Makeover of 2016

And there we were, thinking Britain was going to win "the most monumentally stupid political act" for 2016.

@Andrew_C Like father like son.

@Andrew_C The Americans always have to do it bigger and better.
Like when we had major floods the other year.
America had to go and have bigger floods. With a hippopotamus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/14/georgia-floods-deaths-feared-zoo-animals-on-loose

@Epi

It's crono envy.
We're only 240 years old. Other countries keep, well, kept telling us it wasn't our time yet, because we were a baby country.
So now, we're a bi-coastal superpower, Just To Show them.

And, hey. Don't knock the sports car. That's not crono envy. That's just because all of that fattening food we've been eating tends to be, well, feminizing.

@Epi That, uh...

That's not the US.

That's the Georgia located in the Caucus. You know, formerly part of the USSR?

@Andrew_C America just says "Hold my drink." Right?

@Andrew_C
U.S always want to take one step further than anyone. If someone gets more attention then U.S they want to beat them.

@Andrew_C
Well... in Colombia we voted to stay in war with Colombia... so... there's that.

@Andrew_C Yes, but America had a Trump card!

Decided to change my profile pic, to better showcase my feelings about this

@atlachan Maybe I should change mine as well...

Nah, I still have enough faith in my country (and Congress) to keep it

@Lord_Skata with Congress, Senate, President, and soon to be Supreme Court all hard right leaning, we're going to be in serious trouble. we have no checks and balances anymore

@nbdyhome Remember that the Congress also hates Trump as being a RINO

@Lord_Skata Please, establishment Republicans have been kissing his ass for over a year. They make a little noise about this or that controversy whenever he opens his mouth, but as soon as it's out of the news they're back to puckering up.

@Lord_Skata perhaps, but some of his detractors were voted out last night while still maintaining a party majority. and RINO or not, they'll never reach across the aisle to hinder anything with their party connected to it. that's why they threatened to block any and all SCOTUS nominees from the other side and let the SCOTUS die out

I wish we had state profile pics. I'll be clinging tight to the security of my state government for the next 4 years as we try to shelter ourselves from Trump's influence.

I did not vote for Trump, and I still apologize for the hysterics by those upset he won. Its frankly embarrassing to see the way people are responding to his victory. All of the hyperbolic handwringing laments that we are suddenly super racist, and that Trump is going to single-handedly take away everyone's rights is really shameful. Sorry, Trump isn't Hitler - not even close. Clinton was the only one of the two that actually campaigned on taking rights away (second amendment anyone?).

There were TWO crap choices in this election. I am sorry that your media has shaded your perception of what Trump and Clinton actually represent - though our media really isn't that much better.

I like this strip - I really appreciate what it represents, and have learned a lot. The artist may do what he pleases, but if it is really going to become 4-8 years of "Look how horrible America is because they elected someone the media didn't like - they are clearly Hitler" - can you let me know now so I can take it out of my rotation?

I didn't vote for Trump, but of the two, I am GLAD it was him and not her. He shattered the political class on the right, and prevented the same on the left from retaining power. Now if we can just start having some real political discord in this country without defaulting to accusing those who disagree with you ask being racists (HItler comparisons? Come on...) we might make some progress.

The Electoral College exists for a reason. Without it, anyone not living in LA, New York, or Chicago should just stay home. Sorry - just because you live in the isolated world of the big city, it doesn't mean you are smarter than the rest of the country. Without the Electoral College, those voters with legitimate concerns about jobs and trade in this country would have no voice. Farmers would have no voice. Mining and industrial regions would have no voice. That is why we are a Republic and not a direct democracy, to guard against the tyranny of the majority.

@deadpool809 Well said. I didn't vote for Trump either but these reactions are ridiculous and frankly are why he succeeded. Trump got 29% of the Latino vote. Certainly not a majority but enough that anyone who thinks this was about racism needs to seriously question that.

@Amarsir 29% is one of the lowest in history. George W Bush got 40% I think. Also racism is not about how many idiots support you but about your values and actions.

@Dasneko George W Bush is fluent in Spanish and his sister-in-law was born in Mexico. He favored amnesty and as governor of Texas had many dealings with the Latino community. That he only got 40% shows how much the Democrats have that demographic locked down. Romney only got 27% .

Still, the point is not that he did particularly well with that group but that 3.8 million Hispanic men and women probably didn't interpret his "values and actions" the way you do.

@Amarsir I would not say that Bush did much for the Latino community. For starters Bush is not fluent in Spanish as far as I know. He can speak a little but he is not a full speaker.

He wanted to do immigration reform but it never went through congress. That said this immigration reform he pushes is very much a republican proposal which focuses on things like increased border guard and deportation.

'@deadpool809'
"The Electoral College exists for a reason. Without it, anyone not living in LA, New York, or Chicago should just stay home."

This is completely mathematically bankrupt logic on every level and I'm kind of amazed by it.
Without the electoral college every vote is a vote. The cities don't get big points by being big, there are no points, just raw votes.
And no this has nothing to do with why it exists. It exists partly because the original US was much more an actual federation of pseudo-countries than it was anything else. That and creepy elitist stuff about the masses needing a safeguard of wise people to cushion their dumb choices too.

"Sorry - just because you live in the isolated world of the big city,"

Big cities aren't isolated. In fact they're more along the lines of what the country actually looks like as a whole. Which goes doubly for small cities. And not at all for rural areas.

"Without the Electoral College, those voters with legitimate concerns about jobs and trade in this country would have no voice."

So your saying people from areas of higher population density don't have legitimate concerns about jobs and trade. Gosh, thats dumb.

"Farmers would have no voice."

They still don't. Farmers don't represent the majority in mostly any states. Suburbs are the main boost in conservative states.

"That is why we are a Republic and not a direct democracy, to guard against the tyranny of the majority."

The most obvious reason your wrong is that the Electoral College is based on state borders and not anything trying to spread votes into farmlands and mountains. And state borders even back then had heavily arbitrary natures to them. Who is being protected by giving the random existence of Delaware 3 electoral votes.

@deadpool809 You should CGP Grey's video on the troubles with the Electoral College.. You theory of just jumping between NYC, LA and Chicago is just mathematically wrong. Even the ten biggest cities in the US, only account for 7,9% of the population..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

@deadpool809 The reason the Electoral College was first introduced was to put the southern states on par with the northern states in terms of voting power. The northern states had a larger population of citizens who could actually vote (free men as opposed to women or slaves). The introducing the representative based Electoral Collage allowed the southern states to count their slaves as 5/8ths of a citizen and secure more votes while having less total voters

tl:dr the Electoral College is an outdated, backwards system based on racist practices

@deadpool809 I'll just leave this here. http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/news/20161109/wellsville-softball-field-dugout-marked-with-swastika-graffiti

By the way, this is in New York. Rural New York (there is more to this state than the City) but still that supposed big city liberal bastion that everyone thinks the Electoral College was created to buffer against. This is one town over from where I live too, so, yeah, this is quite literally close to home.

I am in no way saying that this incident repudiates your statement that Trump isn't Hitler, and I am in no way saying that either he or the majority of his voters are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers either. Trump's Re-Tweets of Tweets by such groups (and those of the KKK) and that official campaign publicity that had the Star of David shape on it could very well have been honest mistakes by either Trump or his campaign staff – in fact, I think that particular joke in the comic was more of a comment on Trump not knowing he was doing such things.

Trump was not pandering to these hate groups nor was he ever doing so (except perhaps for the general anti-Muslim sentiment that currently plagues our country), but there is a Nazi/Neo-Nazi population in this US and boy did he get their vote.

@deadpool809
First, sory for my english.

Russian here (yeah yeah VODKA, BALALAYKA, PUTIN and stuff), and as for me, i watched election night like a big show. Thirlling.

About hysteria - totaly agree. Situation looks like "you dont like Hillary = you're fascist"
One person cant change government in one day, or year. And Trump totaly not a Hitler. Doubt something wil fundamentally change. System itself wil not allow it. From my perspective the results of elecion means that people want changes in the situation (same as Brexit). As a citizen of a country that awaits own elections in 2018, that gives me hope that we too can change something on our corrupted system.

Also. Despite the huge differences in wiew on "how to live", i deeply respect the fact that in US, despite all the obstacles, someone can win. That's truly great and inspiring.



//Aaaaand the last thing (i supose you're intrested). I have a cold bloded mind and so the heart. I dont ether like or hate Putin. The Hitler-like (oh, again) image seems for me more like a scarecrow made by media. But he is simply a person, with own interests (trivially money, power), and some interests of Russia. He make some changes, some are good, some are bad. Now it's time to move on. We need new leader, new opinion. It's not about the tolerancy freedom and sЪt. It's about the stagnation of system.

@ttsdt Regarding Putin and Hitler: It really needs to be taken into context. As much as Putin doesn't like the comparison, moving into Crimea does have parallels with Hitler moving into the Sudetenland (and then on into the rest of Czechoslovakia). Not quite the same tactics, but certainly the same justification.

There are other comparisons that could be made, but when all is tallied up, Putin is no Hitler. He's smarter than Hitler, saner, and most importantly of all, he doesn't have any genocidal ambitions that I've heard about.

@deadpool809 I stopped reading your post after you insinuated Clinton would have tried to repeal the second amendment.

1. The fact that you can even compare a right such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom to protest with the right to own a gun is a staggeringly stupid lack of priorities on your part.

2. The president can not repeal a Constitutional amendment. Two-thirds of Congress must vote on it, and 37 states or more must ratify it. The president has absolutely no say in it. Educate yourself. People like you are why we have Trump now. Sure, you didn't vote for him, but uneducated people who thought Clinton was the devil's spawn put him in the Oval Office. Congratulations, you're part of the problem.

@niels0827
she was talking about holding gun manufacturers accountable for mass shootings. that will effectively shut them down, since they have no control over the people who buy their product. i can buy a car and ram it into a playground, doesn't mean you can hold ford accountable for me being a dumb ass .

1.) the freedom to own a gun IS comparable to the freedom of speech because they're both constitutional rights. they're so important that they're the first and second things the founding fathers included. also, the freedom to own a gun and form militias is important since it would allow you to fight back against a tyrannical government.

2.) you can't repeal the second amendment, but again, holding gun manufacturers accountable for mass shootings will shut down gun manufacturers. their product is completely legal, congress has failed to pass any sort of decent legislation to prevent crazy people from getting guns and Hillary was trying to hold the gun makers accountable for the governments Failings.

P.S. calling all trump supporters a problem, or just insulting them is what helped prevent Hillary from winning. there were too many regressive people on the left tossing out insults instead of having a respectful conversation with republicans. so republicans stopped listening, and that stopped any chance of you changing their minds. congrats, people like you are a problem.

P.P.S. I don't support trump, i just don't think he's Hitler.

@callumcree3 Pathetic. First of all, the president is the puppet of Congress, who has the ability to approve or veto whatever they throw the president's way. Second, most of the people who supported Clinton were against her position that gun manufacturers should be liable for misuse of their products. Third, single issue voters are the real problem. If somebody can justify voting for Trump solely because they perceive Clinton to be a legitimate threat to a Constitutional amendment, they are indeed the problem.

"Oh sure, he condoned racial attacks and segregation, endorsed persecution against gay people, undid our peace treaties with other countries, promised jobs he doesn't have the power to create, deregulated the banks even more, paid bribes to Wall Street officials, gropes and objectifies women, and accelerated the rapid growth of irreversible climate change, but at least I got to keep my gun!

What a sick lack of priority. You are the problem.

@niels0827
okay, it's been a while since i made the last comment so i don't quite remember what got you this riled up. i just want you to remember that shouting down trump supporters and anyone who disagrees with you helped get trump elected. nothing else to say there, i just wanted to bring up the fact that trump is going to be president and you helped that happen.

you do realize that if a president vetoes something then 2/3rds of congress has to approve it the second time around? this means that the president does have some power, and thinking the president is just a puppet makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist.

third, suing a gun manufacturer when their product gets misused is an issue, that's why i brought it up. people have different priorities, don't assume mine because it just makes you look like an asshole.

again don't know what made you think im a single issue voter or that i voted for trump, like i said earlier i forgot the comment. With that said, if a president does manage to get rid of a constitutional right then we're fucked. especially if it's the one about having weapons to fight a tyrannical government. i assume you're going to get nit picky about this last part but i honestly don't care, a constitutional right shouldn't be messed with in some roundabout way.

also, please provide evidence for each claim you've made against trump. especially how he's deregulated the banks without holding any political office just yet. also, the "grab em' by the pussy" comment is a weak argument. it's funny when people spend a year calling someone a liar then suddenly say "no we have to believe him right now, he's telling the truth". again, when did he accelerate climate change?
you're giving the guy a little too much credit.

again, i don't really know what made you think i was a single issue voter, or even that i voted for trump. please keep up the outrage, i mean it only made me resent my own party, but i'm sure it's bound to work one of these days.

@niels0827
Did you know it's legal to own a gun in Mexico?
Except, there's one gun store in Mexico, in Mexico City.
And they're booked solid.
(Not a US example, but a valid example of circumventing a law via other laws, anyway.)

Did you know it's legal to carry a concealed gun in New York City?
Except, you have to go through a bunch of expensive hoops to ask, and the local government can deny you for no reason.

Did you know you can own a "silencer" in the US?
Except, you have to buy an expensive permit, for THAT suppressor which you want to buy, (which is specific to a given caliber, by the way, no using a .223 silencer on a .30-30, you'd just tear it up,) you have to renew it periodically, at a significant cost, and it doesn't give you the legal means of transporting it to another state...even if you move states.

Did you know that laws have been written to whittle away at what is in the second amendment, all without, technically, touching the letter of the second amendment, and all it takes to undo the current interpretation is to have enough Supreme Court justices agree with you that this positive right wasn't actually intended for the citizenry?

@SeanR Your car has much more utility and is so much more beneficial to your daily life and convenience than your gun is. Yet, to own a car, you must register it and pay the associated fees, and in most states you're required, if you drive it on public roads, to have comprehensive car insurance which requires monthly payments for a service you won't actually see or get unless something bad happens. Furthermore, to operate your car, you're required to have a license which you must renew every few years, and also pay the associated fees for that, in addition to being tested on whether or not you're competent enough.

But, I don't hear you or anyone else complaining about this. You're a gun lover and you're holding a double standard. I'm a car lover and I've never complained about the legal process behind owning and driving a car. Your freedom isn't free. It comes at someone else's expense. We all have the right to life and/or protection, and the fundamental right for there to be a gun in everyone's hand is contradictory to this notion. It's called compromise. You should be able to own and use a gun if you're properly trained and competent, and not mentally unstable.

As for the second amendment itself, it was written at a time when the country had no military, and the most powerful guns could fire about one round every few seconds. Pretty pathetic to interpret it in its 1776 form today. Never mind that numerous other amendments have been overruled or injected with added specificity to clear up ambiguities that were creating loopholes. Furthermore, your disdain towards varying state laws comes from the Constitution itself, guaranteeing states the right to any powers not granted to them in the Constitution. It looks like that old document is both your best friend and your worst enemy.

@niels0827

My point is, no, she might not have "revoked" the second amendment, but she'd certainly be in a position to make it _toothless_, and she has shown an inclination to do just that. There are several ways, historically successful ways, to take the spirit out of a law without actually taking the effort of repealing it, and several have already come to pass. One example I gave is from the nation of Mexico, while the rest of the examples are domestic whittlings of the second amendment.

And for the last hundred years, the Supreme Court has required the states to abide by most of the same constitutional rules as the federal government, which is probably why Utah isn't officially Mormon.
(I, personally, don't mind that New York has such a draconian law, for themselves. It just means that's a place I don't ever want to live...like Russia,... or Sudan.)

As for the double standard. I don't have to have a driver's license to operate a vehicle UNLESS I DRIVE ON THE PUBLIC STREET. Nor is there a requirement that I insure a vehicle that is never used outside of private property.
And "Freedom isn't free" means you must constantly fight to retain freedoms or they are lost. Keeping gun grabbers out of the white house is part and parcel of that. It's not the same as "your freedom to swing your first extends only as far as the tip of my nose," although that, too, applies.

Finally, let's look at "trained and competent" again. Any sixteen year old can get a driver's license. It takes being eighteen, and a background check showing a clean record, to purchase a gun, in a gun friendly state. Who decides what qualifies as "trained and competent"? I keep remembering back to the Jim Crow poll tests when I hear people say that about guns. If given the opportunity, certain politicians, heck, a good chunk of the nation, would require a prospective gun owner have a virtual master's degree in gun us in order to qualify. Like asking a black man to prove he can read Latin before he can vote in elections. It would quickly devolve into a thinly guised mechanism for disarming just about everyone. That NY CCL permitting system is designed to drive off would be CCL permit seekers by including a test that covers such a broad range of errata that very few people can hope to pass. If a sixteen year old had to pass a similarly difficult written driver's examination test to qualify only bus and truck drivers would be on the road today. At least legally. But the individual _privilege_ to drive is so popular that no one would institute a more difficult test for fear of losing the next election. (I, personally, think those tests are coming, just as soon as the machines are reliably better than human drivers, and as commonplace as air bag equipped cars are today.)

@SeanR All your arguments revert back to the same exact problematic concept: the right to own a gun is held to the same caliber as your right to free speech, freedom of religion, the press, privacy, a fair trail, etc. Such lunacy. Responsible people own guns in many developed countries around the world where there is no supreme law guaranteeing them this privilege. Even Australians can own guns if they have a legitimate use for them, but there is no legitimate use for assault rifles other than mass murder, so they ban them.

First off, the Supreme Court forces states to adhere to the Constitution. The federal government must also do this. No state can declare an official religion. It violates the First Amendment. No government agency may endorse any religion. States are not sovereign nations, no matter how much anyone wants them to be.

You need to jump through so many more loopholes to own a gun and related peripherals because unlike cars, guns were designed for the sole purpose of harming and killing people. Misusing cars can lead to injury or death, but relative to the total instances of usage, there is no comparison. Additionally, guns can go just about anywhere cars cannot, such as inside buildings.

"If a sixteen year old had to pass a similarly difficult written driver's examination test to qualify only bus and truck drivers would be on the road today."

Seriously? Then who would be driving the trucks and buses? They would practice, study, and reapply when they're older and more competent. Frankly, no 16-year-old should be driving if you ask me, personally, but your own comment implies only 16-year-olds can apply.

But perhaps most perplexing is your comparison of a would-be gun owner or permit seeker being rigorously tested on how to use something they're actually fucking hoping to use, with someone being forced to learn a language completely irrelevant to the voting process in order to vote. It sounds like your problem is the methodology and criteria by which would-be gun owners and CCL permit seekers are judged by, rather than with the existence of gun control in the first place. If prospective gun owners or CCL permit seekers are tested on anything other than the proper use, maintenance, and hazards of firearms and their mental health, and all that's associated with it, then your issue is purely with local administration.

And by all means, go ahead and stay out of New York. But to compare it to Russia or Sudan is utterly laughable. New York sure exceeds any flyover state's standards of living for anyone who isn't trigger happy.

@niels0827

Yes. My right to own a gun is enshrined in the constitution, right along side and coequal with my right to speak my mind, worship as I choose, not having the government making me provide room and board for soldiers, not have the government digging through my stuff without a VERY good reason (that they can articulate to a judge), not letting the government force me to confess to a crime, regardless of whether I did it or not, not having to prove my innocence again, and again, until the government gets it right, not being tried by a judge, and only a judge, without my say so, not being forced to pay too much for whatever it was I might have done, or being tortured for my indiscretion, and all the rest.

Point two. We agree. That's a surprise.

You need to jump through so many loopholes because, unlike cars, there is a constitutional protection to the ownership of guns, so it takes loopholes to achieve the goal of disarmament.
I don't want some crazy to own a gun, either, but if the government, or more specifically, the anti-gun portion of the legislature or bureaucracy, is allowed to decide what constitutes "crazy", they WILL use it, in the same manner as poll tests of old, to restrict gun ownership for the purpose of restricting gun ownership rather than ensuring competence. Refusing the government that leeway is only common sense.

And as to "assault weapons".
First of all, US Citizens are already incapable of buying any but a very small, and dwindling, supply of true military arms. With full auto capability.
And that is wrong, because the point of the Second Amendment was that the citizenry would have arms the equivalent of soldiers, (so they could be drafted with their own guns, of course.) By restricting the citizen to only "sporting" guns, you neuter the point of the second amendment.

Would you agree to teaching all eighteen year olds how to handle a gun, as part of Civics class? We could ensure competence that way. Everyone should know how to shoot, and shoot straight. (And when not to.)

As for New York. They may have a higher standard of living, by some metric, but I'd rather live with fewer luxuries, (like reliable internet,) than live in a less-free place, such as New York City or Russia, (or Sudan.)
(Although, to be fair, where I live probably isn't really that much "freer" than New York. Just freer in ways I'm inclined to participate in. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are all that considerate about following the fist-nose limit on legislating the behavior of others. Both want to tell you how to live your life and woe unto you if you want to live your life differently. I fully equate the deliberate campaign to post the Ten Commandments outside the state capitol with the campaign of shutting down any business that refuses to cater specifically to the interests of LGBT persons on equal protection grounds. Both are violations of the first amendment.)

@SeanR Okay, if we concede that having guns is part of Americans legal rights and stay as they are, what can we do to protect people from those who could use their guns for negative, i.e. mass shootings, purposes?

@beteljuice01
Most effectively would be to make sure both sides continue to have guns. The mass shootings we've had don't tend to be in places where the people who "belong" there are armed.
Where we've had mass shootings are schools, where usually even the teachers, (who pass a pretty rigorous background check, so are pretty reliably sane,) are unarmed.
Dark theaters that are devoid of guns, (by the order of the owners,) in cities that are anti-gun, (by order of the city council.)
And crowded bars with poor visibility and lots of flashing lights.
Okay, arming a bunch of drunks remains a bad idea.
There have also been some shootings at churches. Some ended when an unexpected parishioner, who had a gun, ended it, reducing the body count by adding the shooter to it. In any case, another place where the people are not expected to be capable of returning fire.

@SeanR I'm very eager for you to present to me one example of a libertarian utopia that exists today and is thriving (hint: the former doesn't exist anywhere, so neither does the latter). And I'm absolutely convinced you would not live in Russia or Sudan if offered. I've spent time in both St. Petersburg and Khartoum, and your kind wouldn't last five minutes.

I already stated what one of the biggest flaws in your thinking is, and you just confirmed it again. You hold the right to own a gun in equal light to the right to free speech, religion, protest, privacy, etc. simply because it's in the Constitution. Had the right to bear arms been absent, I don't think you'd be taking your privilege to own a firearm so seriously. Had none of the aforementioned been guaranteed to us, I don't think you'd consider owning a gun to be as important as the freedom to say what you want. Not unless you're power hungry.

Third, you express a distrust of the government and use this as a justification for your desire to possess a gun. The government is run by people. People are regulated in the developed world by laws because they act within their own best interest when such legislation doesn't exist. Now imagine if everyone in the country had a gun. How could they further their own interests with a gun in their hand? It's your, and everyone's, responsibility to elect those who represent us and not themselves. So far, most of this pathetic country has done a terrible job of doing this. Congress has an 11% approval rating and a 96% re-election rate. But I digress. Absolutely nowhere else in the developed world are so many people as a percentage of our population killed unnecessarily by guns. And much of the reason is because this country has a sick obsession with guns and is the only such country to guarantee every one of its citizens something to kill people with.

And finally, even if the second amendment was intended to provide citizens with access to arms equivalent to those used by the military, how is this relevant today? The military provides soldiers with these very weapons, and there is no need for them outside the battlefield. You can use a rifle for hunting and sport, or a pistol for self defense. But absolutely nobody outside the military has any business with an AK or an AR15.

@niels0827
No utopia exists. Period.
However, show me where the right to privacy is enshrined in the constitution. There's a right to being secure in your papers, yes, so long as Your papers are in Your possession on Your property. Your email account doesn't enjoy those protections.

I hold the right to bear arms as equal to the others because it BACKSTOPS the others.
Oh, and an AR makes a handy deer rifle. An AK, with it's larger bullet, makes a better one.

@niels0827
To sum up.
You said it's not like she can revoke the second amendment.
I said she could do enough damage that it might as well be revoked, and here's how it's been done before.
Your response to that was, why should we still have guns in the first place?
Well, I've answered, from my perspective.

It's almost as if you wanted the question as to how left unanswered, because you had already decided on the why.
Wait. You had decided on the why. That was point one.

@niels0827 Not to jump in here, but I get the feeling that you miss the point of the second amendment.

SeanR has repeatedly stated that, yes, he does hold the second amendment equal to the rest of them. This isn't just because it was written in the paper with the others. I'm sure you've heard the quote about how an armed populace is the final defense against a corrupt government, right? So here's an example:

Let's assume Hillary Clinton won the presidency, and all the right's misgivings about her have no basis in reality. She's actually a woman who wants nothing more than the best for her country, and one of the ways she thinks she can make her people safer is by increasing gun control. She obviously can't repeal the second amendment, but she certainly can make it harder to buy guns. One of the ways she does so is legislate into existence a no-fly list, and require that gun dealers adhere to said no-fly list. If you have any of a list of mental disorders (depression and psychopathy come to mind as possible examples), you are immediately placed on said no-fly list because you are too mentally unstable to own a gun. This is done without any semblance of due process, any guns you own when diagnosed are confiscated, and you aren't allowed to buy any new guns or appeal to recover your old ones until a certified psychologist pronounces you mentally stable. Since, in this scenario, Hillary Clinton is a genuinely well-meaning woman, she doesn't abuse the powers she has handed herself, and four to eight years later leaves it at that.

A few election cycles later, the law has still not been repealed, and someone sketchier comes along. This person promises and promises, and some people have a sinking feeling about him. But it's not enough. There's no substantial evidence he's bad news, and he promises a lot of things people want. So he gets elected. And it's not his first move, or even his tenth, but eventually he expands the list of mental disorders that can prevent you from owning a gun to include more things. And every time there's a tragedy with a gun involved, he makes the list just a little bit bigger. But maybe people are wrong about him, too. Maybe he means well. But it doesn't have to be him, does it?

Over time, the noose draws tighter and tighter. Eventually, someone quietly adds a 'mental disorder' to the list, where one of the defining symptoms is simply the desire to own a gun. Weapons have no use outside of violence, after all. Why would a sane person want or need one? And so every one of America's gun owners are disarmed, not overnight, but over the many, many years in-between. And, now that the population is properly helpless, someone in a future election cycle turns their attention to other rights. Whittling away at the freedom of speech, for example, or the freedom of religion. There are plenty of millennials who would be happy to see them go. Remove the protections for those Christian supremacists, or make political correctness something required by law. No more people spreading anti-LGBT+ hate, or trampling over some poor nonbinary person's feelings by making assumptions about their gender. Wouldn't that be such a wonderful world?

Some people see what this soon to be dictator is doing, of course. And they aren't surprised when the new restrictions grow and grow until they have no rights at all. They want to do something about it. But they have no weapons. They were all taken away. They are helpless beneath the foot of a tyrant, and all because someone added in a law and didn't wonder what would happen when - not if, but when - someone came along who wanted to take advantage of it.

@deadpool809

"All of the hyperbolic handwringing laments that we are suddenly super racist"

You DO realize that in a number of areas, Klansmen were actually celebrating in the streets?

@deadpool809

"The Electoral College exists for a reason. Without it, anyone not living in LA, New York, or Chicago should just stay home."

The Electoral College actually works AGAINST smaller states, as more populous states receive more electoral votes, and states with smaller populations receive less electoral votes. The Electoral College, in other words, is actually the system that works to deprive more remote regions of a voice.

@Grubadubdub

That's certainly the way it's worked lately, but it was formed to give less populous states a minimum guaranteed representation.
A bloc of California voters certainly trumps, (no pun intended,) a block of Montana voters, but one Montana voter's vote is worth significantly more, in theory, than one Californian's vote.

Really, we, the smaller states, (I'm not in Montana, incidentally,) should break out of the Blocs, if only to attract presidential candidate interest. Like Nebraska did.

@SeanR

I'd argue that at present point, if our government upped their standards for information security, we'd be at a point where we could effectively drop the electoral system all together, and move to direct voting. And I think the country would be better for it.

The problem is that our federal government has shown a remarkable willingness to stick their collective heads in the sand when it comes to matters of information security whether out of ignorance, unwillingness to spend the money to upgrade security, or a mixture of both.

@Grubadubdub
I want to see a Condorcet method, myself.
Ranked Pairs looks good.

@SeanR

I'm not familiar with that system, but now I'm curious. I'll have to look it up!

@deadpool809 You know, I am really tired of replying to Trump supporters on the internet, but whatever, here's a list of rebuttals with terrible grammar because I am sick and tired of saying the same thing over and over

1) Clinton was not trying to take your guns, she was campaigning for gun control because there are a lot of idiots who don't need firearms

2) This is the 2nd comic in this entire webcomic that deals with the US election, honestly, I was surprised there wasn't more, with our influence I figured everyone was following our election, if not for the politics at least for the entertainment

3) Just because the system is flawed does not mean you destroy it. You need to have a plan to replace what you are uprooting otherwise you will be worse than what you're replacing. The problem is nobody bothered to ask what his plan was. Can you even name some of the president-elect's tax policies? Also, have you looked at his cabinet picks? His first ones were an establishment republican and a white nationalist. Where the hell is this great change, because all the change I am seeing is taking the worst of both worlds.

4) The whole point of the electoral college is to force people to care about the less populous states. Unfortunately, this means that people living in those populous states are being thrown away, and thanks to the electoral college it fails to force candidates to go to smaller states as well. Mathematically one person from Wyoming’s vote is worth 4 Californian votes, and one Vermont vote is worth 3 Texan votes in the electoral college. (check out this graph to see how messed up it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#/media/File:State_population_per_electoral_vote.png) What the hell makes a person from Wyoming's vote more important than a person from California's vote? "Oh, California has the 6th largest GDP in the world, so their votes should count less", do you know how terrible that sounds? Also, if the point of the electoral college was to make presidential candidates care more about the smaller states, it does a terrible job. Instead of focusing on the small states and the large states equally, presidential candidates spend all their time in swing states, ignoring the rest of the country.

By the way, if you want a more in depth look at how the electoral works, watch this video from CGP Grey who gives a good overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw

this is another video of his that explains the problems with the electoral college
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

@deadpool809
Hi as a scandinavian i just need to get one thing explained to me.
you wrote:
"I didn't vote for Trump, but of the two, I am GLAD it was him and not her. " in scandinavia people usually vote for the person they want to win so the above sentence dont make much sence in my world ?. Is it a statement based on voting blank is great cause both sucks ? Because i stricktly believe that you should atleast vote for the option you find the lesser of two evils if thats how you see it.
Yours Dama

@deadpool809 Oh but we do know about Clinton. We didn't "like" her either, she's a warmonger and from a center right party representing the interests of some millionaires. The idiocy here is throwing a tantrum to protest your establishment and electing a racist fascist millionaire with little regard to your so-called democracy. Nobody thought half of the american voters would be so puerile, the choice was pretty straightforward.

And Trump isn't Hitler... YET. Read about the early rise of the Nazi party in Germany, the similarities are frightening.

If you are GLAD that now the full military power of the US lies in the little hands of a man that does not care about truth and facts, points towards ethnical minorities as the enemies and calls a whole nation rapists and murderers, you are a RACIST. That's the exact name. It doesn't feels comfortable realizing you are a racist? then don't be one!

@deadpool809 As a ex-Republican, i know good and well trump isn't hitler. The explicitly anti-minority rhetoric and appeals to delegitimize media accountability, dubious developments but not nearly the same.
What worries me is that i do understand what the GOP is, and trump is a far fling from the more centrist root of the party. I personally think the end result of this, a massive shakeup and breaking of the system, will in the end be a good thing, but there will be a LOT of difficulty to come, with political jarring the equal to the 8 year roadblock against obama now reversed against trump.
The electoral college, and the distribution of senators/reps is just patently undemocratic and moreso outdated. When the system was begun, the smallest state was 5% the population of the largest, even with slave counting. Today, that gap between smallest and largest has quintuppled, and whereas before there were 2-3 truly small states compared to the large ones, now nearly half the country is vastly overpowered. The fact that a single Wyomingite equates to 3-4 californians for the electoral college is ridiculous. Besides that, the fact that California can equal the population of enough other states that their 2 senators preside over as many people as over 30 others is LUDICROUS.
At this point the factor is that, like the old elites, the system has been giving states that don't nearly equal production, population, or GDP far greater power is why election maps can look like a red tide. We need to open the cap on representatives and distribute evenly, and quite possibly rethink the senate cap to not be overwhelmingly biased

So... this is what it felt like when Delores Umbridge took over Hogwarts. :-/

@BellaU2 I think Hillary Clinton would have resembled Umbridge far more.

@BGMan Trump is a less competent version of voldemort for me, but agree with you, Clinton is definitely Umbridge.

One of the reasons Trump got to be popular is exactly because he isn't a politician, and that apparently means he's automatically for the little guy citizens instead of another bought-by-corporations crook.

Never mind that he is one of those corporate crooks. And it could be said that he isn't really a very good businessman, since despite plastering his name on buildings and luxury products and presenting himself on "reality TV" as a master business mogul and cultivating an image of super high-class products and refined high society staples, his steaks and vodka and menswear line are reported to be quite mediocre and his hotels and resorts have lost billions and he only stayed afloat thanks to those very same big business-favoring tax loopholes and bailouts that caused the economic disaster in 2007-2008.

It should be noted that Hillary Clinton is leading in popular votes, so boasts that he was elected by the overwhelming will of the people are false.

@Dan Well, while I think we can both agree on the American system being completely undemocratic, with the "Winner takes it all". I would like to note that, that the amount of votes that made the difference in the popular vote really isn't that much. It's a 0.1%. Which is extremely small.

@Dan She got 198,400 more votes, but he did win by the will of the people due to that is how your system works. Otherwise politicians wouldn´t care about catering to anyone but the areas with most inhabitants.

@Dan The fact that he won the popularity vote on election day says otherwise my friend

@Dan

Well you have to give the guy some slack as tax loopholes cant make your net worth 4 billion dollars can it? The guy has atleast some business-sense as he owns a lot of companies and knows how to run a company even if that company goes to shit and again 4 billion dollars is a lotta money. The man will not ruin america's economy he will probably help it by minimizing cost and maximizing profit by removing Obamacare and eldercare and a lot of other care programs.

Is that good? No that is horrible but what can you expect from a REPUBLICAN the right in america has always wanted those things gone and so does he but what really impresses me about Trump? The guy knows how to keep the media eye on him, ISIS? Everyone talked about it for a while then poof gone, ebola? talked about for a little while then gone, crimea? Talked about for a little while then gone. And it goes on and on like Greece and many other things everyone just forgot about.

But not Trump, the man has been in the medias eye for a year and a half now and it is still on him so you know what? That is fucking genius! The man probably does all this insane shit to keep the media on him so that people see him and then people care about him and bam people vote for him.

And that was all probably a ramble but eh i got my opinion out.

There's a lot of problems with America that sets it apart from the rest of the industrialised world.
But one of the basic ones is a lack of choice. For all it's talk of free market and diversity, the American political system is badly broken since it only offers the "choice" between two right-wing party's.
One - the Democrats - that any European recognise as a regular centre-right party from their parliaments, and the other - the Republicans - an extreme right party that for decades have only become more extreme with it's thinly veiled racism and outright obstructionism.
There is no political left represented in mainstream American politics - that choice is not available.
And as a result America is the only nation in the industrialised word that still doesn't have basic provisions for all of it's people - like universal healtcare.

The idea that all citizen in a state should have the right to certain basic provisions - like healtcare, pensions, paid sick- and maternity leave, free education, paid vacation time and so on is a socialist idea. The political right fought this idea tooth and nail in every country in the world but they were implemented by the political left when they came to power. In America the left have never come to power, and as a result American citizens are still not afforded the basic, universal right we in the rest of the industrialised world take for granted.

No right wing politician in Europe would ever dare to question or threaten every citizens right to publicly funded healtcare - even if some of them might actually like to abolish it. Because every country in Europe offers one or more left-wing party as a choice for it's electorate to vote for and any right-wing party threatening the basic social safety-net of it's citizens know they would be punished heavily at the ballot box.

America is the richest nation in the entire history of the world and could easily afford the same level of care for it's citizens as the rest of the industrialised world already does and in most cases have done for decades, but there is no political party willing to actually fight for that.
For decades both American party's have demonised socialist policy's as akin to Soviet Russia. The Democrats, to their credit, have implemented some programs like Medicaid and tried to implement others but have never actually wanted or dared to make the case that some socialist policy's are not only good economically but also morally right. The stigma of the socialist bogeyman always keeps the American political debate far right of anything we are used to in Europe.

So while ordinary people in the rest of the industrialised word have enjoyed all the benefits of these policy's for decades, ordinary Americans are working longer hours for less pay with the threat that if they become ill or laid of the will probably go broke over the costs. Many young people can't afford higher education or is saddled with unbearable amounts of debt, pensioners can't afford their medication and so on.

And Americans accept this inequality because they either don't know how different life is in the rest of the industrialised world, or they don't believe the facts. Because the Republicans and the right-wing media have for decades been spreading complete lies about the rest of the world, telling their voters that they should be lucky to live in such an awesome country since everywhere else is so much worse and less free.

But that's nonsense of course! The average western European enjoys as much freedom as the average American (apart from maybe the freedom to buy a gun at your local supermarket), their economies have not suffered, the people are not poorer or live in worse conditions then their American counterparts, they're not less educated, feed or healthy.
In many metrics many other countries instead surpass America, which is not no 1 in everything - whatever the Republican propaganda says.

Instead of providing the same basic safety-net as the rest of the industrialised world America has one of the largest income and wealth disparities in the world. Not the largest amount of billionairs per capita - several countries (including those socialist hellholes Norway and Sweden which the Republicans love to demonise) has more. No, but America has the very richest of the rich. Extremely few people in America own more of the country's entire wealth then anywhere else in the industrialised and democratic world.

That's where the wealth of the richest country in the history of the world goes - to the very few at the absolute top. And many of them spend part of that money on supporting politicians who ensure that the rules will never change.

Trump will in no way change this since he is (or at least pretends to be - we don't know since he refused to release his taxreturns) one of these people him self. Ordinary Americans will continue to be screwed by their own country - the only thing Trump will offer his voters is the schadenfreude of seeing Latinos and Muslims being screwed even worse.

And so it will continue, with ordinary American beings screwed by the rich elites and the only two party's available to them. The Democrats offering some ointment for the populace's sore arse, the Republicans offering to screw some other poor sod even harder then they screw their voters.
But none of them are advocating for a any policy that would fundamentally change the situation and drag America into the 21 century where it could join the rest of the industrialised world.
No, because that would be socialism and that's baaaad...

@Nisse_Hult While I don't actually have any argument with most of what you said, I think it says more about you than us that you think that public welfare policies are a Universal RIGHT, and not a privilege. I think most of what you said has to do with differences in our perceptions on the role of government. Many of the industrialized nations you referred see government as the caretaker of the country and its people. While there are many in our nation that subscribe to this view, the majority view our government's role as more as the enforcer of order and law instead of the caretaker of the people.

@InfernalDrake117

"I think it says more about you than us that you think that public welfare policies are a Universal RIGHT, and not a privilege. I think most of what you said has to do with differences in our perceptions on the role of government."

It's not actually a question of what I personally believe vs. the US. This is the law of the land in EVERY industrialised, democratic, nation on earth except the US. The US is the anomaly here - it's the only industrialised, democratic, nation never to have had a left wing government and also the only country that doesn't provide a basic social safety-net to all it's citizen as a right.
And this is of course no coincident but as you say depends on the perception of the role of government. A perception which in America is formed by the fact that you don't even have a left-wing party as part of your political discussion but two right-wing parties. No one is speaking for the principles that are commonly accepted in the rest of the world so of course your perception is different.

As you rightly say the political right wing sees government as the enforcer of law and order because that's what suits their interest. The political right represent the moneyed interest - the rich elites - and they need the government to protect their personal property and wealth so they want the government to do only that.
But since they are independently wealthy they can personally buy whatever they need and therefore see absolutely no need for any social safety-net that cover all citizens. "I have what I need so screw everybody else" is their underlying principle.

While the political left in the rest of the industrialised world believe that a nation has a moral obligation (not to mention that it's also smart policy both economically and socially for a host of reasons) to give all it's citizens a basic chance in life. Not everyone has the fortune like Donald Trump to be born into wealth and be set for life from the day they are born. Most people in any country don't and they at some point in life will need support to get by.
There are differing opinions as to exactly how much help the society should provide each individual, but as I say the basic provisions like universal healthcare is acknowledged as a RIGHT in every other industrialised, democratic, nation on earth - except the US.

You provide the usual right-wing counter-point to this here by trying to paint this as something negative. Be it by trying to brand this as a "caretaker" or "nanny" state or trying to paint people who use any support of the government as "moochers" or "freeloader" - implying that they are in fact just lazy persons who could provide for themselves but choose not to.
Implying or directly stating that any nation that choose to implement a universal safety-net would suffer terrible consequences for doing so.

Now if that had been true, all the other countries in the world that have version of these systems would have been miserable failures - but they aren't.
Just look at a few country-by-country comparisons and the US is clearly not some shining example for others to follow.

Median per capita income - the US is 6:th in the world and all five countries with higher median per capita income have a social safety-net as a right for all it's citizens (Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland).
The US has the highest cost for healthcare per capita in the world, spending one and a half the amount of the closest nation which amounted to 17,6% of your total GDP in 2010 (and it's still growing). Still it doesn't have the best care by far, which can be seen by stats like:
Life expectancy - the US ranks 31:st in the world, just below Costa Rica
Child mortality rates - the US has higher child mortality not only then all of western Europe but also countries like Cuba

So the socialist principle of maintaining a social safety-net for all citizens as a right clearly works and produces better results compared to the American example.

As I mentioned before both Norway and Sweden also has more billionairs per capita then the US so the taxes that are required to pay for this safety-net doesn't mean people can't become independently wealthy in countries with this safety-net.
The difference is - as I stated before - that the low taxes on the really rich means that in America a handful of people are INCREDIBLY rich. So rich it's hard to actually express in just words, so here is a video with some charts to go with the words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Now that's where Americas wealth goes. That's why America - the richest country in the history of the world - is basically broke and the political right pretend that a social safety-net that covers all citizens as a right is some "pie in the sky" dram that can never be realized. The money is there - it's just in the hand of the extremely small number of super-rich who uses part of that wealth to support politicians of both major parties to ensure that this inequality will never change.

And with no political party that questions this fundamental inequality and stands up for the socialist principle that every citizen has a right to a decent chance in life it will never change, unless by the means inequality like this have always been resolved historically - which is by revolutions.
Both the French revolution and the Russian revolution where products of enormous inequality that eventually lead the people to desperate action.
Here is an American billionair making that exact point in a Ted Talk about inequality in America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPiLE2Box2w

Read what I have written here and watch the videos I linked to above - it would be interesting to see what you think after that.

@Nisse_Hult
Hmm.
I've heard it said that the difference between our peoples is the Europeans still think in terms of a feudal mindset rather than an individualistic one. That a person is ranked in a way, owing fealty up the line, and being cared for down the line. I don't know if this is true, but it made sense in the context of the argument where I heard it, (about jobs).

A quick check of Google shows that the US spends 3.3% of GDP on defense. Large parts of that are spent in Europe. France is 2.1, Germany is 1.2, Italy is 1.3. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union
Going down the second link. Denmark...isn't reported. Estonia is 1.98, Finland, Russia's neighbor, is 1.33, Greece is 2.23, Ireland is 0.48, Only the UK comes close to the US spending, at 2.17 percent of GDP.

On Social Services. Hmm. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG
The US is 19.3% of GDP. Finland is 30.8, Estonia is 17.4, France is 31.5, Germany is 25.3, Ireland is 16.1, Greece is 27.0.
UK comes in at 21.5% of GDP.

Germany spends 21 times what it spends on defense, on social services.
France spends 15 times what it spends on defense, on social services.
Finland spends 23 times what it spends on defense, on social services.
Greece spends 12 times what it spends on defense, on social services.
Netherlands spends better than 18 times what it spends on defense, on social services.

I guess we could demobilize our overseas bases, especially those in Germany and Finland, and focus on social services, if it'd make you happier.
There was a quote once.
" A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage. "

The attribution on the quote is somewhat in question.

I'd argue that a strong "safety net", such as you enjoy, is one of those gifts from the treasury. It takes a strong will to not reach into the cookie jar.

@SeanR

I've told you once and I'll tell you just one more time - could you just stop interupting other peoples conversation by spamming your views everywhere?
I'm having a conversation with InfernalDrake117, not you. I'm interested in his opinion - not yours.
You've already sabotaged the discussion I had with MiskisM by pretending to know what he "really" meant and writing about completely unrelated things and now you're doing it again here.
Log of for a while and work on your people skills. Other peoples conversations are not an open invitation for you to join at will and spam your opinions all over, ok?
Go write your own comment and see if anyone is interested in talking to you there because I'm not.

Also, Finland is neutral so the US don't have any bases there that you can treathen to withdraw.

@Nisse_Hult The US enjoyed a brief golden age of social progress with President FDR, then it sputtered on for a while longer as Presidents JFK, LBJ, and Nixon tried to extend that legacy.

Then enter Ronald Reagan and the rise of conservatism and reactionary rhetoric, where any sort of progress was labeled "filthy communist" and abandoned in favor of pumping money into the military and the super-rich (because it all trickles down in the end!). It all sort of went downhill from there.

@skx0221

Yes, that's a concise description. The rise of neoliberalism and the theory of trickle-down economics (which was brought into mainstream politics by the Reagan-administration) has increased inequality in all of the industrialised world. But nowhere are the effects seen more acutely in the political discourse then in America since they simply don't have a political left to even counter this rhetoric. The left in all of the industrialised world have been affected by neoliberalist theories too, but they have never completely abandoned the basic premise that a social safety-net is the right of every citizen.

Last night, my country experienced some form of collective insanity.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof'
To be fair, it has experienced it at least couple hundreds of years. Or should have, at least.

I'm African-American, I've traveled to both Europe and the Middle East, and I voted for Trump.

I don't think anyone that voted for Hillary read the Wikileaks releases or listened to any of her speeches seriously. She was advocating for the US to establish a No-Fly Zone over Syria, which would involve getting into a war with Russia. I hate the idea of WWIII or anything involving nukes. She also revealed in her emails that she admitted lying to the public about her polices was okay and that she accepted money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, despite knowing full well that both of them are actively funding ISIS. The Clintons also wrecked Haiti for many years to come and their Foundation accepted well over $6 billion in charity funds that it never gave to disaster stricken Haiti. If you add that to the $6 billion missing under her watch as SecState, there's well over $12 billion dollars that has just gone missing under her watch. To put that in perspective, the low ball cost estimates to establish a colony on the moon are around $10 billion.

Clinton advocated censoring certain opposing media and news outlets just because their point of view was different and also wanted to take away gun rights of American citizens. She wanted to raise taxes on us and use our American tax dollars to bring in migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, which we here in America are watching destroy European countries and assault European women. Sweden's rape rate is now comparable to an African country. This has only shown us ever more so much why we need our 2nd Amendment right.

Also, Clinton's mentor was a man named Robert Byrd, who was a grand cyclops of the KKK, whom she said represented the "heart of America" and was a great leader at his funeral. Trump can't control who endorses him, but at least he denounces the support the KKK gives him and distances himself from them. Trump actually loves black hip hop culture and many black actors/artists/athletes. Every time we've elected the Democrats they make great promises and then leave the black communities in the dirt, which is why they've been voting blue for 40 years and only keep getting worse. I'm sorry but your liberal news media outlets' attempts to portray our liberal left as angels and our conservative right as evil are just full of shit lies. They lie to you and hide just as much from you as our liberal news media does. A certain Wikileaks email revealed our major corporate news (CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, and others...) receive direct money from Clinton to do so. She literally bought out our media and now they won't tell the truth and everyone knows it!

Also, the main advocates for censorship and intolerance in the West now have become our liberal leftists. Only liberal leftists have been closing dialogue and censoring those who disagree with them. Our other side in our country was not allowed to have a voice because if they disagree they would be slapped with the label of racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe ect... Only those who disagreed with liberals risked losing their jobs, business, social isolation, and now we're seeing straight violence just for voicing a different opinion. That's why they stayed silent right up until they got to the voting booth. The liberals preach tolerance, but then become absolutely INTOLERANT of every other point of view. They preach against hate and bigotry, but will be quick to blame all Trump voters over the actions of a few (like the KKK), which is over generalization and prejudice... you know... just like racism is. They will preach against hate, but they will be quick to hate and insult those that disagree with them, which is exactly what this comic above is trying to do. Americans were sick of it and sick of our political establishment using it to their advantage while they passed laws draining our wallets of money. We voted against that!

I'm really REALLY glad Trump won. He may be an asshole, an absolute MAJOR asshole, but at least he'll be an asshole for American citizens. We need to try to make his faults work for us, not repeatedly insult him and hope he fails. Feel free to draw him like that for the next 4 years (maybe 8 years) as much as you want. I actually LIKE the way America looks now.

@BlackOwl There's also a petition circulating asking the electoral college to elect Hillary anyway. I shudder to think what will happen if it gets listened to.

@tomyironmane I've seen that and it's highly unlikely. Over 99% of electors have gone the way of their state's voters since the electoral college's existence. The Electoral College was made so a few populous states couldn't team up and enslave the other states by outvoting them. Trump has 306 votes to Clinton's 232. That means they would have to convince a huge chunk of electors to betray all of their states and hand their votes to Clinton, when less than 1% of these electors has ever done that before.

The basis the petition was made off of was also that Hillary won the popular vote when that might not even be the case. Not all of the votes have been counted yet last I checked and apparently there's still more Trump votes projected to come in.

@BlackOwl
Very well said!

@BlackOwl Hillary Clinton is leading the popular vote by a little under a million votes. You're right that some ballots have yet to be counted; for example, California reported it still has as many as 4 million votes left to count. But is it any mystery which way the liberal bastion of California, which has overwhelmingly voted Democratic in both presidential and congressional elections for the past 20 years, will have cast its votes?

@skx0221 There's a lot of debate about that. The United States is not a true Democracy. It's a Republic, which means we have rules in place to protect the lesser guys from the rule of the mob. California is by far the most populous state and if the president was picked based on the popular vote, both candidates would have had to change their campaign strategies so much to a point where they would be spending most of their time in Chicago, New York, Miami, and California. The other states virtually wouldn't even matter.

Our Republic has the electoral college in place to make sure that votes across the entire US actually matter and play a part in the process.

@BlackOwl That's a good idea on the Framers (back to their whole debate about how to make the small states matter), but it's not without its faults.

With the electoral system now, candidates are courting votes from the more "vote-dense" states—that is, states where each vote counts way more because of the small population. This has led to all sorts of subsidies, like corn, ethanol, etc that don't really benefit anyone in the entire country except those few states.

Also, with the electoral college, candidates can "game" the system by pouring all efforts and appeasements into the swing states. Those few swing states get all the attention and policy promises, while the states considered "safe," like California and NE for the Democrats and Texas and the Bible Belt for Republicans, are wholly ignored.

@BlackOwl You win the best post for this entire comic. It's like europoors are losing their shit because someone they don't like won a democratic process.

@JTS_ Well, your new president-elect has explicitly stated he'd like to buttrape Europe and NATO with a huge burning torch in the shape of a cactus. Simply because he doesn't know anything about it and he doesn't care to learn about it. Which is plain stupidity as Europe is the USA's best partner and ally in this world and also provides a half a billion people strong market for American products, if TTIP would have been signed. Which Trump refuses to do, as he doesn't understand it and thus hates it. So typically American nowadays. I bet he was more occupied with finding ways of dating his own daughter.

The biggest issue with this election is that it isn't about choosing the most suitable candidate, but about throwing all sorts of bullshit on the internet and elect the one who's least destroyed by it. It's a hateful, negative campaign. As said, typical for America these days. It has nothing left of the greatness and positivism you could find there about 50 years ago.

So don't be too surprised if we in Europe don't really fancy this man...

@ImportViking I just want you to know, I really don't give a fuck what you Europeans think. We've paid the bill for your defense for the past half century while you never really carried your weight. We solved your problems for you, even spent money on you when we gained little to no benefits except having a stable Europe to not worry about. It would have made common sense if you gave us a break economically or at least paid us, but you competed with us on the economic front. I can't blame you because it benefits you, but don't expect any warm feelings from me. We carried you guys through the entire past half century.

No military alliance should ever be permanent. NATO has served its purpose. Now it's time we shook hands and take some time apart. Doesn't mean we can't still be friends.

@BlackOwl Thanks, but there is absolutely no need to reconfirm what I just stated about how Americans are nowadays: arrogant, lack of historical knowledge, hateful and not interested in facts at all. All of what you state is pure bullshit and factual nonsense.

@BlackOwl I'm sorry I accidentally reported you. I was trying to upvote. Don't know how I did that. Again sorry.

@ghostfox69 No worries

@BlackOwl Enjoy the Kool-Aid, BlackOwl. I'm sure there will be more. It already looks like your savior will be backpedaling on a number of his grandiose campaign platforms. Most presidents wait until their inauguration to break their promises. Your man Trump is certainly going to be an over-achiever there. BTW, "at least he'll be an asshole for American citizens" is not only what is wrong with our country, but the stupidest thing I've read in quite some time. Good job.

@BlackOwl "Also, Clinton's mentor was a man named Robert Byrd, who was a grand cyclops of the KKK, whom she said represented the "heart of America" and was a great leader at his funeral. "

You want to know who else praised Byrd at his funeral? The NAACP.

Is the NAACP pro-Klan?

Sometimes it's not where one starts ... but where one ends up as a result of living.

@Dena By that same logic you can disregard the Klan's support for Trump. After all, it's not where one starts ... but where one ends up right?

@BlackOwl Odd comment.

Has Trump endorsed the Klan? Embraced them? Joined them? If not, I don't care what the Klan says. It's what comes from TRUMP that matters. His actions, his deeds. If they want to project their ideals upon him, that's on them ... not him.

@Dena Trump has denounced the support the Klan gives him. He distances himself from them. They just like him because he's a republican candidate. Trump is actually more liberal minded than you might think.

@BlackOwl And where have I indicated that I think he's a right-wing loony....

@BlackOwl I agree with most of what you said. But you do know that part about sweden having higher rape rate than other countries is a lie, right?
Sweden has a different way of documenting rape cases than other countries (basically each rape is reported, not each victim)

salty much?

humon is so butthurt over this.

and no makeover for america if hillary won?

@slicergod Makeover would have been made for Sister America.

@MrSaukko Not necessarily, actually. Remember that the nation-avatars aren’t intended to reflect reality. They reflect the stereotype of the country as viewed from Scandinavia.

Clinton was essentially the ‘status quo’ candidate. Clinton winning wouldn’t have changed anybody’s view of America.

Trump winning the Republican nomination was enough of a surprise, and going on to win the Presidency was something that I don’t think any country outside the US was seriously expecting. That he did so on the platform that he was running WILL change people’s image of America, particularly the American right, deservedly or not. America’s avatars are already more nuanced than most countries in that Brother America and Sister America represent different political views (accurately enough, since one of the divides in the election was a gender-based one) – his transformation of the American right, for better or worse warrants recognition.

Personally, though, I wouldn’t tie the duration of the makeover to the term of Trump’s presidency, but over how much he dominates the American right. If he effects a transformation that holds after he leaves office, it’s probably warranted to keep the makeover. On the other hand, if the Republican establishment reins him in and his policies end up being more in line with the traditional Republican ideals, it’s probably warranted to revert the makeover even if he’s still technically in office.

@Draxynnic - I'm going to be honest, Trump IS the Republican way. He's a lot more chaotic, but the GOP backs him both in word and in spirit, I'm afraid. He won their voters, and the things he wants are (mostly) the things they want. So American shouldn't have changed - Trump is just a more open version of what already existed in Conservative America :/

@Mecharic Perhaps, but again, it's about perception - from the Scandinavian viewpoint - not reality.

@Draxynnic True but I would have loved to see sister America in a pantsuit. I still would. That was a part of the comment section like I think led to this makeover. Humon, could you please just have her in it for one comic. This is not because I voted Hillary, I did, I just want the cali-girl American in a pantsuit.

Meanwhile Canada and Sister Canada are desperately trying to build a wall

@austryzor

Are you gonna make America pay for it?

@Grubadubdub Eyyyy