Doonesbury - 04.02.2007

Last Fall, the Democrats won an surprising number of open seats in Congress, the Senate, and Governorships across the country. Most of the candidate’s platform was nothing more than “I’m not a Republican”. When prodded to give some sort of ideas, most talked about how the war was a terrible idea (from those darned Republicans), and that we needed to get out of Iraq. They rarely gave any actual plan to get us out, but America apparently thought they would do something right, because they voted them into power.

Fast forward several months. For the most part, the Democrats have done what one could have easily predicted: Nothing. Just because they said they would do something about the war while they were campaigning doesn’t mean they were actually going to do anything about it when it came down to it. It seems that now, a few Democrats are actually going to try something. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has proposed a bill that would cut off funding for the Iraq war next year, effectively forcing the military to pull the troops out of Iraq.

As one would expect, the Republicans are rebutting this plan by using clever soundbytes like “They’re voting against the troops and against our country.” Dick Cheney had this one - “It’s time the self-appointed strategists on Capitol Hill understood a very simple concept: You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy you’re going to quit.”

This is where the suttle politics comes in though. Obviously, by cutting off funding and pulling out the troops, the US will essentially be forfieting the war. Dick Cheney is trying to stress this, because the Democrats don’t want it to seem like they will be causing the US to lose the war. They want to end the war, and then blame the Republicans for losing the war in the 2008 elections.

The timing of this is no coincidence. This gives a lot of good soundbytes for the Democrats in early campaigning, and it will all be over by the time the 2008 election is in full swing. At that point, the apathetic American public will have forgotten everything about the war other than “we lost”, and the Democrats can sweep to victory.

So anyway, there isn’t much of a point to this post other than to point out once again that “it’s all politics”. Nothing being done here by liberals or conservatives is truly to benefit the American public - just to benefit the politicians.

Doonesbury - 1.14.2007

This is a funny Doonesbury today, but there are a few things that I take some issue with, especially in the 5th panel.

My primary beef is with the idea that “both” sides of an issue should be respected. It’s very popular lately to act as though every issue (scientific or otherwise) has two sides: a “conservative” side and a “liberal” side, a “right” side and a “wrong” side, a “bad” side and a “good” side. Some may say I’m reading too much into this, but I really don’t think I am. The idea that complex issues (like many of those named in panels six and seven) have only two sides is a very “political” way of viewing it, and a very incorrect way of looking at things.

This type of thinking often simplifies complex issues into two specific sides, both of which often have major flaws. Worst of all, it keeps people from actually thinking critically about an issue, allowing them to blindly go along with one “side”, usually dependent on their political leaning.

It’s ironic that the 3rd panel of this comic shows the student claiming that the evidence doesn’t line up with his beliefs. Dividing issues into two sides makes it easy to ignore all evidence that doesn’t support your claim, and is a primary reason for the huge drop in support for the war in Iraq over the past four years. Major evidence against the presence of WMDs existed in 2002 and 2003, and most truly objective analysts predicted at least five years of US occupation, but in the hysteria and desire for revenge left over from 9/11, most decided to ignore any evidence that went against their predetermined belief that Iraq was supporting terrorists and should be invaded.

The entire issue was neatly divided into two sides by the American public:

• Those who were against terrorists and loved America
• The “No Blood for Oil” crowd who hated George Bush and America and think the war is only about money.

With these being the two perceived “sides”, it’s no wonder that most of America fell into the first category. Now, four years later, everyone absolves themselves of blame because “they were lied to”. This is true to an extent, but the information we have now was available then. It’s very easy to blame someone else for misleading you, but anyone who bothered to look past the headlines would have seen huge amounts of evidence that there were no WMDs, obvious reasons to believe that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein would never work together for any reason, and easily predictable outcomes that would surely come from this type of military action.

I’ve gone off on sort of a tangent here, so I’ll digress. I may seem a little overly passionate about something that seems trivial, but I really think that a lot of the ridiculousness in American government today stems from every issue being divided into two sides, relieving everyone of the need to think critically about anything. A large percentage of people just pick the side that their favorite politician/radio personality/best friend supports, and in the end, we all end up fighting over trivial issues while the important issues go completely unnoticed. If I was more of a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the politicians are causing this to happen on purpose, but unfortunately, I think we’re just doing it to ourselves.

I’ve written far more than I set out to write and covered far more topics that I intended, so I’ll end this post here. Please write comments, and let’s discuss.