Originally published at: Why Counter-Earth's USA can't have any vaccine requirements | Boing Boing
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Why can’t this post have any comics?
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It shows up in the RSS feed. Something’s going on with the site today, perhaps a problem with the CSS.
For example, this should be a new paragraph with a blank line preceding it.
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I’m standing by, Right Now!
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But WHAT are you standing by?
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Hmmm. I’m not sure this one is communicating the message that it thinks it is. Equating vaccine requirements to shitty laws of the past seems like a bad idea.
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Oh thanks, you found it.
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no comic, but all the pop up ads are loading just fine, thank you!
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Why do Tom’s Dancing Bugs always refuse to show up when you load this (blank) page…?
I’m reading it as, the people who hate vaccine requirements have traditionally loved all those shitty laws of the past.
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Yeah, I get that, but it’s still saying, “Here are these bad things you liked. Vaccine requirements are just like these bad things, so why don’t you like them too?”
It’s a self-defeating argument.
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For most people, they’ll moan and complain, but when you pass the law they’ll take the vaccine. And the further right they are, the more likely they are to take it, because doing what they’re told by authority is kinda their jam.
The libertarians (with which everything is worse) who still refuse are very loud, and neither they, nor the people listening to them, are engaged with anything like a rational argument. It’s all about the feels.
There is no “argument” in any sense which can convince them, except if it’s being made by a tall person in a black robe wielding antique farm tools.
So for those who are responding on the feels (“it feels like he makes a good point”, “I just have a gut feeling there’s something wrong here”), you may as well make your point by highlighting how dumb it makes them look. Don’t bother making a rational argument, get them in the feels.
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Does this do that, though? Putting aside for a moment that the intent of Bolling’s (almost always wonderful, BTW) comics seem to be not so much to persuade these people as to mock them (a mission I wholeheartedly support), what this does is allow them to turn the argument around: “Of course these laws are terrible!” (Because way too many of these types won’t directly admit to being monsters, but instead find ways to rationalize defacto equivalent positions), “and you’ve just admitted your ‘vaccine mandates’ are just as terrible!”
First: They’re not reading Bolling in the first place, so his purpose isn’t to convince them so much as to improve our morale by point out that their objections are stupid.
Second: For a significant proportion of them, there is no rational argument which will change their mind. Trying to find the golden argument which will illuminated them and bring them to the side of reason is an utter waste of time. Talking to them one-on-one has a better chance of working. Deathbed pleas from dying ex-antivaxxers before the final intubation has a better chance of working. A meaningful mandate (you won’t be allowed to go shopping or go to work unless you get the jab, and we are checking, and if the Christian Scientists and the Catholic Church have said that the vaccine’s OK, then you sure as hell don’t get a “religious objection”) has a better chance of working.
A comic strip? That’s not convincing anyone. But it amuses us and makes us feel just a little bit better, and that should be enough.
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Also, if you are going to argue using these points, it’s all about how you present them.
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Yep, I made a similar point in my previous post.
I’m not so sure that’s true. I see too many memes that have a cumulative power of persuasion to be convinced of this.
And that’s fine. But I stand by my observation that the message of the comic is at odds with its spirt. This statement and your position are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I’m not actually sure what we’re arguing about. 
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“I agree with you!”
“Shut up moron, I agree with you!”
“God you’re dense: I am agreeing with you!”
“Look, …”
And so it goes.
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