Chris Gavaler's Blog, page 27

Retrospective: Selections from My Trump-Era Comics, Cartoons, Memes, and Digital Art, 2016-2019

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Why I (Still) Don’t Like Trump

I wrote this back in June 2019, in response to a question asked by a conservative member of the Rockbridge Civil Discourse Society. Another conservative member later laughed at me for taking the question seriously, but at the time I thought trying to have meaningful conversations across the partisan divide was worth a great deal of effort. I’m now questioning whether it’s ever possible, and I’m certain that the existence of Donald Trump makes it essentially impossible–at least not while he’s tweeting from the White House and millionaire pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity continue to cash in on their viewer-financed misinfotainment brands at Fox News.

But this was my sincere attempt at a thoughtful response, and reading it sixteen months later, I’m not changing a single word:

I didn’t like Trump before I didn’t like Trump.

Before he was a politician, I knew Donald Trump only as one of those self-fulfilling celebrities famous for being famous. I never watched an episode of The Apprentice, but everyone knew the one-man promotional brand playing himself on TV. I categorized him in my head with Hulk Hogan. Saying I didn’t like him is misleading. He was no more real or relevant to me than Paris Hilton or a Kardashian. Except his caricature was even less savory. A serial adulterer marrying absurdly younger trophy wives while flaunting his comic wealth. None of this has anything to do with politics.  It never occurred to me to wonder what political party he might belong to because political parties involve groups of people banding together to pursue common goals. The goal of Trump was exclusively Trump. This was before 2014—before I knew he was running for office. At first I didn’t believe it, not really. It had to be another gimmick product, Trump Wine, Trump University, Trump for President, one more way to expand his business brand, pump up his ratings with more outrageous showmanship. It didn’t occur to me that he could win a primary let alone a nomination. It didn’t occur to me that someone, anyone, could view him as anything but a pop cultural personification of ostentatious greed, because I sincerely understood him to be that and only that.

Trump says things that aren’t true.

Some people call that lying. Others say he’s only using exaggerations—or just savvy business practice. Whatever you call it, Donald Trump knowingly and wantonly makes statements that are not true. He also knowingly and wantonly makes statements that are true. The accuracy of his statements is irrelevant. He says whatever is most useful to him. His 1987 memoir ghost-writer called it “truthful hyperbole,” a way of playing “to people’s fantasies,” “a very effective form of promotion.” Admittedly, an indifference to truth sounds useful in a cutthroat business environment, and as long as Trump remained in that environment, his exaggerations, lies, and hyperboles were no concern to me. Then he became a politician, a profession known for its own brand of mistruths. But Trump is different. Look at all the presidential nominees of my adult life: Mondale, Reagan, Dukakis, Bush, Clinton, Dole, Gore, Bush, Kerry, Obama, McCain, Romney, Clinton—all of them were constrained within a similar range of allowable spin. I’m not arguing any are better, more honest people. If they could have gotten away with Trump’s level of mistruth, they probably would have. But his go unpunished. Maybe it’s his business savvy, his ability to sell anything, but its application to U.S. politics deeply disturbs me. Again, this has nothing to do with political parties. If Donald Trump had run as a Democrat, he would be the same democracy-gaming salesman appealing to a slightly different set of voters with a slightly different set of self-promotional hyperboles.

Trump says things that offend me.

I’m not going to say Donald Trump is a racist. Conservatives tend to define that term as a necessarily conscious belief, that only a white person who actively believes he is superior to non-whites can commit racist acts. I don’t know if that describes Trump or not. I suspect when he refers to Central Americans as rapists, murders, etc., he is not expressing deeply held personal convictions but politically useful hyperboles of the kind discussed above. That doesn’t make it any less offensive to me. I also don’t know if he ever committed sexual assault, but I know he bragged that he did. Some defended his words as “locker room talk,” that it’s normal and therefore okay for men in the privacy of other men while unaware of being recorded to brag about assaulting women. I never have, and I have never heard any male friend or acquaintance of mine brag about assault either. Maybe I’m the wrong kind of man. Maybe Trump is no different from all our other white male presidents, saying out loud what the rest privately thought and privately committed. If so, then they all offend me equally. Again, this has nothing to do with political parties. No one who brags about sexual assault and expresses offensive stereotypes about ethnic groups should be electable, and I’m offended that Donald Trump got elected anyway.

Trump thrives on the political divide.

It never even occurred to me that he would keep using Twitter after the election. It never occurred to me that he would continue to attack and mock his political opponents at literally a daily rate. Maybe I’m just old. I remember when George Bush’s campaign rhetoric went into panic mode a week before the 1992 election. He said, “My dog Millie knows more about foreign policy than these two bozos.” He nicknamed Al Gore “Ozone Man” because “we’ll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American.” Those sound like presidential tweets now, and during a Trump presidency, it’s always a week before the election. I’m not suggesting Trump created the political divide. Exactly the opposite. He got elected because the divide was already so extreme, and he is the perfect salesman to thrive in that political marketplace. And even this isn’t about political parties. I want a president—preferably a progressive one—who tries to bridge differences, not focus exclusively on his base by stoking their outrage in an endless get-out-the-vote campaign.

I don’t like his politics.

Now, finally, this is about political parties. I’m a Democrat. Democratic candidates more often reflect a larger number of my political preferences than Republican candidates. That’s an absurd understatement. I have never seen a Republican candidate who came even close—though McCain during the 2000 primaries did make me sit down and really look at his plank-by-plank platform. I long for that.  Still, if Romney had been elected in 2012, or McCain in 2008, or Dole in 1996, I wouldn’t have responded to their presidencies in any way like I’ve responded to Donald Trump’s. When Bush was reelected in 2004 and elected in 2000, and when his father was elected in 1988, and Reagan in 1984, I had voted against them but accepted the outcomes with disappointment and only disappointment. November 2016 was nothing like that. I felt personally betrayed. I felt that the norms of decency had either been overturned or revealed to have never existed. Even when Clinton’s polls dropped three points after the release of the Comey letter in the last days of October, it still never seriously occurred to me that Donald Trump—a man who to me represented misogyny, bigotry, narcissism, and greed—could be elected. Clearly, I was wrong. But I maintain that it is not possible for anyone to have voted for Donald Trump if they understand Donald Trump to be the person I understand him to be.

And maybe I’m wrong about that too.  Maybe my impressions of him from the 80s and 90s and early 2000s unfairly biased and blinded me to his real character on the campaign trail. Maybe I have an idealized, antiquated notion of proper politics and my disappointment isn’t against Trump’s divisive style but the political arena that makes it effective. Maybe most or all white men who rise to power are at least latently prejudiced and abusive, and Trump has merely revealed that fact. Maybe it’s okay to use mistruths when it’s for a cause you and your followers deeply believe in. It’s also possible that my dislike for Donald Trump is really motivated by political preference, and that if a Democrat with the same traits had risen to power I would have accepted his shortcomings and supported his agenda. I hope not. But I fear it is possible. It’s also one of the things I most dislike about Donald Trump. He’s motivated a lot of good people to embrace a lot of very bad things.

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Predicting the Next President (the final 2020 installment)

Have you heard the argument that eliminating the Electoral College would undermine democracy because then only a handful of states would matter in presidential elections? That’s the status quo. As far as the Biden and Trump campaigns are concerned, the U.S. consists of ten states, AKA “battlegrounds”:

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A couple of times in the last year or so Minnesota has joined that list, but it’s not currently in play. Apparently, Michigan and Wisconsin aren’t either, since all election forecasters predict Biden will win both. No battlegrounds are unanimously predicted for Trump.

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Stacking the forecasts from smallest Biden lead to largest Biden lead reveals how each battleground state factors.

Biden 259

FORECASTER: Polls as of October 20.

New polls are released essentially every day, and so the conglomerate numbers are in constant flux. Placing states with Biden or Trump leads under 5% as toss-ups, on Tuesday October 20, two weeks before Election Day, the state polls put Biden at 259.

If Biden wins Michigan and Wisconsin, but loses both Pennsylvania’s twenty electors and Arizona’s eleven electors, he’s at only 259. To win the election he’d need to pick-up one more toss-up: Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, or Ohio. Iowa’s six electors wouldn’t be enough. For Trump to win, he would need to sweep them all but Iowa.

Biden WINS with 279

FORECASTER: Politico, Polls as of October 26.

If Biden wins either Pennsylvania or Arizona, he wins. Arizona would pull him up to exactly the magic 270 (assuming he also wins the one elector from Maine’s second district), and Pennsylvania would put him over at 279.

As of today, Monday October 26, eight days before the Election, the polls would put Biden at 279 by including Pennsylvania. All of the other battleground states remain in the toss-up column’s margin of error.

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Politico predicts Pennsylvania for Biden too, leaving Arizona in the toss-ups and shifting Georgia and Texas to the Trump column.

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Biden WINS with 290

FORECASTER: Crystal Ball, Cook Political Report, CNN, NPR, U.S. News.

If Biden wins BOTH Pennsylvania and Arizona, he wins in the Electoral College by a margin of twenty. Four of those five maps feature five toss-up states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa. U.S. News gives Iowa and Georgia to Trump, and all give him Texas too.

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Biden WINS with 319

FORECASTER: Inside Elections.

Biden wins not only Pennsylvania and Arizona, but also Florida, leaving four toss-up states: Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa. And Texas goes to Trump.

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Biden WINS with 323

FORECASTER: The Economist.

A week ago The Economist agreed with Inside Election’s count, but they’ve since moved North Carolina to Biden and Arizona to toss-up. They also give Ohio to Trump.

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Biden WINS with 334

FORECASTER: Decision Desk, PredictIt Market Probabilities, FiveThirtyEight.

Biden wins Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. Two of these forecasts leave Georgia, Ohio, and Iowa in the toss-ups. PredictIt, which is based on actual betting where there is no such thing as a toss-up, gives all three to Trump, though by the smallest margin range possible. All give Texas to Trump.

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Biden WINS with 335

FORECASTER: JHK Forecasts, Princeton Election Consortium.

Sorry, did I forget Maine? There’s one swing vote in Maine’s second district. That’s how Biden might pick up on additional elector. Both JHK and Princeton leave Georgia and Iowa in the toss-ups, but JHK predicts Ohio will go to Trump. And Princeton is the only forecaster placing Texas in the toss-ups.

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So the two most popular predictions are Biden at 290 and Biden at 234/235, each with five forecasters.

Combining them all, using Biden’s worst-case scenario and Trump’s best-case scenario, leaves four states in the unknowns but leading toward Biden: 

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A majority of the forecasters predict Biden will win one, two, three, or all four of the middle column. No forecaster predicts Trump will win any of them, and Trump needs to win all of them to win the election. Biden needs to win any and only one. 

Here are the currents polls (according to FiveThirtyEight and updated October 26) for the middle column:

Pennsylvania: Biden up 5.6.

Arizona: Biden up 3.0.

North Carolina: Biden up 2.5.

Florida: Biden up 2.4.

And the current polls for the other battleground states:

Wisconsin: Biden up 6.7.

Michigan: Biden up 8.

Ohio: Trump up 1.5.

Iowa: Biden up 1.2.

Georgia: Biden up .4.

Texas: Biden up .1.

Many of these polling numbers are well within the margins of error (Texas and Georgia are really dead heats), but if they reflect actual votes, Biden will win with 394, taking nine of the ten battleground states:

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With a final map that looks like this:

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Is that too much to hope for? Definitely. Handicapping Biden with a two-point Trump-favoring margin of error produces this map:

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And raising that margin to three points looks like this:

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Raising it to four points makes no difference. And neither does five points. In all those scenarios, Biden wins.

For Trump to win, Pennsylvania’s polls have to be more than five points off. FiveThirtyEight puts Biden ahead there by 5.6. The right-leaning Real Clear Politics says it’s only 5.1. FiveThirtyEight also gives Biden an 86% chance of winning Pennsylvania, an 87% chance of winning the election overall, and a 31% chance of a double-digit popular-vote landslide. If state polls are as wrong as they were in 2016, they still predict Biden wins with 280. 

When will we know the outcome?

Both Arizona and Florida expect to report on election night. If Biden wins either, Trump has no plausible path to victory. If Trump wins both, we have to wait for Pennsylvania, which probably won’t report its count until late Saturday November 7 (because it has to accept mail-in ballots arriving as late as November 6). Whoever wins Pennsylvania almost certainly wins the country. 

How Rightwing Pundits Destroyed America and my Facebook Page

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I had a dream that progressives and conservatives could overcome differences, that we could strip away reductive stereotypes and destructive rhetoric, that a path toward common ground was only a matter of choosing to believe that political opponents are not bad people intent on bad things, but good people disagreeing on how best to achieve good.

I co-founded a local group and Facebook page, Rockbridge Civil Discourse Society, dedicated to those goals, and spent a couple of hours every day talking to people with opposing partisan backgrounds and ideological reflexes. I thought if I worked hard enough, reasoned through each issue, addressed all objections, provided verifiable support for every claim, and, most importantly, built trust and friendship, that we could bridge our local portion of the political divide.

I was wrong.

I blame Ann Coulter.

Not just Ann Coulter, but Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson and all professional political pundits, who most definitely include Ms. Coulter.

I’ve not met her, but I once sat in a gymnasium of folding chairs twenty yards from her podium. James Carville, another for-hire-horseman of the Democracy apocalypse, was slouching at the other podium. I have no idea how much money my university poured on them to perform their political theatre skit, but let’s assume buckets. W&L stages a mock convention every four years. I’d watched a startled Newt Gingrich saunter onto that same stage to the thump of Rocky III’s “Eye of the Tiger” and the thunder of the improbably conservative student body. Bob Dole literally phoned it in, as he and his campaign faded into the static of his departing plane.

The Coulter-Carville show was 2012, within spitting distance of the first primary. Gingrich was duking it out with Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. Rick wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. Newt wanted to go to Mars. Coulter, a savvy reader of conservative weather patterns, staked her tent in Romney territory. When asked about Gingrinch’s still-formidable polling, she performed a diplomatic pause and said: “He’s not attracting our more thoughtful voters.” And I thought: “Hey, this woman’s okay.” That was before she said “Chinamen” were taking our jobs, and that the audience of youthfully open-minded undergrads would someday be home-owners and not want certain unspecified kinds of people moving in next door.

That’s Coulter c. 2012. Coulter c. 2020 is a Gingrich groupie who regularly throws Romney under the wheels of her MAGA bus.

How do you explain her change?

You don’t. Because she didn’t. Ann Coulter today is exactly what she was then: a professional commentator paid to say things that appeal to her market audience.

Eight years ago that audience leaned Romney, so Coulter leaned Romney, entertainingly contemptuous of little Newt. Now her audience bleats in harmony with the Trump Twitter account, so Coulter swings hard right, out-Gingriching even Gingrich. So does Hannity and Limbaugh and Carlson and anyone else trying to make a fortune as a conservative pundit.

Despite its appeals to fixed traditions, “conservative” is a fast-moving target. A century ago Coulter and Co. were hocking the anti-American horror of women voting. A half-century ago they were demonizing John Lewis and Martin Luther King as pinko agitators hellbent on desecrating our founding fathers. Today they’re telling their revenue-producing viewers that Marxist pedophiles have infiltrated the Black Lives Matter movement and the Main Stream Media. They’re asking whether Democratic governors’ and mayors’ decision to promote rioting is a smart reelection ploy. If Biden is elected, Antifa will be invited to the White House, all borders will be open, all police departments will be eliminated, and the United States will become a socialist dictatorship. First-term Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they tell their thundering audience, commands the entire Democratic party.

There’s a word for all of that.  Philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt calls it “bullshit,” describing a “bullshitter” as someone who “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” The pundits’ purpose is to please a conservative audience and so attract advertisers who indirectly pay them salaries. For Carlson that’s $6 million a year, for Hannity $40 million, and Limbaugh $85 million. Coulter isn’t currently holding down a salaried job, but her net worth is $8.5 million.

Do they actually believe Marxist infiltrators are plotting to overthrow America? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because I know they don’t care.

But a lot of people do care. I used to chat with them regularly on the Civil Discourse page. Most still absorb their political content from Fox News. I’ve spent literally years arguing that biased sources are the driving wedge of our two-reality political divide. Every time I criticize Fox News, I include MSNBC in the same damning sentence. I cancelled my internet subscription to the Washington Post and stopped skimming inflammatory headlines at CNN. I balance my daily New York Times reading with my daily Wall Street Journal reading. I study the polling data at both RCP and 538.

The Civil Discourse conservatives continue soaking in the comfort of daily Fox News punditry. As a result, they believe in Revolutionaries, Deep State saboteurs, and Socialist policies designed to eliminate capitalism and America with it. They’re not capitalist Coulters contorting themselves for profit. They’re sincere and sincerely patriotic conservatives incapable of thinking through complex national problems from multiple political angles. Unlike the pundits they parrot, they actually care about and believe in the truth of the bullshit they soak down to their DNA and regurgitate with foot-thumping certainty. 

So after two years of shepherding the politically diverse participants of the Rockbridge Civil Discourse Society page, I’ve retired. The pundits won. My Facebook corner of the Internet is Coulter Country now, same as the rest.

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Predicting the Next President (part 2)

I posted a “Predicting the Next President” round-up analysis of election forecasts on August 31, six weeks ago.

Did anything interesting happen since then?

Ginsburg died on September 18, and McConnell announced his intent to replace her hours later. The White House hosted a celebration for Trump’s pick, Amy Coney Barrett, on September 26, resulting in at least thirty-four CV-19 infections. On September 28, Ginsburg was buried, and The New York Times released Trump’s tax records. Trump debated Biden on September 29, tested positive two days later, and was hospitalized the following day, October 2. He returned to the White House on October 5. A fly landed on Pence’s head during the vice-presidential debate on October 7, and the second presidential debate was cancelled on October 9 after Trump refused to participate in a virtual format. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins Barrett’s nomination hearings today, October 12.

That’s the short version. Normally, an October 2 release of a recording of the First Lady saying, “who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? …I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a fucking break,” would be THE ONLY headline.

On the day of the first debate, Trump was polling six points behind Biden, 43 to 49. Ten days later, he was ten points behind, 42 to 52. It’s hard to diagnose which had the most impact on that four-point leap: Trump getting sick, Trump hosting a superspreader event, Trump paying no income taxes, or Trump delivering the worst presidential debate performance in U.S. history.

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The election forecasts were already leaning hard in Biden’s direction in August. None predicted Trump, nine predicted Biden, and three made no prediction due to toss-up states. Biden’s lowest electoral college count estimate was 268, two short of the 270 needed to win. Trump’s highest was 204.

What are those forecasters saying now?

All but one predict Biden. Only Politico remains with Biden at 268, Trump 203, and 67 toss-ups. Six weeks ago, CNN and Crystal Ball placed Biden at 268 too. Now they both say 290, as do NPR, U.S. News, and Cook Political Report.

How, according to half of the forecasters, does Biden get to a minimum of 290?

By winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. None place those four most pivotal states in the toss-up category. And according to the Real Clear Politics conglomerate polls, they’re right. Biden is up seven points in Pennsylvania, six and half in Michigan, five and a half in Wisconsin, and two and a half in Arizona.

Biden is also up three and a half in Florida. A year ago, half of the forecasters had Florida for Trump. Now six place the state with the toss-ups, and four for Biden.

Biden is up one and a half points in North Carolina, a state that all of the forecasts called a toss-up six weeks ago. Now two give it to Biden.

Real Clear Politics doesn’t list them with their “Top Battlegrounds,” but Biden is up by one point in Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia, and Trump’s lead in Texas is down to two. Biden leads by nine in Minnesota, a state one forecaster still placed with the toss-ups six weeks ago.

According to current polls, Biden and Trump are within five points of each other in a total of seven states: Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa, with Biden ahead in all but Texas. Only one of the forecasts considers Texas a toss-up, and the rest predict Trump will win it. Only one considers Arizona a toss-up, and the rest predict Biden. And only one still considers Wisconsin a toss-up, and the rest predict Biden.

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Biden can lose either Wisconsin or Arizona and still reach 270. Which of the possible toss-ups states does Trump need to win?

All ten, plus both Pennsylvania and Michigan, states that all of the forecasts predict for Biden.

Can Trump still win?

Yes. But he has only one path: through the courts.

The states and national GOP will fight to disqualify every ballot possible, with mail-in ballots especially vulnerable. Since Democrats are twice as likely to vote absentee, the danger is very real. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last month that mail-in ballots not placed inside “secrecy envelopes” will not be counted. 100,000 votes could be tossed—placing Pennsylvania back in the toss-up category since Trump won it in 2016 by only 44,292 votes.

He won Wisconsin by 22,748, and Michigan by 10,704.

Biden needs big margins of victory to keep his electoral college count safe.

Even then, Trump is guaranteeing November chaos while states count mail-in ballots. Most can’t start counting until election day, a process that can extend to December 9, the day Congress must have a certified count from every state. Since mail-ins are likely to include twice as many Biden votes, early counts and exit polls could favor Trump—fueling baseless claims of fraud when his leads erode over the following days and weeks

The best and probably only way to avoid that is an election night landslide.

Early in-person voting in Virginia started on September 18. The day Ginsburg died.

Have you voted yet?

New Fruit from Old Comics Form

Sometimes the mark of a good comic is its inability to be summed up in words. Here’s my one-sentence attempt for Old Growth:

“Sentient mushrooms build a city in the forest of an expelled caterpillar who returns as an avenging butterfly tasked by angels to prevent the mushroom people from completing their tower of Babel and invading heaven.”

That plot summary may be engagingly odd, but it’s neither the most engaging or even the oddest thing about Niv Bavarksy and Michael Olivo’s graphic novel. Old Growth is foremost a visual work, and no verbal description will do it justice.

That includes the authors’ own attempts. In a concluding four-page interview, Olivo writes: “The book is largely an exploration of immature and arrogant attainments of power, and the two polarized factions represent the individualistic and collectivist manifestations of that.” Bavarksky wisely adds: “I’m not personally inclined to explain too much. Maybe it’ll become clearer over multiple readings or be interpreted very differently from our personal interpretations and I welcome that.”

I welcome it too. Exploratory interpretation is even built into the DNA of the two artists’ creative process. They began with no story, no character, no situation, just a few panels they passed back and forth by Dropbox (they live on opposite U.S. coasts). Like their later readers, they had to figure out what was going on based on initially ambiguous drawings, before working backwards to build a foundation for the sequence and then forwards as the narrative coalesced panel by panel.

That’s not your typical approach to comics writing. More often a scripter hands a penciler page-by-page descriptions of would-be panel content paired with dialogue and narration. The artist doesn’t start drawing until the writing is over, making most comics just illustrated scripts. The penciler divides up the pre-determined number of images into layouts, sketches them, and then hands the work-in-progress to an inker who finalizes the line art, before handing it off again to a colorist. That’s the conveyer-belt production style of mainstream companies like Marvel and DC.

Olivo and Bavarksy worked nothing like that. They instead drew “completely in tandem,” trading the same panels back and forth, each adding new details, both and neither taking the role of primary artist-writer. Little wonder Old Growth took three years to produce.

They offset their complex creative process with formal simplicity. Most of the novel’s pages divide into a 2×3 grid of equal squares, providing a comfortingly simple progression through an internally complicated world. The choice of squares isn’t random. Bavarsky and Olivo recount how their first collaboration began when both were separately commissioned to draw an album cover. Instead of competing, they submitted a single, combined work. (They don’t name the album, but I’m guessing it’s “Cartoons” by the Australian band Hollow Everdaze.) Apparently, the shape appealed to them, because Old Growth includes over six hundred more.

The only images not co-drawn are the authors’ self-portraits, and there it’s clear that their styles are so merged it would be impossible to identify either’s specific contributions anywhere else in the novel. Their cartoons also evoke a higher level of abstraction than the majority of graphic novels. Sometimes panels seem to be shifting arrangements of flat, single-color shapes more than a storyworld of environments peopled by characters. The caterpillar, for example, is a string of overlapping pink circles with an anthropomorphic eyeball at one end but no other facial features.  The opening full-page image highlights a yellow triangle, which only after rereading with information gleaned from later pages can be deciphered as a heavenly ray of light bursting through darkened clouds.

Most panels are isolated images, but some pages (usually those depicting underground networks of mushroom roots) are appropriately interconnected, as though the white of the gutters blocks the view of the full picture. The second chapter (which might be an extended dream or prophecy?) breaks form, with squiggly panel edges and an eight-page sequence of full-page images that heighten the authors’ abstract style and push even harder against the novel’s narrative coherence. As a result, it’s one of the most interesting segments in the novel—though I admit I equally enjoyed the visual allusions to 1970s Godzilla movies when the caterpillar suddenly has a death ray emitting from its head. I also suspect the authors have seen a few Harry Potter movies, since the death ray and a mushroom laser tank lock beams like Harry and Voldemort.

Given that level of visual playfulness in both style and content, it may seem odd to interpret the novel as a philosophical struggle between domesticated comfort and antagonistic growth as Olivo suggests. He argues that the key to happiness is the understanding that pain is necessary. I’m guessing it was also Olivo who drew a literal key in the novel—a skeleton key with a skull for a head—that unlocks a heavenly door to the unknown.

I prefer Bavarksy’s description. When you’re taken “out of your comfort zone,” make something positive from the challenge. I suspect Old Growth will take some readers out of their comfort zones too. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a little more happy discomfort and a deeper exploration of heavenly unknowns, but it’s a treat to watch such an unusual collaborative process regardless of what flavor of fruit grows from it.

Capitalist Coup in Hell

Hell isn’t what it used to be.

Charon was forced into retirement after some influential sinners complained about his indiscriminate brutality. His ferryboat can be found on display in the Hell History Museum. New arrivals now enjoy a luxury passenger ship, though the River Styx can be crossed by airplane too. After fingerprinted and photographed, arrivals pass under the new entrance gate sign: “You are now entering Hell. Welcome.” (“All hope abandon, ye who enter here” was retired too.)

The smell is bad, a combination of sulphur and automobile fumes, but lessened by the scent of perfume—now one of the leading industries in the region. Cerberus is spritzed daily. Visitors and favored sinners can enjoy a taxi to the Grand View to acclimate to the heat before continuing on. Be sure to stop by the Limbo Club, where the ancient philosophers and bards have been joined by other impractical and so potentially disruptive thinkers, including Karl Marx, Thoreau, Isadora Duncan, and Eugene Debs. Visits are limited to one hour.

According to the last census statistics, two-thirds of the Devils you meet will be former sinners from the Upper World. The remaining are either original Bad Angels of Heaven or their descendants (inbreeding and bestiality has resulted in a range of Minotaurs, Harpies, Houndbats, Goatguamps, and other variegated races of Fiends, Demons, Jinks, and Imps). The original inhabitants should not be called Fallen, since Hell’s past isn’t quite what it used to be either. Recent investigations reveal that when Lucifer and his fellow rebels warred against Heaven, they were victorious, forcing God into a peace conference where He signed a treaty ceding the subterranean regions.

Lucifer isn’t his old self either. The early years of the twentieth-century saw an influx of robber baron capitalists, who forced the ruler to abdicate his thrown in order to modernize damnation. The new Money Power government was soon printing its own currency and reaping the considerable benefits. Now Lucifer is truly Fallen, reduced to the ceremonial duties of parades and radio addresses. He and his PR advisor, Beelzebub, play a lot of cards in his palace office.

All of the above facts were directly observed and carefully illustrated by cartoonist Art Young during his six-week visit to the underworld in 1934. He traveled there by New York City elevator. It was his third trip. The first two were in 1892 and 1901, well before the capitalist revolution and his own conversion to socialism. Steven Heller, who writes the foreword for the new Fantagraphics edition, asks: “Would he and Bernie Sanders be comrades?” By way of answer, Heller points to Young’s four-level chart dividing the inhabitants of Hell into economic groups. The “Poor” are heaped into literal mountains, while a tiny gathering sits atop the “Richer” shelf. Young doesn’t offer percentages, but I suspect Hell doesn’t have a wealth tax on that top .01%.

Young returns at a prescient moment. Though Senator Sanders was likely still a serious presidential contender when Fantagraphics decided to republish Inferno, they could not have predicted that the Depression-era satire would arrive during the pandemic and what may be the opening months of the Twenty-first century Depression. Apparently the last economic catastrophe was a boon for Hell, since it yielded a massive crop of “financial wizards” arriving by suicide. Instead of sending them to the suicide circle, the government assigned them to the Recovery Board to issue reports emphasizing “the necessity of generous loans to Big Business” and forecasting “much hope in the willingness of the most miserable sinners to work for almost nothing, or even go without work until business improves.”

It’s not necessary to have read Dante’s Inferno, or to have studied depictions of the underworld by Breughel, Blake, Doré, or centuries of other artists, but Young clearly has. The mild-mannered cartoonist (he draws himself squat and round-faced) is an aficionado of all things infernal. His love of Dante produced three comedies, though unlike The Divine Comedy, Young was content to keep sketching the bottom rung.

He opens with a retracing of Dante’s footsteps, but after literally mapping the Circles (now connected by elevators), he abandons the narrative approach for a random shuffle of vignettes titled by theme: The Scientists (they’re as useless as the bards), About Women (they’re as bad as the men), Heroism (limited to ruthless football players), and Snatches of Conversation Along The Streets (“Must get job,” “If it won’t sell, what good is it?”). The meandering is fun, but the early promise of a concluding interview with the dethroned Satan does preserve a little suspense.

Though Inerno is comic in the satirical sense, the book is not a comic book. Except in rare cases, words and images stand apart, and it’s hard to say whether the drawings illustrate the blocks of prose or if those paragraphs just provide an excuse for Young’s satirical cartooning. His subject and style are consistent, but some images are designed as quick dash-offs in the corners of pages, and others are meticulously crosshatched full-page reveries. Young’s pen, whether drawing or printing, is filled with the same critical wit.

If it’s not clear yet, his subject isn’t Hell but life on the U.S. portion of Earth. Where Dante and his other predecessors were Christians providing imaginary evidence of the future waiting the faithless, Young’s social commentary seeks to punish the abusively wealthy in the here and now. I suspect most shrugged off the criticism as easily in 1934 as their descendants will in 2020. If Young made it to cartoon heaven, I can easily imagine the fun he’s having right now sketching the Robber-Baron-in-Chief in the White House.

 

 

End Gerrymandering Now: Vote YES on Amendment 1

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I made this bumper sticker back in January 2017. I just added “Vote YES on Amendment 1” because that is THE BEST WAY to stop gerrymandering in Virginia.

There is a lot of misinformation about the amendment and the notion that some other amendment could replace it. That’s a manipulative distraction. Because it all comes down to this:

If you want the Democrats in Richmond to be free to gerrymander when they draw the new maps in 2021, then vote NO.

But if you believe gerrymandering is wrong regardless of which party is in power, then vote YES.

Here’s why:

ONLY an amendment can stop a 2021 gerrymander.

The anti-gerrymandering law that was passed in 2020 is MEANINGLESS. The legislature can do ANYTHING they like with the new maps because the Virginia constitution gives them complete, unfettered power. No law can change that.

And this has to happen NOW. New maps MUST BE DRAWN next year. There’s no stopping that. It can’t be paused for two legislative sessions and a general election as some other theoretical new amendment is approved.

And I mean literally RIGHT NOW. Voting has started. There’s no pause button for that either.

I’m hearing a lot distracting noise about the amendment not being perfect. Obviously it’s not perfect. But it is VERY GOOD.

It guarantees that the two parties will be forced to work together and draw maps that favor neither side. That is the ONLY REASON a redistricting commission exists, and the amendment achieves that goal.

I keep hearing distractions about the commission not being “independent.” What does that even mean? The point is to lock the two parties into a forced position where compromise is their only option. The amendment does exactly that.

I hear distractions about the commission having too many “elected officials” or that the parties are in too much control of who serves on it. THAT IS THE POINT of the commission.

The two parties get 8 members each, and then at least 12 members have to agree on a map. It’s aggressively bipartisan with no option but compromise. THAT is how you end gerrymandering.

But if Amendment 1 fails, we will be left only with the promise of some theoretical replacement amendment that can’t be ratified until after the new maps have been drawn without anything preventing them from being gerrymandered.

It’s either Amendment 1 or crossing your fingers and hoping that the Democrats in Richmond will set aside all partisan and personal interests and draw fair maps when they have complete power to make them as unfair as the GOP maps were against Democrats for the past decade.

The majority party gerrymanders. That’s why it’s so incredibly difficult to stop the perfectly legal but entirely anti-democratic practice. Virginia voters have ONCE CHANCE to do this, and it’s RIGHT NOW.

If you believe in fairness and principles, vote YES.

If you believe in revenge and hypocrisy, then vote NO.

Or maybe you actually think the Richmond Democrats are above gerrymandering? That our side are the “good guys,” and it’s only those “bad guy” Republicans who would ever do something so terrible as gerrymandering?

Grow up.

I’m not going to gamble away this amendment on a roll of the dice and the blind hope that incumbents will all suddenly become superhuman angels overnight. We’re talking about politicians.

Power corrupts. Gerrymandering has proven that again and again and again.

END IT NOW.

 

Here’s how the amendment looks on the ballot:

Virginia Question 1, the Redistricting Commission Amendment:

A “yes” vote supports transferring the power to draw the state’s congressional and legislative districts from the state legislature to a redistricting commission composed of state legislators and citizens.

A “no” vote opposes transferring the power to draw the state’s congressional and legislative districts to a redistricting commission, thus keeping the state legislature responsible for redistricting.

And here’s the complete text of the amendment (I’ve placed what I consider key points in red for easy skimming):

Section 6. Apportionment.

Members of the House of Representatives of the United States and members of the Senate and of the House of Delegates of the General Assembly shall be elected from electoral districts established by the General Assembly pursuant to Section 6-A of this Constitution. Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory and shall be so constituted as to give, as nearly as is practicable, representation in proportion to the population of the district. Every electoral district shall be drawn in accordance with the requirements of federal and state laws that address racial and ethnic fairness, including the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, and judicial decisions interpreting such laws. Districts shall provide, where practicable, opportunities for racial and ethnic communities to elect candidates of their choice.

The General Assembly shall reapportion the Commonwealth shall be reapportioned into electoral districts in accordance with this section and Section 6-A in the year 2011 2021 and every ten years thereafter.

Any such decennial reapportionment law shall take effect immediately and not be subject to the limitations contained in Article IV, Section 13, of this Constitution.

The districts delineated in the decennial reapportionment law shall be implemented for the November general election for the United States House of Representatives, Senate, or House of Delegates, respectively, that is held immediately prior to the expiration of the term being served in the year that the reapportionment law is required to be enacted. A member in office at the time that a decennial redistricting law is enacted shall complete his term of office and shall continue to represent the district from which he was elected for the duration of such term of office so long as he does not move his residence from the district from which he was elected. Any vacancy occurring during such term shall be filled from the same district that elected the member whose vacancy is being filled.

Section 6-A. Virginia Redistricting Commission.

(a) In the year 2020 and every ten years thereafter, the Virginia Redistricting Commission (the Commission) shall be convened for the purpose of establishing districts for the United States House of Representatives and for the Senate and the House of Delegates of the General Assembly pursuant to Article II, Section 6 of this Constitution.

(b) The Commission shall consist of sixteen commissioners who shall be selected in accordance with the provisions of this subsection.

(1) Eight commissioners shall be legislative members, four of whom shall be members of the Senate of Virginia and four of whom shall be members of the House of Delegates. These commissioners shall be appointed no later than December 1 of the year ending in zero and shall continue to serve until their successors are appointed.

(A) Two commissioners shall represent the political party having the highest number of members in the Senate of Virginia and shall be appointed by the President pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia.

(B) Two commissioners shall represent the political party having the next highest number of members in the Senate of Virginia and shall be appointed by the leader of that political party.

(C) Two commissioners shall represent the political party having the highest number of members in the House of Delegates and shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Delegates.

(D) Two commissioners shall represent the political party having the next highest number of members in the House of Delegates and shall be appointed by the leader of that political party.

(2) Eight commissioners shall be citizen members who shall be selected in accordance with the provisions of this subdivision and in the manner determined by the General Assembly by general law.

(A) There shall be a Redistricting Commission Selection Committee (the Committee) consisting of five retired judges of the circuit courts of Virginia. By November 15 of the year ending in zero, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia shall certify to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, the leader in the House of Delegates of the political party having the next highest number of members in the House of Delegates, the President pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia, and the leader in the Senate of Virginia of the political party having the next highest number of members in the Senate a list of retired judges of the circuit courts of Virginia who are willing to serve on the Committee, and these members shall each select a judge from the list. The four judges selected to serve on the Committee shall select, by a majority vote, a judge from the list prescribed herein to serve as the fifth member of the Committee and to serve as the chairman of the Committee.

(B) By January 1 of the year ending in one, the Speaker of the House of Delegates, the leader in the House of Delegates of the political party having the next highest number of members in the House of Delegates, the President pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia, and the leader in the Senate of the political party having the next highest number of members in the Senate shall each submit to the Committee a list of at least sixteen citizen candidates for service on the Commission. Such citizen candidates shall meet the criteria established by the General Assembly by general law.

The Committee shall select, by a majority vote, two citizen members from each list submitted. No member or employee of the Congress of the United States or of the General Assembly shall be eligible to serve as a citizen member.

(c) By February 1 of the year ending in one, the Commission shall hold a public meeting at which it shall select a chairman from its membership. The chairman shall be a citizen member and shall be responsible for coordinating the work of the Commission.

(d) The Commission shall submit to the General Assembly plans for districts for the Senate and the House of Delegates of the General Assembly no later than 45 days following the receipt of census data and shall submit to the General Assembly plans for districts for the United States House of Representatives no later than 60 days following the receipt of census data or by the first day of July of that year, whichever occurs later.

(1) To be submitted as a proposed plan for districts for members of the United States House of Representatives, a plan shall receive affirmative votes of at least six of the eight legislative members and six of the eight citizen members.

(2) To be submitted as a proposed plan for districts for members of the Senate, a plan shall receive affirmative votes of at least six of the eight legislative members, including at least three of the four legislative members who are members of the Senate, and at least six of the eight citizen members.

(3) To be submitted as a proposed plan for districts for members of the House of Delegates, a plan shall receive affirmative votes of at least six of the eight legislative members, including at least three of the four legislative members who are members of the House of Delegates, and at least six of the eight citizen members.

(e) Plans for districts for the Senate and the House of Delegates shall be embodied in and voted on as a single bill. The vote on any bill embodying a plan for districts shall be taken in accordance with the provisions of Article IV, Section 11 of this Constitution, except that no amendments shall be permitted. Such bills shall not be subject to the provisions contained in Article V, Section 6 of this Constitution.

(f) Within fifteen days of receipt of a plan for districts, the General Assembly shall take a vote on the bill embodying that plan in accordance with the provisions of subsection (e). If the General Assembly fails to adopt such bill by this deadline, the Commission shall submit a new plan for districts to the General Assembly within fourteen days of the General Assembly’s failure to adopt the bill. The General Assembly shall take a vote on the bill embodying such plan within seven days of receipt of the plan. If the General Assembly fails to adopt such bill by this deadline, the districts shall be established by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

(g) If the Commission fails to submit a plan for districts by the deadline set forth in subsection (d), the Commission shall have fourteen days following its initial failure to submit a plan to the General Assembly. If the Commission fails to submit a plan for districts to the General Assembly by this deadline, the districts shall be established by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

If the Commission submits a plan for districts within fourteen days following its initial failure to submit a plan, the General Assembly shall take a vote on the bill embodying such plan within seven days of its receipt. If the General Assembly fails to adopt such bill by this deadline, the districts shall be established by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

(h) All meetings of the Commission shall be open to the public. Prior to proposing any redistricting plans and prior to voting on redistricting plans, the Commission shall hold at least three public hearings in different parts of the Commonwealth to receive and consider comments from the public.

(i) All records and documents of the Commission, or any individual or group performing delegated functions of or advising the Commission, related to the Commission’s work, including internal communications and communications from outside parties, shall be considered public information. [6]

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My New Digital Paper Dolls

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Someday I should really tackle Photoshop, or at least Adobe Illustrator. But I keep having too much fun inventing styles and techniques within the archaic simplicity of MS Paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eldercare Twilight Zone

 

“I am Yukie Sakai, home help aide! And I’m here to help!!”

If that sounds like the tagline of a delightfully improbable superheroine, the crises that call her to action are even better: a legion of brutal grandchildren hunting their destitute grandfather down for New Year’s change; a senile Santa Claus giving gangsters rocket-launchers for Christmas; an elderly woman whose supernatural dementia rewrites history to match her delusions.

This is the eldercare Twilight Zone of manga artist Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21, now extended into its second volume for English readers. The first included an interview with the artist, as well as opening stories that provide some grounding (Yukie keeps getting these demented assignments because a jealous colleague is blackmailing an executive to destroy her), but since each episode stands alone, Volume Two does too.

As much as I admire Kago’s oddness as a writer, his artistic pen is even sharper. Unlike so many typical manga characters, Kago’s cast avoids the cliché stylistic ticks of their genre and instead hover at the edge of naturalism. Though selectively cartoonish, even when simplified, Yukie and her clients retain a realistic edge that intensifies their horror-tinged universe. Kago wisely keeps his computer-generated graphics in the background, evoking the emotion of a moment through soft grays that swirl psychedelically or emanate in dramatic bursts. Best of all, the introductory page of each chapter—presumably covers or splash-pages for the original series—are surrealist mini-masterpieces.

Though you might expect Yukie to defeat each episode’s menace, you can’t count on her. She reassured poor Mrs. Furuike that the zombies employed at the nursing home were no threat, but that didn’t stop the nursing home from attaching her head to machines and feeding the rest of her body to the new staff. When a neighborhood of condos designed to look like bingo boards plays an elaborate game of chance by darkening a square of windows whenever an elderly tenant dies, Yukie doesn’t even try to stop them. She’s equally powerless when Japan’s government passes a law nullifying all crimes committed by senior citizens to reduce over-crowded prisons—never mind that the elderly, deprived of the comforts of prison, “descended into more profound depths of evil.”

The English translation by Rachel Thorn provides an appropriately colloquial tone to the dialogue, including idioms (“All right, all right. I get the message. I’ll leave!”) and slang abbreviations (“Whadda we gonna, do, boss?”). The chapter set 10,000 years in the future must have been a particular challenge since the humor is primarily word-based with a chief archaeologist (a descendant and namesake of Yukie) lecturing about the discovery of an ancient species called the “Ell-durly” who battled ancient homo sapiens with repellent “Bah-breff” and detachable teeth. Adages are harder, requiring an asterisk and footnote to explain why the archaeologist thinks eggplants were poisonous (they were once thought to inhibit fertility and so lead to the saying: “Don’t let your daughter eat autumn eggplants”).

The core premise of the series requires some cultural context too. Presumably a Japanese reader would know before the sixteenth chapter of the second volume that Japan has one of the highest elderly populations in the world: “I’m sure you’re aware that Japan’s population pyramid has become wildly distorted” with “increasingly more older people than younger people.” A heroine who works for a home aid corporation reflects that demographic fact and places all of the adventures in the realm of social commentary.

Unfortunately, no amount of cultural context can lessen Kago’s attitude toward rape. Yukie’s naked spirit is chased by the equally naked spirit of the inventor of a machine that forces out-of-body experiences: “Hi-de-ho! I may be old, but my disembodied spirit is as lively as ever.” Worse, according to the archaeologist’s theories, the male Ell-Durley “would attack a female homo sapiens … impregnate her … and keep her captive … while the fetus develops.” Worst off all, that demented Santa Claus rapes a child’s mother to fulfill the child’s wish for a baby brother. Dark or not, the humor does not translate.

Still, Kago is significantly less sexually exploitative than the manga market he later lampoons. he collection dips fully into meta-fiction as Kago draws himself redrawing the series to satisfy the requirements of an anime producer. The changes replace Kago’s style with generic manga effects: Yukie’s “rounder face,” “bigger eyes,” “more exaggerated expressions!” That new version also includes “longer legs,” “shorter skirt,” and “big boobs.” Instead of old people, she’s caring for young girls with sponge baths and glimpses of panties.

Like most of the tales, the meta-Kago’s ends tragically, but this time the collection transitions into a four-part sequence that appears to bring the series to an end—not that any of Kago’s endings seem definitive. After Yukie tricks death by giving herself a 10,000-year lifespan, even the future archaeologist remarks on internal inconsistencies: “Wait, I thought I was supposed to be your descendant in this book.”

Other tales appear to exist in parallel realities. According to chapter three, Yukie and the rest of the cast are just actors in an elaborate stage production. Chapter six depicts a global war against a legion of supernaturally sentient diapers, until the entire planet is swaddled in one enormous diaper which the human resistance causes to explode in confusion by intentionally urinating in their clothes. If that planet-wide cataclysm leaves any historical impression, it’s erased before the start of the next chapter, which itself ends with a child about to launch a world-ending nuclear missile strike.

The ending sequence brings a welcome arc to the series, initiating yet another war, this one between the elderly and the Japanese government attempting to exterminate them once and for all. Though I appreciate the extended storyline, it comes with the cost of Yukie, or at least her character consistency since the ever-kind aide transforms into a mercenary providing her talents and inside knowledge for a wad of cash. The instant conversion is a cute gag, in keeping with Kago’s increasing meta-approach, but I preferred the old Yukie. Granted, she was first rendered destitute by the agency that recruits her, transforming her first into a vengeful monster kidnapping her former clients to discover who framed her and got her fired from her beloved job.

But maybe that’s all an alternative timeline too, and the more lovable Yukie will return for a third volume?