CSotD: You don’t say!
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Reply All starts us off with a reflection on personal responsibility, specifically in the area of crying "Bullshit!" when appropriate.
At one end of the scale, we've got the faux-clever people who think everything is bullshit, or, at least, who think calling everything bullshit is clever, and the Internet was made for them.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to them, because I suspect they include a large number of people on the autism scale who genuinely don't get it and aren't able to work through the nuances of social interplay. It's not necessarily "healthy" for them to act on their distorted belief that the world is a hostile, dishonest place, but it's understandable.
I had a young friend who was an Aspie but was quite successful because he'd had early intervention and a lot of counseling and, while it wasn't something he could fully overcome, it was something he could understand, such that he learned not to act in ways that made his life more difficult and to channel his skills into areas in which he could excel.
But between a system in which early intervention is a luxury we don't care to fund and parents who refuse to consider that their kid might need some, his story was rare. Too many of the people in his situation are left to sort it out on their own.
Only now I guess there aren't any more Aspies because Asperger's doesn't exist anymore and we're all just in different places on a continuum, which I think brings us way to the other end of that continuum and to Lizzie's friend who is so averse to conflict and confrontation that she won't even take a stance on whether she wants another cup of coffee.
We don't seem to have a clinical term — even an outdated one — for those folks, perhaps because they don't cause any trouble.
We do offer assertiveness training, but the effectiveness of that depends, I think, on how far down the scale towards total fear of speaking up they are, starting with speaking up to say "I should be more assertive, if it's okay with you."
My young friend observed that it would be nice to have some kind of organization where Aspies could get together but of course their aversion to social interaction is such that nobody would show up.
Pretty sure you could say that of their opposite numbers as well.
Though I'm pretty sure the point of the cartoon is that most people dwell somewhere between those extremes and that being a spineless jellyfish should not be an attractive social position but appears to be an increasingly popular one.
But who's to say?
Somewhere along that continuum are the indecisive characters like the poor fellow in today's Arctic Circle, seeking absolutes in a world that offers few.
Throughout his administration, Obama quoted the saying that "The perfect is the enemy of the good," but for purists, that smacks of compromise and so, unable to reach perfection, they advocate much but do nothing, allowing more pragmatic people to place the marker on the line that runs from ultimate good to consummate evil.
And probably closer to that latter extreme than to the former, because, as another old saying goes, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
And insisting on perfection before doing anything is the moral equivalent of doing nothing.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Though, if I were, I'm sure that President Stein would have said so in her inaugural address.
Meanwhile, Tina's Groove indirectly reflects on one outcome of all this, because, while the gag is simple, the underlying facts are complex.
Deer may not push shopping carts or drive cars, but they certainly have — like skunks, raccoons and coyotes, not to mention our old pal Mus musculus domesticus — shown an ability to adapt to civilization.
Or, at least, an ability to hang around, given that clearing out large tracts of forest gives them better browsing and fewer predators, so that they can spend their lives despoiling vegetable gardens and fruit trees in people's yards before being struck by cars or dying of diseases that wouldn't spread among them if there were fewer of them scattered over a wider, more natural range.
Howsoever, if you'd like to see that naked guy from Arctic Circle summon up his courage and take a firm stance on something, just propose thinning a suburban deer herd to sustainable levels.
Homage of the Week
Dan Piraro obviously doesn't know his own stren'th.
And, yes, I had to look it up, because I wasn't sure if maybe the problem was that he takes a 7 1/2.
While, on a related topic …
The related topic being "silly cultural references," today's Brevity will work for people slightly younger than the Rocky and Bullwinkle crowd.
Dan Thompson is an inveterate punster and the nice thing about a single panel cartoon is that you can drop a stupid pun and just leave it there for the reader, not the other characters in the strip, to react to.
I would note with approval, however, that Thompson also weaves puns seamlessly throughout Rip Haywire and rarely, if ever, feels the need to have anyone react or even acknowledge them.
I suppose it's a dangerous technique. Police Squad failed as a TV show because it had no laugh track but, instead, counted on viewers paying attention and parsing the jokes on their own.
At least, that's what I've heard.
But, really, who's to say?
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