CSotD: Sunday Sweep-Up
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Rhymes with Orange leads off today with a cartoon based, IMHO, on the joke that "Is this a good time?" is sort of like "How are you?" It's not an actual question so much as a greeting.
The difference being that, if someone says, "How are you?" and you actually answer the question, they're obligated to listen. If they say, "Is now a good time to talk about our relationship?" you damn well better say "yes" because the real question is, "Should we discuss this, or would you prefer I just unload on you?"
When flow-chart cartoons don't work, they are just mini-lectures, but when they do, they are little treasure hunts of logic, and this one works. It may all be put into one panel, but it functions as a multi-panel cartoon and, whether it would have been legible in daily size anyway, it's good Hilary Price saved it for a Sunday.
The "always/never" is my favorite part. It makes my stomach hurt because of the unlikiness that two people would ever sit down for this conversation with neither of them employing those useless, unfair words.
The entire cartoon is based on the realization that, if both partners were willing to wait for an appropriate moment and then conduct the conversation under Marquis of Queensbury rules, their relationship would not be in a place where they had anything to discuss anyway.
That's a laff.
Insignificant Juxtaposition of the Day
Are the stars out tonight? I don't know if it's cloudy or bright, shoo-bop-shoo-bop.
Nor do I know how Dave Coverly and Rina Piccolo both fastened on this particular topic for the same day. There was an article floating around a little while ago about how few people have ever seen the Milky Way, but I think too recently to have sparked a Sunday, which strips are generally done well ahead of dailies.
I also don't know if the confluence of two jokes about stars and insignificance is a particularly deep matter.
Significant Juxtaposition of the Day
(Dav)
Here's a more weighty coincidence, though comparisons between Brexit and Trump have not been hard to find. But playing off Trump's slogan is particularly apt if you put them in this order, which is sort of a "set-up-and-the-spike."
I've seen several pieces of analysis as to why it's not the same thing, but I've also seen several cartoons and analytical pieces suggesting that, now that Britain has voted to leave, other countries will follow suit and the EU will collapse.
I'm not entirely persuaded by any of them, though the most frightening element of the Brexit vote is the enormous turnout, which robs us of the comforting notion that the vote was hijacked by one side turning out in force while the other sat back expecting someone else to counter the crazies.
The only positive from that is the possibility that November's sane side will recognize that simply having logic on your side is not sufficient and that they need to do a better job of clarifying the issues for those middle-ground voters who are not deeply committed and who invariably make the difference on election day.
And that is who matters: People are posting evidence that the "Leave" side of the Brexit vote has already begun pulling back from their promises and predictions, but there would have been little profit in trying to point out the truth to the True Believers anyway.
After all, we've got TB's on one side of things here who sincerely believe you can build a wall across our southern border (leaving aside whether it's a good idea), and TB's on the other side who — having written off Bernie as a sell-out for his call to vote Democratic, avoid national disaster and fix the party later — now sincerely believe that a woman who has never won elective office beyond town meeting, and who, in the last presidential elections, won a whopping one-third of one percent of the popular vote, is going to sweep into the White House on a third-party ticket.
You can't reason with fanatics, but you can reach the people who can be reached. And, having reached them, offer them a ride to the polls on election day.
In the meantime, with a tip of the hat to Alex's Charles Peattie for posting it, here's a pre-vote discussion that, while directed at Brexit, also applies to an issue I've seen in which the appeal of both Sanders and Trump are lumped together.
I hadn't seen the connection, because, while Sanders wants to fix the system, Trump wants to blow up whatever he can't exploit, which seems to put them at opposite ends.
But Mark Blyth, a Scottish ex-pat who now teaches at Brown has the central matter well-pegged and not in a way that should make anyone with half a brain feel terribly comfortable:
Meanwhile, on another issue:
Brexit ought not to obscure That Other Thing we were talking about, and Pat Bagley asks a fair question.
If any armed lunatic who claims to be part of ISIS must be taken seriously, why bend yourself into knots dismissing the purported visions of other delusional maniacs?
Either they are all connected to terrorism or they're all unhinged or you'll have to sort them out by mental state rather than religion.
And that latter would be work, and might have a political cost.
It's the sort of question that we began today's conversation with, because I'm not expecting an answer.
And, although the answer to "Is this a good time to talk about gun control?" is always "No," we're farther down that flow chart, hung up at that point where, if we were prepared to sit down and talk about it fairly and rationally, we wouldn't need to have the conversation in the first place.
And what fun would that be?
We'd rather squabble among ourselves than have to actually dig in and make an effort.
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