Bennett: Karen. And you brought a friend. A bear and a lame duck. I can’t tell if this is the U.S. government, or a Disney movie.
Karen: Don’t get cute with me, Bennett. We need to talk about this bill you’re pushing.
Bennett: Do you mean the bill reaffirming that America is awesome? Because that is a valuable use of Congress’ time, and anyone who doesn’t think so must want the terrorists to win.
Park: You know the one I mean!
To track Beings the way you’re proposing would be a massive violation of civil liberties. Not to mention overkill! There are less than forty in the nation. And they’re exponentially less dangerous than humans. I know the incident with the rabbit has you worried —
Bennett: What? It does not! Why would I care what happens to that brat?!
Park: . . . I wasn’t saying you were worried for her. Point is, when you stop being spooked and look at the facts, all she committed was a glorified incident of vandalism. Far from a national security issue.
Bennett: I d-don’t have time for this. Save it for committee. I have meetings to get to.
Oh man, if Bennett is so un-cool under pressure, how on earth did he get to Congress?
I think we’d all be amazed at how some people get into Congress.
Heck, look at Strong Thurman’s last period of service – he had to sleep through portions of various committee meetings…
It’s hard to dislike the character who keeps getting some of the best one-liners of the comic. “US government or a Disney movie” and “bill reaffirming the US is awesome” are both hilarious.
Since when does a Democrat care about civil liberties? They supported the Patriot Act and NDAA as much as the Neocon Republicans (compared to Conservative Republicans, who opposed both). Great way to expand the government, after all. Park’s position is not very realistic, unless she’s intended to be an outlier like Kucinich.
Also, I just realized Erin’s exploring the concept of “false flag terrorism,” where the government invents a threat to justify a crackdown, similar to a lot of the stuff Bush and Obama have done, such as “Fast and Furious” or the war talk about Iraq, Libya, and Iran. That makes it more interesting.
Um, X, you may not have realized this, but…that statement about republicans and democrats might just be considered inflammatory by some…?
I find it more interesting that Bennett is trying to create situations to justify the “false flag” then his transparent attempt to capitalize on it…Chap can get into a lot of trouble doing that…
I try to balance my critique of the political parties. Democrats make a lot of screw-ups. So do Republicans. Acknowledging that both sides have flaws rooted in their leadership is more pragmatic than controversial. It would be more inflammatory if I focused solely on a single group (which happens when I relate my experiences with racism by the liberals who live in MA).
Bennett basically represents the side of the Republicans that is screwing it up for the rest of them – the unthinking imitation Conservative who claims the title without adopting the underlying philosophy, just a pale imitation. Colbert does a great job of lampooning this and Erin has followed suit.
We haven’t yet seen the Democrat equivalent in this comic, but we can assume that in the BICP universe Bennett has plenty of counterparts across the aisle, just as he does in real life. Sparrow comes close to this role, since she’s prone to over-the-top reactions to issues, but she’s been given more depth than a parody due to her status as main character.
Okay, first up, what you did was make a broad generalization about two groups in a theoretically negative fashion while holding up a third in a more positive light. You’re generalization also implied that only Conservative Republicans (which is not a strict or well defined term to begin with) opposed those measures that you held to be indicative of the stance you were opposing. This is not the case, and creates a second issue of contention.
If your goal was to point out a failure within our Congress to protect civil liberties, it might have been wiser to simply say “The majority of Congress (on both sides) does not care about civil liberties,” instead of trying to pick out one group or another.
X: the response Rippy should have gotten there was “Sorry, my bad, I’ll try to be less inflammatory in the future.”
But no, you had to go insisting that you weren’t being inflammatory at all. Complete with the obligatory gratuitous mention of the racist bullying you got in elementary school.
I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt here for a long time. And you keep not adjusting, not learning what people find abrasive and confrontational and inflammatory, not giving any evidence that you’re even *trying* to learn.
Therefore: You are now disallowed from talking about politics on the BICP website.
You can make comments that are directly related to what’s happening on the page, but no vaguely-related generalizations. I get to decide what counts as “directly related” and what doesn’t. Comments that don’t count will be deleted, and you’ll be suspended from commenting for a week after making them.
If you have a comment and think it *might* count as related, but aren’t sure…please, save yourself the trouble and don’t make it at all. Or take it to a part of the Internet that I don’t moderate. Since this is almost all of it, you should have no trouble finding a more suitable place.
Clarification for anyone scrolling past: This rule only applies to X. For everyone else, keep doing what you’ve been doing. Your internal senses of “what’s on topic” have done perfectly well so far, and you should feel no worries about carrying on as usual.
Are discussing Park’s and Bennett’s specific politics fine? That’s character based. Likewise, what about the themes in the comic, such as the false flag terrorism aspect? That’s political, but potentially relevant to the symbolism you’re using.
If you don’t want the comic put in the broader perspective of modern politics, fine. I can reserve that for more scholarly presentations. (BICP is a whole host of fun for comic studies analysis.)
[Reply meant for the last comment on the tree.]
The reason I said “if you’re not sure, don’t make the comment” was to save you the trouble of wasting my time with questions like this.
The answer is no. Stop asking.
Since when does a Democrat care about civil liberties? Probably since it’s THEIR liberties. I suppose her position is more affected by the fact she owns being that by her political party.
Similarly, the support for Patriot Act and NDAA certainly WASN’T caused by the supporter’s political party.
… He’s a lot less clever than he likes to think he is, isn’t he?
That’s how it is with most politicians. Both presidential candidates suffer from it in spades.
Yes he is. I have found its a pretty common defensive mechanism for when a person gets in over their heads for a long period of time…everyone eventually gets tired of the little voice in their heads screaming “I’m going to f this up so badly! I am SO bluffing! We’re all going to die!”
Hey, US DoD policy in the Cold War era!
Isn’t everyone?
Or, more grammatically: “Aren’t we all?”