Auchtoon!

First, I want to stress that I’m not making a “both sides do it” point with the cartoon. Well, okay, I am, but it’s nuanced (and like political conventions, political cartoons are not particularly well suited for nuance).

In my sampling of the Democratic and Republican Conventions over these past two weeks it was clear that fear was the featured technique to attract my vote. For the Democrats it was, “Can you imagine four more years of Donald Trump?” And for the Republicans it was one long, extended, panicked scream.

So, yes, while I would have preferred to hear more from the Democrats about what they are for and less about what they are against, the Republicans left me wondering what is the color of the sky is in the dystopian world they seem to be living in. Again, both sides, similar technique, but WAY different orders of magnitude.

Regardless, the reason it’s done at all is that it works. Or, at least, it has worked in the past. It’d be great if we can prove them wrong come November by voting on what we aspire to, not what scares us.

I had a completely different cartoon mapped out when I sat down to draw, and then this story broke: Michigan reaches $600M settlement in Flint water crisis.

So I started again from scratch. It didn’t take me long to find parallels between the current coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Flint water crisis — how Flint was kind of a “canary in the coal mine” for what we as a nation are experiencing now. Well, I suppose it’d be more correct to say that the Flint water crisis could have been a canary in the coal mine. (We all would have needed to notice and care that the canary died for the analogy to play through.)

But here’s what I really find notable: There are three basic types of consequences for these tragedies — death, chronic health conditions, and money. Which one is most likely to motivate people?

I’d say that evidence shows death is the least effective. We can’t (or simply don’t want to) relate to it. It’s too abstract, especially as numbers grow. Chronic health conditions are a bit more tangible — we can all imagine being sick. Perhaps not lead poisoning or lung damage sick, but sick.

But I think the best motivator is money. More specifically, our money, taxpayer money! The idea of somebody wasting our hard-earned money is pretty much what motivated this country to be a country. Perhaps we can channel that. A completely avoidable health crisis has now cost Michigan taxpayers $1 billion (this recent $600 million added to the $400 million already spent). That would seem like enough to get us to listen to medical experts.

As many of you college football fans are already painfully aware, the Big Ten conference postponed its 2020 football season in hope of being able to play it next spring. The Pac-12 quickly followed suit. Many other conferences with smaller schools (including the Mid-America Conference) have already cancelled theirs.

It’s not surprise. Even if this country had a coordinated and effective response to COVID-19 (spoiler alert: we don’t), college football would be unwise before a vaccine (a real vaccine) can be administered nation-wide. 

Still, my first inclination was to poke fun at the superfans (But where are middle-aged men going to go to openly and freely unleash abuse upon 19 year-old kids?) or at the anti-fans (At last! Now competitive quilting is really going to take off!). But in the end, neither felt right. I like college football. The money around it is all messed up, and I worry about the long-term effects on the players, but it’s fun to watch, and it’s fun to be part of supporting a school. 

Good thing Scott Frost, coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, spoke up and provided me a focus. Earlier this week, while school administrators were deciding what to do about the season, Frost let it be known that his team was looking for other options. Wait…what? Options? What kind of options do you really have? Either you’re part of a conference or you’re not. There are no other options, technically or realistically. 

For somebody who gets paid millions of dollars and has done pretty well by the system, he sure doesn’t seem to understand or respect the system.

Do you remember how I wrote last week that I was on vacation? Well, that means that this week is the first week after vacation, which everybody knows means two weeks of work scrunched into a single week. Which means no additional commentary because I have to get back to work!