A Lot Of People Staying Up And Thinking About The Future

I've made all the commentary about this week's presidential election I'm going to make on various social media platforms. For what it's worth, I always saw the winning candidate winning. It's not worth much except maybe I get to avoid the shock part of what many of my friends are saying they're experiencing now. Even as I go to bed, there's still hope, but I'm not confident. I will embrace being wrong with the greatest smile on my face.

Comics mostly leans left, and I bet last night was heartbreaking if not bewildering for a lot of comics people. Further, if you're in one of the many groups overtly and directly threatened in the course of the winning campaign or even those whose primary livelihood counts on margins that will soon be removed via things like raised health insurance premiums, I'm so sorry. What you're facing is less heartbreaking and more terrifying, and also something more likely to make you furious or feel despair. I don't have any answer why a list of about 20 things didn't disqualify the president-elect. I hope for our ability to respond in the most humane way possible, I hope our responses improve.

In order to function the way it has over the last quarter-century, comics depends on a lot of poor people either doing direct harm to their lives, giving up things that would benefit themselves in the future, or otherwise putting themselves at risk to pursue a dream of making within an art form that has just begun to fully realize its potential. It's an art form that seems to attract nice, mostly sane people -- if only compared to other art forms. I can understand why people may harm themselves to live there, but I'm not sure I can continue to countenance it.

We may all have to up our game a bit if the world around us becomes, as many expect it to, more hostile and difficult to navigate for people without significant wealth, or who don't adhere to rigid standards of preferred identity. We can no longer afford to short-change ourselves the talent pool necessary to maximize economic growth by holding onto bias and prejudice, even if it's just to keep our place. We have to stop seeing the room we share as a place to get our own, to exploit as others may seek to exploit us. We have to stop acting like consumers in all things, because that's how they get you.

This work was always there to do. It's imperative we stop settling and work with clear heads and shared enthusiasm towards a rational, supportive, truth-telling, non-exclusionary and non-exploitative community. Comics for everyone: we have that now. We'll be judged on what we do with it. There's a very real possibility that even our best effort could be thwarted. We have to try.
 
posted 3:35 pm PST | Permalink
 

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