Comic Strips

We're here because people keep supporting a broken system. We keep getting elections with gerrymandering and candidates that don't represent people because people are unwilling to take action outside of them or even exercise that power in its most basic form. Even if you maintain that things are genuinely good when Democrats win (we'll circle back on that one), it's such a brittle system. Any progress that has been made can be wiped out every few years due to elections which have been gerrymandered to create the 50/50 coin-flip when the actual population doesn't support the right at nearly that rate. Plus, because of the messed up process of supreme court appointments, we sometimes lose rights even when Democrats are in office because of a fundamentally undemocratic institution. You could argue that's all the more reason to have voted against Republicans in the past and why we should vote against them now, but once again: In a system that is supposedly based on constitutional protections, why are our rights contingent on the random time an old judge kicks the bucket? Or the supposedly illegal actions of a president?

Because there's nothing to actually stop any of it. Rights are hard to establish and enforce and really easy to be taken away or ignored. Republicans will "break the rules" and then Democrats will decide to be bound by not only the rules their "opponents" won't follow, but by the new rules that come out of their actions. If you truly believe your opponents are fascists, and you're genuinely opposed to that, then nothing should be off the table for resisting them. At the tamest end of things the least they could have tried to do would be to break the power of the court or anti-majoritarian rules in the legislature. But again, if rules don't matter to fascists, you should be willing to go way further than that to stop them. Instead, the "#resistance" under Trump largely consisted of tweets, protest signs, and a call to vote differently in 2-4 years while simultaneously questioning if we'd even have an election to vote in. If Trump wins are liberals going to get out there and do something about it? Are they going to storm the capital to boot out the fascists? Fight cops and feds from taking away minorities? No. That's way too "uncivil" for them. We're just gonna have to vote harder next time!

And if only all we had to talk about were the trains being on time!

Circling back to how things are under Democrats: Sure, maybe they're a bit nicer to minorities publicly, but we still get:

• An ever expanding military, police, and surveillance state. Bush might have started the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and enacted the Patriot act, but Obama continued the wars, including the torture and indefinite detention he said he'd end. We also learned about the NSA's mass surveillance program under Obama and when confronted with the public outcry about an assault on our fundamental rights or the war crimes being committed by the military, he chose to go after whistleblowers instead of doing anything about it. Since then has ANY president or major presidential candidate even talked about the NSA or given any indication that they'd cut back on surveillance or imperialism? In my lifetime over 3 Democratic and 2 Republican administrations, the military budget has tripped. And of course support for Israel's genocide has continued with little more than hand wringing and empty promises.

• Anti-immigration policies continued under Obama and Biden. Biden in particular continued the detention centers and even allowed for the wall to keep being built.

• Climate legislation that isn't good enough to meet the existential threat posed by the problem. Far from being "something is better than nothing," these compromise positions obstruct efforts to implement the necessary changes. Plus whatever "advancements" are put in place tend to be fairly temporary in nature. A regulation can be easily overturned by a future administration or court. It's a lot harder to go around destroying public transportation and clean energy infrastructure after it's already been built. We are facing a global crisis and the system is going to get us all killed eventually, and poorer countries even sooner.

There are a lot of people who are hurt by US capitalism and imperialism even under Democratic administrations. It's a decision to not value those people. And it's not even like they're always different people. The surveillance state hurts everyone, but in particular it makes it easier for the government to target undesirable groups like immigrants, LGBT people, or say, women who want to get an abortion. There are certainly LGBT people, disable people, women, PoCs, etc amongst those the US has bombed, sanctioned, or caused to live in chaos after a coup. Lack of adequate healthcare means that accessing abortions or gender affirming care harder even if they are completely legal.

But don't worry, just vote for the Democrat then push them to the left! By... uh... holding up signs? Making tweets? You definitely need to unconditionally vote for them again next time, so you can't pressure them that way.

It's ok, next election we'll talk about ~the trains~ the military, surveillance state, healthcare, the environment, etc.