Cartoon for October 27, 2008
McCain must have amazing powers of persuasion to convince crowds of poor people to cheer his call for him, as a multimillionaire, to pay fewer taxes at their expense.
posted by Ted Rall at
12:01 AM
9 Comments:
If McCain had amazing powers of persuasion, he'd be ahead in the polls. It's Obama who has people hypnotised into thinking he's a real Democrat.
I don't know why, but this cartoon is more accessible to me than the October 25 cartoon, which makes a very similar point.
They say that the way to understand a person is to accept that what they believe is true, and then try to imagine what it could possibly be true of. My imagination just isn't good enough, I guess.
How can McCain get nearly 50% of the vote touting the policies of an administration with a 27% approval? I sincerely hope someone comes along who can explain it.
How can McCain get nearly 50% of the vote touting the policies of an administration with a 27% approval?
Because 50% of the vote is about 27% of eligible voters.
The guy in panel 3 on the right looks a little too much like Patrick Stewart. Be careful, Ted, Captain Pickard might come after you!
This was brilliant, Ted.
Thank you.
I've long wondered how, in an individualistic society where we are trained to think of ourselves first, Republicans have managed to convince so many people to vote against their own best interests. I spent most of my life in Kansas/Oklahoma, states that stand to gain the most from Socialization, and watch them vote overhwelmingly Republican.
One of the biggest complaints there is higher taxes; I point out that the state(s) spend more than they take in from tax revenue, the remainder is made up from other states' taxes (ie: California) that gets 'spread around.' The response: "I can tell you're a college student; you've been brainwashed by liberal academia." No joke. They get their news from Faux News, Limbaugh and NRA newsletters.
Ted, you were correct a long time ago: we call these states flyover states for a reason...
I'm reminded of the late Bill Hicks and his "People Who Hate People Party" bit:
"People who hate people, come together!"
"No!"
"Ladies Who Hate Women" Heh.
Phyllis Schlafly was a Lady. Anita Bryant was too. And our newest Lady Who Hates Women is the lovely Sarah Palin. And by "lovely" I mean batshit crazy.
Great cartoon, Ted.
Ladies Against Women
http://blogs.salon.com/0004123/
was a satirical street theater group in the 1980s. There were some other related projects, like "Mutants for a Radioactive Society," etc.
Agree, great cartoons (today and yesterday). I posted something over at Slacktivist in the comments that was a bit similar. Whenever I see relatively poor people falling for this Horatio Alger schtick, I myself tend to label it an "identity issue". A poor person chooses to support policies that hurt the poor, because anything else would force that person to rewrite their identity, which I suspect is among the most difficult things a person can do. Too often the downtrodden look for somebody else who is lower on the ladder than they are, so their identity depends on being superior to other poor people. They think they're better than other poor people -- better in terms of "character" somehow, since in real life their finances are not any different from anyone else. And character brings about opportunity, in their minds, which is the surefire path to riches. So when John McCain talks about how America doesn't "stifle opportunity", the poor people in his audience are thinking "that opportunity is meant for ME and me alone, not for my scummy trashy neighbors."
They feel that, if they ever were to receive benefits aimed at helping poor people, then they must necessarily join that ranks of poor people, whom they despise even though they're one. They associate the policies with [a group they think of as] dirty grubby hippy anti-Capitalist flower children, and minorities, [other ethnicities in the case where a Republican himself is a minority,] who are too lazy to work and want to destroy America's economy. "That's not my identity," the denier says to himself, "I like my identity so I will do pretty much anything, go to any length, in order to avoid having something in common with those grubby lower-class people I don't want to join." Delusional? Unrealistic? Maybe yes, maybe no, but in some ways I think it's understandable.
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