Blame It on Hillary
I have gotten a little feedback that my comics present Trump as a lovable buffoon. So that leaves me asking myself questions, and here are two of them:
- Are we so used to seeing negative portrayals of Trump that are so extremely monstrous that my attempt to show him as a horrible human being are too subtle?
- Are my attempts to portray Trump with nuance and subtlety not working?
My instinct is to remember that people – no matter how awful the things they say and do – are human beings and not monsters. My upbringing in the Episcopal church helped nurture my compassionate worldview and, ironically, influenced my eventual embrace of secularism and humanism over the conservative Christianity I was raised with.
But, that’s just where I’m coming from – it doesn’t mean my comics are any good. What I need to do is make sure my portrayals of Trump are neither glib about his negative impact on the world nor cowardly about telling it like it is.
As a cartoonist, I want my comics to show that even with subtlety and nuance, Trump is still a bad human being who is bringing out the worst in a lot of people and seriously harming what decent moral standing the United States still has in the world.
Back to Blaming Hillary
Since I was a young conservative person in Oklahoma, I have been aware of the thriving, multimillion-dollar industry built around loathing Hillary Clinton. When I was younger, it seemed kind of mean. Certainly un-Christian. But as I got older and watched the industry achieve its ultimate goal of keeping Hillary out of power in 2016, this anti-Hillary movement became for me a symbol of many troublesome things about slices of American culture – sexism, male fragility, rage at the diminishing role of traditional Christianity in American life, demonizing those who disagree with you, scapegoating…
So, my hope is that Trump loses in November 2020, but, sadly, I expect that he will likely pick up where he left off with bullying everyone he can, including ol’ Hillary. (Not that she is a blameless victim herself, but, come on, can’t we do better than enabling the empire of Hating Hillary?)