I refuse to get political on a site that’s been clean. But I will point out that maybe between panels 2 & 3 you should decide if you’re talking about one friend (friend’s) or more (They).
You can also write ” friends’ ” for the plural possessive. I wasn’t going to say anything because I totally understood what you meant. But since it came up…
And btw, love the comic! I have friends that lean pretty far both ways, so they kinda provide outrigging for each other.
I personally think that fox news is absurd and funny as hell. i’m german and pretty left, but i study american culture and history, so i know the ideological and cultural backgrounds pretty well. To many germans, american politics seem very polarized and weird. I myself can not quite part from that opinion, so I basically see fox news for fun and I still have problems to understand how (fairly intelligent) americans can take that stuff serious. any american explain?
You major mistake is in believing that all “intelligent” people should believe the same thing. That’s not how it works. There is no globally superior humans or group of humans who consistently make better decision than their peers nor whose ideas an actions hold up consistently over the test of time.
As Roy Rodger’s said, “We’re all ignorant, just about different things.” As society grows more specialized, each of us grows more stupid relative to the entire mass of human knowledge.
People can be right and wrong by accident.
Take Eugenics for example. t was a highly successful political movement many of whom laws e.g. marriage licenses are still on the book. In the 1920s it was all the rage among all the educated secular and secular leaning elites. It was supported across the entire political spectrum. Lenin even gave a speech about how much better the Soviet State could carry out Eugenics Programs.
It was firmly grounded in the mainstream consensus model of evolution and genetics of the day and the only questions from scientist at all were based on matters of morality and practicality.
If the Nazi’s hadn’t jumped on the Eugenics bandwagon, it might have survived up until the 70s and beyond.
The only opponents of note where the Catholic Church in Europe and America and in America, Fundamentalist decentralized Protestant Churches like the Southern Baptist (who funded the anti-eugenics cases that went to the Supreme Court.)
Imagine the debate over Eugenics was being carried out to today and you were watching it on the news. Over on MSNBC (General Electrics Press Office) The proponents would be the urban, educated Democrats, most of the media and the scientist and college professors. All talking sagely about “settled science” and having to act responsible to protect the future and how the government just had to act now because “three generations of idiots is enough.”
Meanwhile, over on Fox News would be some hell and brimstone bible thumper with an 8th grade education screaming, “I didn’t come from no damn Monkey and the government doesn’t have the right to tell anyone whether they can have kids or not!”
So, all the best and brightest in the world, with the best intentions and more than a dash of smug elitist, very nearly went badly and horrifically wrong and where only stopped by the historical accident of Nazi embracing Eugenics just like they embraced all forms of state control over individuals.
Conversely, some of the least educated, guided by nothing but blind faith in a body fictional knowledge whose only claim to veracity was shear evolutionary survival over thousands of years, turn out to be accidentally right.
I could list other contradictions. The Republican’s in the 1930s were opposed to big government, opposed to military spending, highly isolation and seriously threatened to impeach Roosevelt if he stepped over the line helping Europe against the Nazis. At they same time, they fought since their founding to protect individual rights irrespective of race.
The Southern Democrats we’re all about big government, social welfare programs, segregation, white superiority and thought we should go after the Nazi’s hammer and tong if those Northern Republican pantywaist would man up. Had it not been for the near suicidal pushing of defense spending on the part of Segregationist Southern Senators after the Republicans took the House in 1940 (rescuing the economy btw) America would have entered WWII with about half the military force it did have, which was pathetic enough. Yep, the very same guys who wouldn’t let the Tuskegee Airman fly, were the ones who made sure they had planes to fly and the Republicans who supported their civil rights and pushed to let them fly in combat would buy the planes.
The best anyone of us can hope for is that history will look back and say, “Well, he got that one thing right, to bad about all the rest.” It impossible to look back at any historical conflict over 50 years old and see that both/all sides, were right about something, wrong about others.
You should be watching Fox News and instead of saying “those people are idiots” and be thinking, “what is it about their lives that I don’t understand.” and “Something they believe is correct and something I believe is wrong. Which is which.”
Some interesting thoughts there, thanks for that. I am not thinking that the people on fox news are idiots, maybe i was not clear on that. it is simply that, from my personal point of view and experience with politics in germany, many of the slogans and stated opinions on fox news seem absurdly over exaggerated. I am not talking about american republicans, or republican politicians. as stated above i know a lot about the ideological backgrounds, especially thoughts developed during the american revolution. So from a historical and scientific point of view, I know where fox news derive their ideas from. I think I have a problem with the aggressive way fox tries to shape and influence political thought, which is something we do not have to that extend in germany. politics are discussed by politicians, which in my opinion is how it should be. i would say I understand their beliefs just fine, but I think fox news ways of persuasion are fairly polarized and over exaggerated.
I do NOT believe that all intelligent persons should believe that the exact same things are right or wrong. If I gave that impression I am sorry. But I think that intelligent persons should be able to distinguish comparatively objective journalism from political manipulation and I do not understand why anyone should be encouraged to let him- or herself be influenced like that.
I hope I made clear that I don’t have any problem with different opinions about politics. It is just some “methods” or modes in american politics that I don’t quite get. You gave me some impulses to think about though.
From my very external point of view (heya, I’m from neither your countries :D), I would say that Fox News is a political channel because it’s used quite directly by political people (the lobbies) to bring their message to the “masses”.
Those messages are very simplistic and over-exagerated, not because the audience is stupid, but because the ones sending the messages THINK the audience is stupid.
Wars currently involve far fewer casualties – relatively. Also, wars these days don’t settle anything. The only mass casualty war I can think of offhand that didn’t settle anything is our own civil war.
I can’t seem to check my email these days without receiving a message from seventeen different political groups talking about tea parties and senators with vaguely penis related names.
Ha ha! Because your monitor is tipping, you have a “friends list!”
I’ve tried to fix that by deliberately getting to know and adding to my friends’ list people whose political opinions differ from mine. But it doesn’t help. All I’ve discovered is that everybody who has a different opinion than I do is a total idiot. It turns out that only people who agree with me on everything are actually smart.
I don’t see any possible source of bias in that previous statement.
I wish my friends were so engaged; my FBf is drowning in a deluge of cats. And Dr. Who mashups. And “share if you agree” sappy sentimental chain post clickbait. And notices about who is playing what stupid game. Oh, and by the way, the next person who sends me a you-gotta-see-this link that results in a clickbait page sans indicated context gets dumped.
Yeah, I need better friends. But every once in a while I want to reach through the network, grab someone by the lapels, and shout, “You’re freakin’ scientist, man! Enough with the Tardis waffle-branding irons and cats acting like freakin’ cats!”
Just once I want a flood of “Save the wilderness … because … you know … these bugs light up … and you can see their insides when they do!” spam in my social media feed.
If I want to see a cat acting like a cat, I’ll go talk to the one in the next room. And if I need a reminder of how special my daughter is to my heart, I’ll skip sharing if I agree and just go hang out with her. Until she tells me to leave her alone. How precious.
Note that it is correctly Doctor Who, not Dr Who. Doctor is a name, not a title. And while it was common during the time the Constitution was written (just to bring it back to the comic) to abbreviate names such as Wm. for William, it is no common now.
Funny enough, the constitution doesn’t say you can’t hunt the poor, or anyone else for that matter. The Constitution doesn’t say the people can’t do any nor does it place any restriction on the people collectively or as individuals.
The Constitution is grant of specific powers to the federal government. It place few restrictions on the states e.g. they must maintain a republican government i.e. no King of Ohio.
The Bill of Rights isn’t a grant of privileges by a benevolent sovereign to the commoners, if a explicit list restrictions on the government. The bill of rights says the government can’t establish a religion, not that the government gives people the freedom of religion. It says the government can’t restrict the freedom of the press (communications) not that government allows people to communicate and so on.
This very thing was warned about by IIRC Madison who argued against the bill of rights by saying eventually, people will forget those was just the enumerated rights and they would become all the rights we have left.
Pretty much true. When you ask anyone, regardless of their political leanings, what the government can’t do, all they can think of is the rights enumerated in the bill of rights.
We started out with free-range citizen with the necessary evil of government corralled by fence and now things are reversed. Now we huddle behind thin wires of the few rights left while the government runs wild.
Whenever someone asks me where the Constitution says some particular freedom, I say, “Ninth Amendment.”
I mean, it’s like people don’t even NOTICE the Ninth Amendment. And I’m including a good chunk of the Supreme Court. Scalia, particularly, seems to have missed that.
Like I said, I don’t watch the news, in fact, I stopped paying attention to current events entirely 3-4 years ago, so I don’t even track news online.
But I do see a lot of this mocking of Fox News in a lot of non-political context e.g. programming forums.
And I have to wonder, what’s the real message here and to whom? If you already watch Fox News your not going to stop because of this kind of stuff.
I think the real target here is people on the Left, the idea being to stop them from watching Fox news. It’s a way of controlling people. Basically, Fox News is the new source of heresy. You don’t want to be caught by the cool kids watching heresy do you?
I think this is the real point because if a person is partisan but still really thoughtful and engaged they already know what their side thinks and all the evidence and arguments so watching their own side’s news is largely a waste of time.
Instead, they should spend a lot if not most of their time watching and studying the enemy. The message we should be seeing about Fox News news is, “Look, you need to watch an hour of this stuff everyday so you keep informed about their views”
I think anyone who tries to prevent you from listening to arguments or evidence, no matter how subtly, is really interested in controlling you.
If your monitor does tilt, odds are you are controlled, your vision of the world is restricted… and you did it to yourself.
Oh, the left get to see Fox News a lot — on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Fox is so bad, there are shows just to make fun of it, and they can run daily
I thought I was a balanced Indie-pendant but when I read by southern relatives racist homophobic facebook posts im compelled to think of an incredibly smartass response to use.
I’m still nearly nowhere to judge, but I still judge lots of people. Espically if they’re hugging someone, wearing backwards hats, or are girls with shirt collars that scream ‘cleavage’.
I have two friends who have strong political opinions. It just so happens that one of them has many left-wing opinions, while the other has many right-wing opinions.
They are so far from the middle that they remind me of each other. And when I tell them that, they resent it, disgusted that I could ever associate them with the other’s (“obviously” screwball) opinions.
All I can say I like the comic for what Adam does and this very calm discussion of politics, which is rare enough that I like to peruse the comments from time to time… a very erudite crowd, maybe we’re elites, or maybe we’re just thinking individuals…
O and Merry Christmas 2015, BTW.
Discussion (41) ¬
I refuse to get political on a site that’s been clean. But I will point out that maybe between panels 2 & 3 you should decide if you’re talking about one friend (friend’s) or more (They).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
It’s plural on both counts. I see how it’s a bit confusing. Maybe I should’ve written “…but the posts my friends have written.”
You can also write ” friends’ ” for the plural possessive. I wasn’t going to say anything because I totally understood what you meant. But since it came up…
And btw, love the comic! I have friends that lean pretty far both ways, so they kinda provide outrigging for each other.
Deen, you’re a lifesaver! I didn’t even know there were rules for “plural possessives.” Thanks! Will fix when I have time.
Maybe you’re a secret libertarian and you just don’t know it.
Being a libertarian is fun; both liberals and conservatives think I’m crazy.
Oh, I love how Fox News helped his monitor become ‘fair and balanced’!
“…dats da joke”
Best comment of the day!
It reminds me how Wondermark had a strip about how the internet is the big polarizer: http://wondermark.com/461/
No one should subject themselves to Fox News, no matter the reason.
I personally think that fox news is absurd and funny as hell. i’m german and pretty left, but i study american culture and history, so i know the ideological and cultural backgrounds pretty well. To many germans, american politics seem very polarized and weird. I myself can not quite part from that opinion, so I basically see fox news for fun and I still have problems to understand how (fairly intelligent) americans can take that stuff serious. any american explain?
You major mistake is in believing that all “intelligent” people should believe the same thing. That’s not how it works. There is no globally superior humans or group of humans who consistently make better decision than their peers nor whose ideas an actions hold up consistently over the test of time.
As Roy Rodger’s said, “We’re all ignorant, just about different things.” As society grows more specialized, each of us grows more stupid relative to the entire mass of human knowledge.
People can be right and wrong by accident.
Take Eugenics for example. t was a highly successful political movement many of whom laws e.g. marriage licenses are still on the book. In the 1920s it was all the rage among all the educated secular and secular leaning elites. It was supported across the entire political spectrum. Lenin even gave a speech about how much better the Soviet State could carry out Eugenics Programs.
It was firmly grounded in the mainstream consensus model of evolution and genetics of the day and the only questions from scientist at all were based on matters of morality and practicality.
If the Nazi’s hadn’t jumped on the Eugenics bandwagon, it might have survived up until the 70s and beyond.
The only opponents of note where the Catholic Church in Europe and America and in America, Fundamentalist decentralized Protestant Churches like the Southern Baptist (who funded the anti-eugenics cases that went to the Supreme Court.)
Imagine the debate over Eugenics was being carried out to today and you were watching it on the news. Over on MSNBC (General Electrics Press Office) The proponents would be the urban, educated Democrats, most of the media and the scientist and college professors. All talking sagely about “settled science” and having to act responsible to protect the future and how the government just had to act now because “three generations of idiots is enough.”
Meanwhile, over on Fox News would be some hell and brimstone bible thumper with an 8th grade education screaming, “I didn’t come from no damn Monkey and the government doesn’t have the right to tell anyone whether they can have kids or not!”
So, all the best and brightest in the world, with the best intentions and more than a dash of smug elitist, very nearly went badly and horrifically wrong and where only stopped by the historical accident of Nazi embracing Eugenics just like they embraced all forms of state control over individuals.
Conversely, some of the least educated, guided by nothing but blind faith in a body fictional knowledge whose only claim to veracity was shear evolutionary survival over thousands of years, turn out to be accidentally right.
I could list other contradictions. The Republican’s in the 1930s were opposed to big government, opposed to military spending, highly isolation and seriously threatened to impeach Roosevelt if he stepped over the line helping Europe against the Nazis. At they same time, they fought since their founding to protect individual rights irrespective of race.
The Southern Democrats we’re all about big government, social welfare programs, segregation, white superiority and thought we should go after the Nazi’s hammer and tong if those Northern Republican pantywaist would man up. Had it not been for the near suicidal pushing of defense spending on the part of Segregationist Southern Senators after the Republicans took the House in 1940 (rescuing the economy btw) America would have entered WWII with about half the military force it did have, which was pathetic enough. Yep, the very same guys who wouldn’t let the Tuskegee Airman fly, were the ones who made sure they had planes to fly and the Republicans who supported their civil rights and pushed to let them fly in combat would buy the planes.
The best anyone of us can hope for is that history will look back and say, “Well, he got that one thing right, to bad about all the rest.” It impossible to look back at any historical conflict over 50 years old and see that both/all sides, were right about something, wrong about others.
You should be watching Fox News and instead of saying “those people are idiots” and be thinking, “what is it about their lives that I don’t understand.” and “Something they believe is correct and something I believe is wrong. Which is which.”
I believe you’re quoting Will Rodgers, not Roy Rodgers.
Some interesting thoughts there, thanks for that. I am not thinking that the people on fox news are idiots, maybe i was not clear on that. it is simply that, from my personal point of view and experience with politics in germany, many of the slogans and stated opinions on fox news seem absurdly over exaggerated. I am not talking about american republicans, or republican politicians. as stated above i know a lot about the ideological backgrounds, especially thoughts developed during the american revolution. So from a historical and scientific point of view, I know where fox news derive their ideas from. I think I have a problem with the aggressive way fox tries to shape and influence political thought, which is something we do not have to that extend in germany. politics are discussed by politicians, which in my opinion is how it should be. i would say I understand their beliefs just fine, but I think fox news ways of persuasion are fairly polarized and over exaggerated.
I do NOT believe that all intelligent persons should believe that the exact same things are right or wrong. If I gave that impression I am sorry. But I think that intelligent persons should be able to distinguish comparatively objective journalism from political manipulation and I do not understand why anyone should be encouraged to let him- or herself be influenced like that.
I hope I made clear that I don’t have any problem with different opinions about politics. It is just some “methods” or modes in american politics that I don’t quite get. You gave me some impulses to think about though.
From my very external point of view (heya, I’m from neither your countries :D), I would say that Fox News is a political channel because it’s used quite directly by political people (the lobbies) to bring their message to the “masses”.
Those messages are very simplistic and over-exagerated, not because the audience is stupid, but because the ones sending the messages THINK the audience is stupid.
Unless, of course, they don’t want their viewing options to have noticeable lists.
All arguments should involve tanks.
I resemble that remark!
Wars currently involve far fewer casualties – relatively. Also, wars these days don’t settle anything. The only mass casualty war I can think of offhand that didn’t settle anything is our own civil war.
Oh, I know how you feel, Adam.
I can’t seem to check my email these days without receiving a message from seventeen different political groups talking about tea parties and senators with vaguely penis related names.
Hey, you can hunt the poor… but they aren’t very good eating… and don’t look all that good on the wall.
On a side note… Rush Limbaugh eats cheese made from the Madagascar Stink Fungus!
Great comic today!!!
Ha ha! Because your monitor is tipping, you have a “friends list!”
I’ve tried to fix that by deliberately getting to know and adding to my friends’ list people whose political opinions differ from mine. But it doesn’t help. All I’ve discovered is that everybody who has a different opinion than I do is a total idiot. It turns out that only people who agree with me on everything are actually smart.
I don’t see any possible source of bias in that previous statement.
Also, when my mother was wearing a “WAR IS NEVER THE ANSWER” button, I asked her, “Hey Mom — how do you spell ‘raw’ backwards?”
She rolled her eyes at me.
Is no one going to blame Obama for this comic? Think of the children.
I wish my friends were so engaged; my FBf is drowning in a deluge of cats. And Dr. Who mashups. And “share if you agree” sappy sentimental chain post clickbait. And notices about who is playing what stupid game. Oh, and by the way, the next person who sends me a you-gotta-see-this link that results in a clickbait page sans indicated context gets dumped.
Yeah, I need better friends. But every once in a while I want to reach through the network, grab someone by the lapels, and shout, “You’re freakin’ scientist, man! Enough with the Tardis waffle-branding irons and cats acting like freakin’ cats!”
Just once I want a flood of “Save the wilderness … because … you know … these bugs light up … and you can see their insides when they do!” spam in my social media feed.
If I want to see a cat acting like a cat, I’ll go talk to the one in the next room. And if I need a reminder of how special my daughter is to my heart, I’ll skip sharing if I agree and just go hang out with her. Until she tells me to leave her alone. How precious.
Note that it is correctly Doctor Who, not Dr Who. Doctor is a name, not a title. And while it was common during the time the Constitution was written (just to bring it back to the comic) to abbreviate names such as Wm. for William, it is no common now.
Funny enough, the constitution doesn’t say you can’t hunt the poor, or anyone else for that matter. The Constitution doesn’t say the people can’t do any nor does it place any restriction on the people collectively or as individuals.
The Constitution is grant of specific powers to the federal government. It place few restrictions on the states e.g. they must maintain a republican government i.e. no King of Ohio.
The Bill of Rights isn’t a grant of privileges by a benevolent sovereign to the commoners, if a explicit list restrictions on the government. The bill of rights says the government can’t establish a religion, not that the government gives people the freedom of religion. It says the government can’t restrict the freedom of the press (communications) not that government allows people to communicate and so on.
This very thing was warned about by IIRC Madison who argued against the bill of rights by saying eventually, people will forget those was just the enumerated rights and they would become all the rights we have left.
Pretty much true. When you ask anyone, regardless of their political leanings, what the government can’t do, all they can think of is the rights enumerated in the bill of rights.
We started out with free-range citizen with the necessary evil of government corralled by fence and now things are reversed. Now we huddle behind thin wires of the few rights left while the government runs wild.
Eat the rich, eat the rich!
Out of the palace, and into the ditch!
— Krokus
http://www.songlyrics.com/krokus/eat-the-rich-lyrics/
Whenever someone asks me where the Constitution says some particular freedom, I say, “Ninth Amendment.”
I mean, it’s like people don’t even NOTICE the Ninth Amendment. And I’m including a good chunk of the Supreme Court. Scalia, particularly, seems to have missed that.
Like I said, I don’t watch the news, in fact, I stopped paying attention to current events entirely 3-4 years ago, so I don’t even track news online.
But I do see a lot of this mocking of Fox News in a lot of non-political context e.g. programming forums.
And I have to wonder, what’s the real message here and to whom? If you already watch Fox News your not going to stop because of this kind of stuff.
I think the real target here is people on the Left, the idea being to stop them from watching Fox news. It’s a way of controlling people. Basically, Fox News is the new source of heresy. You don’t want to be caught by the cool kids watching heresy do you?
I think this is the real point because if a person is partisan but still really thoughtful and engaged they already know what their side thinks and all the evidence and arguments so watching their own side’s news is largely a waste of time.
Instead, they should spend a lot if not most of their time watching and studying the enemy. The message we should be seeing about Fox News news is, “Look, you need to watch an hour of this stuff everyday so you keep informed about their views”
I think anyone who tries to prevent you from listening to arguments or evidence, no matter how subtly, is really interested in controlling you.
If your monitor does tilt, odds are you are controlled, your vision of the world is restricted… and you did it to yourself.
Oh, the left get to see Fox News a lot — on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Fox is so bad, there are shows just to make fun of it, and they can run daily
Adam, I do hope all these backdoor trottings don’t deter your further production of such funny strips.
I thought I was a balanced Indie-pendant but when I read by southern relatives racist homophobic facebook posts im compelled to think of an incredibly smartass response to use.
I’m still nearly nowhere to judge, but I still judge lots of people. Espically if they’re hugging someone, wearing backwards hats, or are girls with shirt collars that scream ‘cleavage’.
I have two friends who have strong political opinions. It just so happens that one of them has many left-wing opinions, while the other has many right-wing opinions.
They are so far from the middle that they remind me of each other. And when I tell them that, they resent it, disgusted that I could ever associate them with the other’s (“obviously” screwball) opinions.
Fun fact, in American I’d be considered left and in English politics I’d be considered right-wing. All around I’d rather be an independent.
LOL An accurate depiction of Fox News, that
All I can say I like the comic for what Adam does and this very calm discussion of politics, which is rare enough that I like to peruse the comments from time to time… a very erudite crowd, maybe we’re elites, or maybe we’re just thinking individuals…
O and Merry Christmas 2015, BTW.