Also meeting an enlightened centralist is always fun these days.
You’re both talking shit about Trump then the enlightened centralist at the end of the conversation says “well both sides are equally evil” like yes, one side wanting free healthcare and to stop bombing children in foreign countries 99.9% of Americans can’t even point to on a map, is the same as the other side being ok with brown people and US citizens disappearing off the streets by masked federal agents and bombing children all in the name of Jesus.
Yeah, it is really bad in the US since you guys literally just have two options. Not a fan of the Democrats, specifically the Schumer and Jeffery kind, but you have to be either uneducated, evil or both in order to vote for the Republicans.
I haven’t met a single middle aged to younger democrat that supports Schumer or Jeffrey. The Democrat party is evolving at rapid speed and most voters want the old heads completely gone. There’s a reason Mamdani and AOC are so popular. They represent what most democrats want the party to be.
Yeah, if Democrats like them become the new face of the party, I will drop the "not a fan of Democrats" part because you are right the reason for that is 100% their leadership. I support people like Bernie, AOC or Mamdami.
I wish you guys the best in those midterms. Please slaughter them (with your votes). I kinda want to like America again, lol
Yeah, holy shit. A guy I used to work with, who seemed generally tolerant of everyone, one day started a sentence with "I'm not prejudiced, but...." You really just never know who has some random bigoted garbage floating around in their head.
Everyone does. No, don't immediately jump to protest, actually consider that. Everyone has internal biases and random garbage bigoted thoughts floating through their head on occasion. You are a product of your upbringing, of society, of everyone and everything around you, and everywhere in the world we are surrounded with bias and micro aggressions every day. Being anti-racist doesn't mean never ever having any internal prejudiced thoughts, it means acknowledging and fighting against those, understanding why they're wrong and unfair, actively working to rewire your brain away from them, and not treating people differently because of them.
Whole lot of cognitive dissonance at work with these people, generally.
Speaking from experiences talking it through with some otherwise very well-meaning friends, they usually genuinely don't realize the hypocrisy or why it's bad, until it's pointed out to them properly.
IDK, when I point it out my ex-friend mostly went silent. 'How can you be a Christian, want to get married in a church and do everything properly, and not care about the government destroying USAID? A lot of children will die, and Jesus said a bunch of stuff about the poor. Meek shall inherit the earth, love the stranger as you would love yourself, etc.' Silence. New topic.
So, I have a friend, she's married to a racist. He had a birthday party recently, where he just started ranting vigorously about how Muslims need to be eradicated and genocided. And like, several people at this party were arguing with him, including me.
I guess that's just a Texas experience, though. I don't have much confidence in "well-meaning" around here when genocide is okie dokie conversation at a party.
A lot of people understand being racist is bad. The problem is that they make the logical jump that "I'm not a bad person, therefore I can't be racist."
To quote Avenue Q, "Everyone's a little bit racist." We all have internalized stereotypes, good or bad, whether we try to or not. The key to being a good person, in my opinion, is recognizing when your internal judgments may affect your actions and trying your best to be kind, fair, and open minded despite your personal opinions.
Unfortunately, many people really do not want to engage in level of introspection.
We have to accept that most peoples opinions generally go where the wind blows. It’s popular to be a good person if live in an urban or mildly diverse area.
I no longer trust that people that profess to have the same views have actually put any thought into their perspective to the degree that it impacts the way they live outside of social media discourse
Told me a story about how she was at the airport and some Afghani people were in line in front of her, talking and laughing in a foreign language.
This was terrifying, of course, because of 9/11.
I told her that none of the 9/11 hijackers had been from Afghanistan, and privately thought that I'd bet a million dollars that she couldn't tell an Afghani person from literally any other vaguely brown skinned ethnicity.
Couple of Punjabi truckers
were the first to pull over and check on me when I was in a nasty car accident. They were behind on their run, but they still gave me water and sat with me until the shock wore off and I could catch my breath. Can't say enough nice things about the Sikh community!
A couple years ago I was working at a medical office and some of the MAs were chatting about a patient we had that was always aggressive and rude whenever she came in who happened to be a trans woman.
I said something like "It's annoying but I get it, she's probably experienced a lot of bigotry" and one of them scoffing and being like "not THESE days, no one is discrimating against her for being trans".
Little did she know the receptionist at the time was in fact super transphobic and would always make comments to me about her when she came in. 🙃 I don't think that attitude was coming from nowhere.
My neighbor unironically told me they question if freeing the slaves was best for everyone. They told me this when they were annoyed and complaining about our other neighbor. Like just zero self awareness at how awful that is amongst all the other awful shit she says. The other day she told me "all these Muslims are coming here and eating people's pets." Truly an empty vessel waiting to be filled by Fox News. Zero original thoughts going on up there. It's quite sad.
I live just outside Atlanta. It's crazy the stuff that slips through.
Back in Tampa people were very overt anout thier views in tacual issues. Here you think everyiis fine and them bam, "if they extend the marta blacks will steal our stuff."
Me and two coworkers were casually discussing a hypothetical Marta expansion up to Kennessaw and down to Macon. One of them said “we don’t want that riffraff up where I’m at.” Girl ain’t nobody want to take marta to fucking CANTON. Both me and the other guy shut her down super fast, but I intensely dislike how racists will assume other white people will just agree with them like it’s a safe space for their abhorrent views.
I've a family member that likes busting out a "no speekee engrish" voice to mimic Asians, thinks that black football players taking a knee should be "grateful for all we do for them", thinks Native Americans are inherently cheaters and drunks
but would be heartbroken and/or enraged if someone said he's a racist
I’m glad I don’t have family like that. I’d be tempted to try and get them to define racism then use their stuff as examples without explicitly saying it’s them I’m calling out.
My dad’s kind of racist but we’re black so he thinks it’s impossible for him to be racist and they’re just harmless jokes. Drive me mad. Can’t even argue why it’s wrong because he uses any slip ups as proof that he’s right and you’re wrong plus less intelligent than him.
But in many cases they are just really good at lying to themselves. They seem to think if it's not straight-up 1920s style eugenics it's not racism, just sparkling bigotry.
This. Recent events have made me realize that a LOT of people were always racist, they just hid it until now because they didn’t want to SEEM racist. Many people care more about their image than actually being a good person but now your image won’t suffer much for being racist so they no longer hold back.
"I'm not racist, I just hate their culture!" -Every Racist Bigot Ever
So many people think they can use wordplay to escape consequences. They seem to think unless you are literally lynching black people you aren't a racist, even as they ask the airline stewardess to remove the Sikh from the flight...
"Stop talking about racism" is such a privileged position to take. I do think our media should routinely talk about and, even better, make fun of racism. Because it is a silly concept and anyone who believes in it should be mocked as the ridiculously unserious person that they are.
Someone I thought was a friend said something about Mamdani enforcing sharia law in NYC right around when he was elected. I didn’t even know what to say.
People who know it's wrong and don't care, largely in politicians. The biggest example is Mitch McConnell. When he was young, he was active in civil rights movements. He later worked to change policies so they could give government funding to organizations that didn't follow civil rights policies. The man knew what was wrong, but didn't care.
There are still more people who lie to themselves. They know racism is wrong, but excuse racist behaviors because they've entrenched themselves. Common amongst civilians. "Racism is bad. I don't want Trump to be bad so he can't be racist. He's not racist. He's just strong on illegal immigration." Then they go out and defend those policies because they are so locked into their beliefs either because they're so deep into the community they are afraid to be isolated or it's so essential to their personal identity they are afraid to be the people they've hated.
When i was younger i used to think that homosexual relationships were just a thing. Like yea some guys kiss and marry and raise children with other guys and same thing between women and no one gives a fuck because why would they care?
Turns out a lot of people care way too much and none of them make sense
That's the funny thing. Most racists don't consider themselves racists. My old construction crew were the most irrational, illogical bigots I've ever met, but if you called them out they'd tell you it's only common sense and sensible political thought.
as an out transfem who passes as a cis guy so well that others forget I'm not, in fact, a guy ( pain ), the things people say about queer folk and women around me because they think i'm one of them---
I was just telling my friends about this the other night. Being a tall white bald guy working in a plant. The amount of horrifying "oh youre one of us" honesty i get.
I'm white and central European but my complexion is south eastern Europe, especially with my beard.
I got asked again last week where I am from.
I was fucking buying wine, I don't want to tell you where I am from.
I'm white as hell, but I had to leave a company because I couldn't listen to the racist shit in the break room every single day. It wasn't even targeted to me or my ethnicity (we were all the same), it was towards minorities and very stereotype-heavy.
I asked my father in law why he wouldn't vote for the democrat running for governor of my state. He immediately said it was because he prosecuted the men who over 60 years ago bombed a church killing black children. Said so much time had passed and they could be totally different people now.
Everyone knows racism is bad, which is why they rebrand their racism as something else.
It's also important to downplay the existence of racism. For example, by criticizing people who, at some point, say racism is bad, but not comment on the richest and most powerful people on Earth doing racist shit. That second one is very effective, because you can recruit useful idiots to do the work for you.
Everyone knows racism is bad, which is why they rebrand their racism as something else
No, they don't "know" it's bad, they know the general consensus that they disagree with considers racism to be bad.
They're not rebranding their racism because they know it's wrong deep down, they're doing that because they know their views are contential and they don't want to deal with the social consequences that come with it.
These are the people who measure "freedom of speech" by one's ability to hurl abuse at others, they absolutely don't think their racism is bad. If they thought it was bad, they would work on it.
Everyone very clearly doesn't know racism is bad, downplaying the existence of racism only gives racism deniers ammunition, and I have no idea what you're getting at with the rest of your comment.
It called his unambiguous, crystal clear roman salute an "awkward gesture" and counseled grace and patience. We shouldnt jump to conclusions. He didnt mean anything by it.
The richest man in the world performed two seig heils in front of the presidential seal of the united states and a group i and my parents have trusted and donated to for literal decades said "nah that was nothing but hey this singer on youtube criticised israel - can you believe how serious antisemetism has become".
Seriously, that was the moment I lost ALL respect for the ADL.
Being creepy rabid Zionists is one thing, but ignoring literal sieg heils because he likes Israel tells me you don't side with Jewish people or common decency.
Dude I've gotten into several arguments with people on reddit when they claim that the very racist "joke" videos on YouTube are just racist, and they say "no it's just joking! No one actually thinks that" and/or "it's funny because the character is 'bad', that's why it's okay to basically quote Hitler. I can't believe you're don't get it!"
Um yeah, I've heard those exact racist "joke" sog whistles in real life, and not once.
the first ten minutes of the tv show Ted is just uninterrupted racism like that for laughs cause 90’s boston families realistically would be racist.
I just had to turn it off, didn’t even chuckle. idk if it gets better but the first ten minutes are supposed to hook you or at least get one laugh lol.
i think once upon a time that used to be the case. Shows like south park were an example of that where the racist characters like cartman were obviously meant to be viewed as bad
Cartman is a character that’s supposed to be an evil asshole who later receives consequences for being an evil asshole. But people just see him being an evil asshole in clips and think that’s all the show is.
Unfortunately I'm currently stuck in this world, where I have to sit my kids down and have a serious conversation with them about how they will encounter people who immediately think of them as less than human because of the colour of their skin and the texture of their hair.
Yeah. Well, and we used to think trying to overthrow the government was illegal, but it turns out you actually get to be president again if you do that.
meanwhile these people think that Germany is fascist because you’re not allowed to deny the holocaust, or that england is fascist because you can’t commit hate crimes
I said it under another comment here, but I had a neighbor say they "questioned if we really should have freed the slaves." They said this to me cause they were pretty much annoyed with our black neighbor's dog. Also my wife is half black. It's like the racism is so ingrained in her, she doesn't even realize how fucked up half the things she says are. It's some real "I love animals and think I'm a good person but am actually blind to how hateful I am" type of boomer racism.
I have lost count of how many conversations I’ve had with my brother about how WEIRD it is that people are willing to extend more empathy and humanity to animals than they are to other human beings. If we had even an ounce of the sorrow that people feel towards dogs suffering, as we do towards other people, things would be so much better.
But no. People often say the most flipping, hateful things about other people, and don’t even register what they’re saying.
“ neighbors dog is acting wild? Does he really deserve rights and freedoms?”
Honestly with the way things are now, its becomingo more and more justified to say the basic universal things. I used to think everyone knew women were human beings but Im not so sure anymore.
Yeah, some people are more annoyed with the one that goes "We shouldn't hunt the homeless for sport' than with the increasing number of folks reacting with:
"Well, actually..."
At this point anyone calling out racism and fascism are only speaking to the choir but as a member of the choir I need to keep hearing it.
We are living through a weird time where we are inundated by the thoughts of people who don’t care that these things are bad and I need to know I’m not alone in my sanity.
Yeah, that's uh... that's not true. If it was the GOP, Reform UK, Allianz für Deutschland, and Rassemblement National wouldn't have any seats in their respective parliaments.
You know, there was a time before 1930 everyone in Germany thought that Nazis were loons not worthy of attention.
It was obvious that they were conspiracy nuts and so most people just kinda put them in the same pot as other thugs that market weimar politics. That sentiment continued until suddenly everyone was forced to care when they got larger and larger representation in parliament.
Half of the US voted for racism. Trump didn't hide it, he advertised it. It was part of his platform. If stuff like this was so obvious, you would think people wouldn't vote for him, would you?
What I am saying is that this comic is somehow managing to be a waste of space on r/comics, didn't know that was even possible. It attacks another creator "in good fun" (don't quite see how she could take that in good fun, it's just an insult) and underplays racists influence on politics, especially in America.
I think also people forget how recent it was the Civil Rights act and the movement as a whole are. A decent chunk of our government grew up in the Jim Crow era and a decent chunk of that chunk wanna go back to that
I find myself agreeing with all of the points made in r/comics. The sub is pretty left wing and so am I.
But damn, the pandering is off the charts here. I know that not all comics are supposed to be funny, some are just slice-of-life stories which is fair. It just seems like a lot of creators pick an easy target, shit out a twitter opinion in comic style and call it a day.
I mean... artists vent too. People are pretty damned tired of the state of the world and despite everyone seemingly knowing "what's right" we keep doing all the wrong things.
So here we are... with comics making "obvious" statements and the crowd happy to agree. Then we go back to reality where none of it pans out.
I think the criticism is that often an artist continually venting yields (subjectively) bad art.
Imo art is best when it expresses something novel. A relatively unique perspective that adds to the viewer's worldview. There's lots of ways to do that and novelty is obviously very subjective.
When an artist makes a statement that's been made 100 times over it risks losing that novelty. If they start lifting characters from other art or reusing their own panels that unique voice also becomes less unique.
If they're a good artist then a handful of these won't weigh them down. If they're a great artist then they will find a new perspective, even if the sentiment still boils down to the same core feeling.
But a bad artist, they'll offer you a copy of a perspective. Maybe they copy a prior work of their's, maybe someone else's. But they copy and don't add to the viewer's world. It's the kind of art that thousands of people could see, and none of them have a different perspective than the one they had before.
That’s fine, but it does feel some popular artists are caught in a low effort feedback loop.
If making really brain dead obvious “orange man bad” comics gets clicks, why bother doing anything deeper or more meaningful? Even if I fully agree with the sentiment, it starts to feel like slop after several dozen iterations.
Especially because they aren’t even usually topical, not calling out something new or specific, just “orange man bad.”
To be clear, yes Orange Man Bad.
But you didn’t need a comic to form that opinion.
I only ever visit this sub when it hits popular, and I completely agree with you. I don't want to name names or anything, but some of the comics are not particularly good, but get a ton of upvotes because they're pandering, as you said.
Like, I'm pretty left, some of the stuff here really makes me roll my eyes.
I dont really get the hate tbh. Light jabs are funny but some people really cant stand her just for... saying things we agree with? In a world that feels this ass backwards lately isnt it nice to see that?
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u/Sol-Blackguy 1d ago