CSotD: Beefing up the choir
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I'm certain there isn't much that can be said to change the minds of Trump voters. Tom Toles notes the repeated lowering of the bar and yet Trump fans continue to not only defend him but to act as if there is nothing to defend.
The latest, most astonishing argument to be advanced in social media is that the popularity of the soft-core novel, "50 Shades of Gray," shows that women actually enjoy being sexually assaulted.
If you've managed to avoid seeing it, congratulations, but rest assured, I am not making it up. (Rebuttals to the meme are fast: People point out that, in the book, the woman not only consents but signs a contract spelling out the terms. Nobody reads rebuttals.)
I'm sure Trump fans are equally unphased by his proposal to jail Clinton for the acts that have been endlessly examined and for which she has repeatedly been found not liable. This is the way the world ends, after all, and it was Snowball's fault that the windmill collapsed.
However, much as the good sheep may switch from "Four legs good, Two legs bad" to "Four legs good, two legs better" without question, and little good as it may do to post rebuttals under their mindless on-line memes, there is some pushback happening, and it's not entirely futile.
Tom The Dancing Bug mocks the sanctity of the "locker room banter" excuse, though, given both the places the cartoon is likely to appear and the subtlety of satire in general, this definitely qualifies as preaching to the choir, because Trump's loyalists will neither see it nor, if they do, get the point.
However, they may see some of the denunciations from athletes that are starting to appear, in which the idea of this kind of talk being "normal" is refuted by manly men who have spent large portions of their lives in locker rooms.
It's more important, however, that other people see these arguments, people who are not fully committed to the Trumpian vision of a hostile, frightening world. It matters that, when the sheep change their chant, that others at the farm say, "That isn't how it went!"
The issue at the moment is not the people who agree with Trump, who are so enraptured with the certainty of the well-ordered world that he promises that they will turn a blind eye to all arguments about his honesty, his morality and the practical outcomes of his fantasy solutions.
If challenging Trump with cartoons like this constitutes "preaching to the choir," let's extend that metaphor: There are those who are in church to sing and there are those who will never sing in church, but there are a lot of people who, if encouraged, will join in, however quietly and uncertainly.
They're not, for the most part, truly "undecided" about Trump or Clinton, though I will say I'm mystified that there are still those who think claiming "they're both the same" is a mark of intelligence.
Rather, they are undecided about getting involved, about voting at all, and I think the challenge, for those who want to avoid a Trump presidency (and a Trump Supreme Court) is to get those people into the polling booths.
To that extent, Trump's excesses may be Clinton's best tool, though I like Jen Sorensen's response to the final debate question.
There are any number of stories floating around on Google News about how much everyone loved Karl Becker for his kindly question at the end of the debate which was, as I recall, "Can you please reassure us that none of this really matters?"
Or possibly he phrased it in the way Sorensen has it here.
In any case, he exemplifies the (potential) voter who doesn't care if two legs or four legs are better, has no memory of why the animals drove out Farmer Jones in the first place, has no idea why the windmill collapsed, can't remember where Boxer went or why and doesn't know who those men are who are meeting with the pigs in the farmhouse.
A generation ago, he responded to "Morning in America" because he just wants everyone to make nice-nice.
He is, at the moment, the key to this election.
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