• next update: ...around 8/17.......?

Cartoonist's Commentary (07/19/2025)

I’m a strong believer that the best comedy is pinpoint accurate. That the best comedy, no matter how absurd, helps clarify the world and our feelings, and helps us find catharsis. But this comic, created the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, is not accurate.

I mean, okay, it's accurate in that, in 2016, just about everybody agreed that the two U.S. Presidential Candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, SUCKED. That's what I was trying to say at the time. But the problem with this comic is that NOBODY thought that they both sucked equally! Most liberals (like myself) didn't like Clinton, but we thought that she'd do a VASTLY better job than Trump. And most conservatives didn't like Trump, but thought that he'd do a VASTLY better job than Clinton. That's not a "Sophie's Choice". "Sophie's Choice" refers to a choice with options that are EQUALLY horiffic. This is more akin to a choice between a snowball to the face and an asteroid hitting the Earth, with everbody arguing about which ball is the snowball or the asteroid. This is not a pinpoint accurate comic! It does not reflect my opinion, or anyone else's opinion, or even objective reality. It is... a bad comic.

Even worse, this comic's presentation of Clinton and Trump being equally bad hasn't held up. In 2016, Donald Trump was a frequently bankrupt businessman with a reputation for stiffing his staff and selling fraudulant products. Yes, he was openly bigotted and he had an admiration of foreign strongmen, but most didn't think that he'd be able to cause too much harm. But, as I type this now in 2025, as President Trump has two concentration camps, as immigrants and citizens are abducted by masked men and held without due process, as the legislative and judicial branches give more of their authority to the should-be-equal executive branch, and as unpredictable tarriffs destabilize the economy... yeah, a comic that suggests that an overly qualified institutionalist would be just as bad as this fascist does NOT communicate what I was trying to express!

So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to say: I'm sorry for the miscommunication.

Be safe.
--Alt Cetera