Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for September 24, 2023

I reject your reality and substitute one of my own creation.

Musta been an all-Republican audience.

Yep. Alas.

Sooooo…….the whole premise is a lie. Must be a member of today’s republican party!

Millennials

It’s really very simple, you know. First of all, being skeptical takes substantially more actual mental energy than simply believing. Thus, as we’ve all been made painfully aware, logic, truth, and empirical reality are the sworn enemies of believers of all sorts, most notably the mentally lazy or deficient MAGA/Q types.

What’s more, actual facts are FAR too limiting, and no fun besides. People just want to be “free” to believe what suits them and what they want to believe (including religion). Lies totally offer that. Unshackled as they are from truth and reality, lies can be crafted to perfectly satisfy the needs and wishes of any target audience. Freedumb! Truth (and science), which can never honestly claim to be 100% correct, seems to want to force people to accept the unacceptable, be it political reality, or the reality about their religious whimsies, or the truth about themselves. There’s always going to be a significant percentage of people who, even though they know perfectly well that what they’ve accepted are lies, will very much prefer those sweet, reassuring, and vindicating lies to the hard, uncaring truth.

Moreover, many people really appreciate liars and their lies. That’s because the liar has shown enough regard for the sucker and the sucker’s preferences to craft a lie that will be appreciated and accepted. Telling the truth is just lazy and rude, and skeptics just ruin the fun. In any case, as Darth Putin has pointed out, “We didn’t do this propaganda to make you believe something, it was to make you believe nothing. Then you will do nothing.”

I am from the Planet Bull-S, and I have a super power that allows me to cut taxes, increase spending, balance the budget, and increase wages. I can also lower house prices for people who want to buy and increase house prices for people who want to sell.

Truth is stranger than fiction but not as popular.

Today, it’s not a matter of which “facts” are correct. It’s a matter of which “facts” are more popular than the other “facts”.

Human nature transcends ideology.

“I want to be Pope, Prime Minister, CEO, Cult Leader, Anarchist organizer, etc…”

What ever happened to Desantis’s promise of $2 gallon gasoline in 24?

The truth is kinda uncouth.

You Can’t Butter Up The Truth With Lies From Not Always Right_ :

I am taking orders for a table with a family. A customer orders something that usually comes with asparagus sautéed in butter and garlic.

Customer: “Oh, and no butter in that. I am allergic to butter.”

I make a note and start going through all the other items the customer has ordered to make sure she’ll be okay. Then, the customer’s mother interrupts.

Customer’s Mother: “What? No, you’re not! You just don’t like it!”

I sigh inwardly, as this is a huge pet peeve of the restaurant industry, but I keep my customer service smile on.

Me: “That’s okay, we can make that without butter—”

Customer’s Mother: “No, it’s not okay! You can’t just lie like that! I raised you better than that.”

Customer: Looking embarrassed “But… I am allergic!”

Me: “I will let the kitchen know. Just to check, are you allergic to butter in its raw form, or cooked, also?”

Customer: “Butter in all forms! It doesn’t matter!”

I nod and give her the benefit of the doubt. They finish their meals and I collect their plates.

Me: “Shall I bring out some dessert menus for the table?”

Customer: “Yes! This place does the most amazing chocolate lava cake! I get it all the time! I’ve been looking forward to it all week!”

Me: “Uh… ma’am. The chocolate lava cake has quite a lot of butter in it.”

I feel the customer’s heart sink. She can either forego the dessert she’s been looking forward to and keep up the lie, or she can admit defeat and eat her consolation cake.

Customer’s Mother: “Ha! Bet you’ll think twice before making some poor kitchen staff jump through hoops because of your lying!”

The customer decided that “a little bit of cake” wouldn’t hurt (she finished the whole thing), and that mother became one of my new favorite people.

Fortunately it does not apply to everyone.

Guess the crowd thought Bob was one of them and would give them the stained, shellacked, lacquered, and varnished truth they are wanting and expecting.

I was going to write “Preaching to the choir”, but I see it’s just an empty room. Apparently his audience seems to have left looking for alternative truths … I also love the flummoxed look on the face of the audience member in the second-to-last frame.

People usually adhere to the ‘truth’ that they want and no amount of ‘Truth’ will convince them otherwise.

I guess they couldn’t handle the truth

Im was in Pennsylvania in June, deep in MAGA country. I was having a fairly pleasant conversation with a man there when he suddenly turned to politics. He said that he wished Oz had been elected to the Senate instead of Fetterman, as he had heard that Fetterman had been hospitalized in Canada for heroin addiction. I of course told him that he had really been treated in the US for depression. Naturally he refused to believe me. I don’t know where he heard that lie, but it is now embedded deep inside his head. You can’t reason with someone who refuses to listen to the truth, but we can’t stop trying.

Great Britain brought “Culture” to the world by enforcing rules and teaching respect. Until that mindset is regained we are screwed.

The fact is Bob is correct.

Conservatives HATE the fact that life itself is both Liberal, and Woke!!

It appears there some who won’t hesitate to shut down the government or who will hold up nominations of dozens or hundreds of military promotions or judgeships. They could be described as ‘political anarchists’ – something they can include on their resumés as a ‘best feature.’ Those who voted for them should be very proud.

and it looks like reality doesn’t make money fast enough

This is a potential challenge.

Facts are facts, not mine or yours, just facts

I think the problem started with non-politician “experts” who came to believe what they believed were facts, actually were facts, even if they couldn’t prove it or demonstrate they were possible.

Most people cannot discern the difference between opinions and facts.

Explaining Bidenomics at a Democrat fund raiser.

People would rather believe a lie that they know is false than accept a truth that contradicts their beliefs. It’s called self delusion and is also known as MAGA.

We all need to put away childish things.

and I can Make it rain whenever I wanted to

“The swarm of America includes the vast class of illiterates. What they are interested in is drama. The thing must be presented to them as a form of simple combat, with one side clearly right and the other clearly wrong. No one in this world has ever lost public office by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

H.L. Mencken, 19 September 1926

What? Both sides love hearing that. They just disagree on what the facts are.

don’t forget raise union wages without increasing car prices

Once again: While facts remain constant, human interpretation of, and opinions about, those facts varies widely.

“Democracy is government by the people and for the people, on the theory that the people should get the kind of government they deserve, good and hard.”

— H L Mencken or somebody like him

I’m all for the facts as long as they don’t hurt my widdle feelings

“You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.”

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” Will Rogers

That pretty much sums it up! Great toon.

Too true.

Most politicians would not know the truth if it walked right up to them and hit them in the face.

Of course they want to hear the truth, as long as it’s what they want to hear.

What happened to DUH-Man?

Well, that cleared the room fast. Hope no one was injured in the stampede.

People want to know the facts—as long as those “facts” agree with their world view. Otherwise, they’ll take a hard pass.

He got them all excited, ready for some Primo level Gaslighting.

Then, he let them down with plain old boring Truth.

Harsh. Obviously Bob has no idea how to speak to the public.

It’s just so hard to get that point across.

“Sometimes reality can be too complex to be conveyed by the spoken word. Legend remolds it into a form that can be spread all across the world.” —Alpha 60

You can’t manhandle the truth!!

Oh wow, what are you trying to do, collapse the internet. 90% of social media will evaporate with that kind of thinking.