Boardroom suggestion
└ posted on Tuesday, 2 June 2020, by Novil
It’s often said that reality isn’t black-and-white, but that there are various shades of gray. But in this conflict, there rather seem to be shades of black.
|
A new comic page every day!
 Gaia in German/auf DeutschSandra and Woo (my comedy comic) Scarlet (my science fantasy comic) |
|
|
| Gaia is supported by our patron Pyromaniac34. Thank you very much! |
|
Click here to see the comments!
Gaia by Oliver Knörzer is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. See the About page for details.
Privacy Policy | Impressum | © 2004 – 2025 Oliver Knörzer
Hey they say that Malevich’s Black Square has 23 shades of black. Not that this fact would help in this particular situation.
Abolish the police
Sorry, but my patience for such hypocrisy has run dry. The left only ever become actives, if (1) a white policeman in america (2) might be accused of police brutality. They never hold antiracism rallies against IS, Hamas, BDS or similar groups. In fact, they often support such actually racist groups.
Even war crimes, terror attacks, comparison of western countries with animals, calls to wipe them out, rotherham, cologne – all of that is – at best – ignored, hushed up or – at worst – even actively supported. I even left the green party because some people on the left were *happy* about 9/11.
Any other constellation of racism – different countries, different skin color of culprit and victim – is simply of no interest to the them. Just because it doesn’t support the narration of the ‘intolerant’ Western world.
And that’s highly discriminatory and actually… racist.
Arent wrote:
I noticed the strip itself doesn’t mention racism nor lefts. The world is not nicely divided to two sides so one can be good and one wrong or even evil. There is lot of sides and most of them are wrong.
And specially, radical left who supports 9/11 don’t make police brutality ok, no matter the skin color of anyone involved. Well, maybe if the police brutality happens to them, but still, fair trial would be better.
These protests used to advocate for police wearing body cameras and not being able to turn them off on duty, but at this point I think the original points are being kind of overlooked.
Arent wrote:
Holding rallies against events in other countries is a bit of an exercise in futility. These protests occur not just because of injustice but because a lack of accountability for the police personally affects us and makes certain groups less safe. There is a rational interest in it.
That being said, there are these protests against the US’s police brutality in Canada, somehow, which I don’t understand at all… I guess people are just using it as an excuse to get out of lockdown.
@ Q:
That being said, there are these protests against the US’s police brutality in Canada, somehow, which I don’t understand at all… I guess people are just using it as an excuse to get out of lockdown.
My guess is get their government to tell the US government that they are watching and police brutality is not OK. You know instead of “That is over there and not my problem.”. Also it isn’t like Canada doesn’t have a problem with racist police or policies. Granted less against Blacks or Hispanics and more against Natives but still.
This comic -> painfully accurate. Thank you.
I think another good reason for fixing the problem in your own state before trying to fix it somewhere else is that it would look completely hypocritical when you ignore the problem at home and protest against it somewhere else.
Chinese media are now making fun of the US that it supported the protests in Hong Kong and now they’re shooting rubber bullets at camera teams and stuff. In fact, I think that you would have a hard time distinguishing videos of police and protests in the US and in Hong Kong, as long as no recognisable land marks or other stuff is seen. “There’s a lot of tear gas in that video so it must be.. uh…”.
The point is, if your own countrie’s police acts so violently against protesters and with the heavy discrimination happening not just now during the protests but in the last.. 20? .. 50?.. 70 (244?) years you can’t really call out institutional racism happening in other countries like China or Iraq without looking like a complete hypocrite.
And I think the point of the comic is that in some states (or on whatever level the distinction happens) to become a policeman you have a 36 month training and in other states it’s “Here’s your gun, welcome to the team, have fun out there.” (more or less).
If you’ve been a school bully and kinda wanna continue to be that, why not join the police? Just gotta be somewhere where they don’t sort people like you out.
Nicely put.
@ Arent:
So, here we are, a cartoon done by a resident of Germany and a resident of Indonesia, and you are complaining about the hypocrisy of the American Left.
While I certainly won’t claim that there are no hypocritical folks on the Left or, for that matter, bigots and antisemites, your broad sweeping generalization is everything you are kvetching about. Lots on the left work against BDS and Hamas. (IS not so much because it’s more than a little out of reach. But few or no fans on the Left.) Plenty of work being done on the Left against poverty, racism, and other societal ills, even if *you* are not seeing it, Arent!
And it’s not as if you are here in the comment section fighting for Truth, Justice, and the (pick a creed, any creed) Way once or twice a week, either.
So… our hosts create a piece of art that resonates, and you proceed to jump up and down about hypocrisy, having no idea what they or we do – complaining about a failure to reach across country lines to people who are reaching across country lines.
I appreciate your passion, but I’m not convinced this is a particularly useful or apt place for it. Your choice, I suppose.
@ amnt:
The REAL hypocrisy is that all this racism, police brutality and violence is happening in a country that’s very fond of telling other countries how to behave and is a self-proclaimed beacon of justice, equality and freedom. I’m not religious but maybe more people should read the Bible and in particular Luke 6:41-42.
I’m white, non-American, and a longtime fan of the comics, but I thought this was almost completely irrelevant to what’s actually happening, honestly.
The protests have turned global because mistreating Black folks and/or people of color in general is commonplace throughout the world. (One of my Black friends says, “Anti-Blackness is universal.”) Even in places where people swear they’re not racist, implicit bias means that Black folks don’t get the benefit of the doubt. Police brutality is just one manifestation of this.
I’m not sure what to say about “more looting!” except that it reads as such a bad parody of “defund the police” that it seems out of touch (it took me about five minutes to figure out what the heck it was supposed to mean). The phrase is provocative, sure, but assuming that it means anything like “anarchy!” is such a knee-jerk reaction. How about approaching it the way protesters are doing so, which means “divert funding to housing, mental-health services, education, etc.”? And my understanding from talking to the organizers I know is that places where “more training and accountability” has been tried, it’s been found to be either ineffective or insufficient. Check out Join Campaign Zero for a cautious, thorough, evidence-based explanation of a better way forward for community safety.
(A color metaphor given that this entire thing is about racism/colorism also strikes me as awkward at best, but I acknowledge that this might just be me.)
That’s a perfect strip. Thank you.
@ Arent:
So, if the left does something good = bad because they can’t fix every single problem
And the right does something bad (i.e. police brutality) = good because… they aren’t the left? Big boy 200 IQ here, watch out.
But wait, if the right does something bad for a “good” cause (i.e. police brutality and racism to protect [white] citizens) = good?
What if the left protects black citizens without harming white citizens = bad???
If I didn’t know you (which I don’t) I’d say you are desperate to boycott the left because… let me guess… you don’t like the communist lgtbi weed smoking california or some other prejudice that’s been rooting in your head, which supports every other mental connection you’ve made (for example the left ara racists->they can’t be helping black people->the BLM is fake/useless because it’s supported by the left and on and on…
And I know it’s hard to shake core beliefs and admit being wrong, but we all know you can!
@ Honzinator:This is just new dialog in an old strip: it was originally a comment on TV networks trying to cash in on popular movies but not supporting original programming they didn’t understand: the exec was demanding how the network could cash in on the popularity of Guardians of the Galaxy.
The yes-persona in Panel Two were proposing how to imitate GotG while not actually admitting it.
The third guy said “We had that. It was called Firefly and you cancelled it.”
@ Fairportfan:
Dammit.
“yes-persons“
Fairportfan wrote:
Actually no, that was already a modification of the original, which was about features on the Wii U:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boardroom-suggestion
@ Arent:
Well said.
Urodov wrote:
Until some pervert breaks down your door and molests your daughter/wife. Then you’ll be like “Call the police! Call the police!” And I’ll point to you and what you proposed. And I’ll laugh. And you’ll cry. And I’ll laugh some more. And about that point, you’ll understand why gun control, plus no police is a bad idea. Nobody left to defend you, not yourself, not the police.
And I’ll laugh.
This comic misses the point entirely. The people who are protesting are literally the ones saying they want more training and accountability. The ones looting are the ones who don’t believe they will get it without acting out and making NOT having training and accountability cost more. Or because they can get away with it. Or because they think they can make the protesters look bad. (tbf, they’re right.)
We need to defund the police–they shouldn’t be the go to service for every social ill, they just aren’t trained for and shouldn’t be trained for every goddamn thing. We also need to stop them from milking the system with fraudulent arrests and over-time. And then there’s the whole STOP KILLING PEOPLE thing.
And to the guy who doesn’t get why people don’t protest Hamas in the country, dude, Hamas isn’t a force in this country. The Police are.