Listening to each other at election-time: a one-page comic

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/07/listening-to-each-other-at-ele.html

3 Likes

I like the sentiment, I do, but surely I’m not alone in thinking that the flow here is a mess…?

10 Likes

I alone can fix that.

9 Likes

Auden:
September 1, 1939

Today especially I think he deserves re-reading.

1 Like

Oh that reminds me: Unflattening is in my to read pile.

When my new glasses arrive I’ll crack it open.

Stick that in your Libertarian pipe and smoke it!

1 Like

He’s right, you know.

And it was accepted as a dissertation. Fuck that noise, man.
Some people have to work their asses off writing a 60k word, printed ziggurat full of endless minutiae to get the same thing.

Either his degree is written on toilet paper or there’s a message I’m missing.

1 Like

What’s the point in listening to people when 90% of what they say is aped talking points from campaign directors/cable news/party disinformation/social media clickbait? Surely it would be a more effective imperative to implore people to read/think/analyze more?

3 Likes

When you have to turn to your party’s platform before stating what you believe, there’s a problem. And I think a lot of people have ended up doing exactly that.

4 Likes

This sort of “we’re not so different, really” sentiment is rose-tinted at the best of times; in the present circumstances, I’m afraid it seems tone-deaf to the point of insulting. It sounds a lot like “if you were as wise and beatific as me, you’d be trying to find common ground with this surge of ugly fascism, rather than resisting it”.

In fact, the whole thing is anchored around the warm fuzzy feelings I’m supposed to feel for the word “we”, i.e. the pronoun of totalitarianism. Is this just oblique propaganda for Trump?

4 Likes

Eight years ago, I would have bought into this. I will never fault someone for their optimism, and clearly his heart is in the right place.

It is hard to see how any amount of listening is going to result in finding common ground though. It means falling back on compromise to move forward, but let us face it - there is one side that has been doing all the compromising recently, and it does not use white nationalist memes or spray tans.

It is more than understandable that minorities and women are done with trying to listen.

5 Likes

Also, the Tea Party (actual event, not movement) was about a lot of things, including taxes. So that illustration is a gross oversimplification.

2 Likes

@Blaze_Curry:
And it was accepted as a dissertation. Fuck that noise, man.
Some people have to work their asses off writing a 60k word, printed ziggurat full of endless minutiae to get the same thing.

This is a separate work from his dissertation. See http://boingboing.net/2015/06/21/doctoral-dissertation-in-graph.html for a sample from the dissertation.

1 Like

The message is to go back to the source material before dismissing it based on a small extract.

1 Like

“Listening to each other” is strictly forbidden by one side; it would be a “compromise” they are unwilling to make.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.