrations against Trump? What is to be gained? Is losing an election a good enough reason to take to the streets? Is the goal overthrowing the president elect before he was even inaugurated?

I find it a bit ironic that the ones who call themselves “Democrats” are having a hard time accepting the result of the democratic process. Most democrats accept the outcome, as they understand that everybody has to play by the rules. But they are the silent majority. Their louder counterparts seem to play by the rules only when it fits them. They claim the results are unlikely, that the voters have been manipulated or fooled. Why is that? We had a Democratic president for the last two terms. Are the results of latest elections that unlikely? Couldn’t it be that that people are looking for a change in power after such a long time?

When people still like to pretend that they play by the rules, but they don’t like the rules, they might as well try to change them. That’s exactly what some democrats are aiming at, calling for a change of the voting system, substituting the Electoral College with the popular vote. Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe it’s not. But is changing the system really the issue we need to discuss? Or should the members of the party which lost the elections sit down and think ‘What did we do wrong’ and ‘What could we do better so that we’ll win the next elections?’

Here are some previous cartoons about the latest Elections:

California Is Taking It Well

Elections 2016. It’s official now:

Pot is legal in California
We have the first orange president

This is what I had to say about the Elections, before they occurred.

How Elections Work in Dictatorships

In dictatorships and totalitarian countries, such as Assad’s Syria or Mubarak’s Egypt, the regimes are fond of holding “Elections” with either only one candidate, or at most two candidates, one of which is sort of a “straw man” candidate (such is the case in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, though in the cartoon I chose to depict it as a single candidate election). The idea of elections in dictatorships is to give the people the feeling of a democracy, while basically making sure the tyrant stays in office, usually receiving around 90% of the people’s support. Sometimes, such as in Azerbaijan’s 2013 elections, the results are miraculously known even before the elections were held!

The results in such elections are almost unanimous because the people “know” who they should choose. The know because

a) there’s only one valid candidate
b) they are being told who to vote for by government officials, the government-controlled media in those countries, the police, the army.
c) they are aware that if they cast the “wrong” ballot, things will be bad for them. In totalitarian countries, Big Brother always seems to know who you voted for.

Now for the latest US elections. No candidate will get 90% of the votes, we all know that. In fact, according to the latest polls, it’s more or less a tie between the two candidates. But it seems that the media (and by “the Media” I mean almost all major news sources, there are always exceptions) has taken a decisive stance in who should be the next president, and it’s making sure to tell us all who we should vote for. While we’ve seen these kind of things in the past, in the case of Donald Trump, the Media’s unanimity on making sure he won’t be elected is prominent more than ever. So much for being impartial. “We report, you decide” has been replaced with “We report and decide”.

There is a frightening similarity between elections with “one candidate”, and elections with “one valid candidate”. In both cases, people are given only one valid option to choose from. Let’s be clear: the US is clearly not on the path of becoming a tyranny. Not even close. But when the media tells us all who we should vote for, it’s starting to sound more like the old Pravda, the communist regime’s newspaper back in good old days of the Soviet Union. A strong, independent and diverse media is important for a functioning Democracy, and when the entire press is all talking in one voice, saying the same exact things, it weakens their power. This is clearly not how free press in a democratic country should be.

Looking for some diversity of opinion? My comics often present conflicting opinions to my own, so why not read them? Here’s a previous cartoon about Elections 2016, and here are some more cartoons about politics.

The Way Death Works

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” – Ben Franklin

Also, this:

The Lowest Form of Humor

Here’s a fun fact: the world’s oldest recorded joke in history, which dates back to 1900BC, is in fact a Sumerian fart joke, which goes like this: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
Women, right guys?

Also, couldn’t think of pun/racist-humor combination without being reminded of this: