It should be possible, when evaluating a foreign conflict, to determine that the best course of action is not to intervene. However, in the binary political scheme around the Russia Ukraine war, supporters of Ukraine insist that everyone who is skeptical of Ukraine and its authoritarian regime is de facto a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Why doesn’t the same logic apply to other wars raging around the world?
Zero Sum
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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If you want to read an adult cartoonist, try Jeff Danziger…………whataboutism-free.
I suspect a confluence of events. Mostly long term. All with the same end result: to wear us out and dumb us down.
Information side: the simplification of the mass media, the collapse of the alternative press, the rise of social media, the consolidation of control of all channels of communication larger than a church newsletter by the hyperwealthy? The end result? Fewer long-form discussions, less informed debate due to how you’re now expending all manner of energy dealing with vaccine conspiracy theorists and people who think Kayla’s_Mamma_1977 knows more than trained scientists.
The living side: Affording/raising a child, paying off college, finding/keeping stable employment. All these things have gotten much, much harder (unless you are very rich to begin with). Affordable housing is a joke. Owning a home is well-nigh impossible, especially when you can’t count on your employer not throwing you away to increase quarterly profits to the shareholders.
Between these two sides? You’ve got the democrats and the Republicans playing “good cop, bad cop.” Both want the same thing: you in prison. They just approach it from different angles. Binary polarization is simply the intended consequence and the unavoidable outcome.
Almost all of us are simply too distracted and too worn down to step back and assess. It’s the day of the lunatic. Idiotically simplistic nonsense holds sway. What’s that? Ted’s a lizard person who supports Putin? Of course he is. One of my friends — the one who used to be a guard at the Martian slave colony in the 1970s — saw Ted drinking vodka once at a bar. I mean, if you can’t connect the dots … there are none so blind as those who will not see.