Lio by Mark Tatulli for November 17, 2023

Most countries have laws that you can’t campaign for office until a few months before an election. In some places like Japan, 17 days.

The US makes it near endless because we have an election industrial complex. Constant fundraising, constant money being spent on ads on TV, constant ads presented during debates that last over a year. It leads to election fatigue and causes our government to spend far more time campaigning than doing their jobs. We could make it law that campaign season can be about 3 months long (statistically a reasonable amount of time because it lets you view the economy, laws, new candidates, etc) but we won’t because lawmakers also get lobbied and paid to keep the election industrial complex going.

We’re a failed state.

Just about the most terrifying thing that I have ever seen in a Lio strip!

The fault, dear Brutus , is not in our stars, But in ourselves.

Oh shoot. It is in the stars.

If one doesn’t try to help turn this anti democratic train around one forfeits their right to complain about the outcome.

Might be time to hide out with your monster friends, Lio!

I love this strip, but this is false equivalency. “Left & Right” on the screen implies the same mechanism exists on both sides to indoctrinate viewers. That’s simply not true. And before someone screams “MSNBC”, MSNBC regularly has panelists on who discuss problems in the current administration and challenges with the current President. And there are many discussions with true representatives of both ends of the spectrum, as well as other self-reflective ideas that hardly ever (perhaps never) grace the screen over at Fox News.

Distilling it down to “Left & Right” – whether in a comic strip or elsewhere – risks turning people off from politics altogether because of a false sense of “both-sides-ism.”

Okay, done. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Must be a drone show.

I’m voting for Montgomery Brewster’s “None of the Above” campaign.

We, the people are saturated with what’s on the TV screen! Period!

Wait, 2024 factorial? That’s way too big a number.

A little bit too scary today….

But you CAN turn off the t.v.!

Our fate is written in the stars…. wait that’s a formation of drones.

It is scary, isn’t it?