The comic strip Mallard Fillmore has a dark secret. Its creator, Bruce Tinsley, is a closet Never-Trumper, who realizes that Trump violates every conservative principle that his comic strip has defended for decades. He also realizes that if he expressed this opinion regularly, he would lose his gig as the only self styled-conservative with pretensions of being funny. Consequently, for the last four years, he has performed a delicate balancing act while attempting to keep both his customers and his intellectual integrity. Once he actually attacked Trump without qualification, using both a cruel caricature and blistering rhetoric. Usually, however, he attacks Trump obliquely, by comparing him to the Democrats. Sometimes he avoids politics altogether, talking about his dog or other standard comic strip fare. Sometimes he makes cartoons that reference news items that are years old, and makes the usual jokes about PC liberals. (The funniest joke he ever made was about how Pluto still identifies as a planet.)
One thing he hasn’t done, however, is completely knuckle under and become a Trump propagandist. In this respect, he has shown far more courage than Lindsey Graham, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz etc. For this he deserves at least two cheers. In the country of the heartless, the half-hearted man is humane. In fact, Tinsley’s half-heartedness may have metastasized into a full-blown identity crisis. He stopped drawing new strips in 2019, and ran reprints for half a year. He then gradually passed primary responsibility for the strip to artist/writer Loren Fishman, who was first listed as co-creator, then sole creator, then Co-creator again. My paper now lists only Tinsley as the author in the title, but Fishman signs the drawing. I think only they know who is contributing what, so I’m going to treat Mallard Fillmore as a single person, and reply to any objections either of them might make by saying “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the duck.”
Covid-19 is scaring Mallard Fillmore, as it should scare all of us, and now he feels the need for harmony rather than polarization. On May 13th and 15th he appeared in cartoons that ridiculed both Liberals and Conservatives for needlessly abusive rhetoric. On May 18th he came dangerously close to knuckling under, with a vague endorsement of Trump’s claim that Covid-19 is China’s fault. (The site with all of these cartoons is linked here.) The next day, however, he put up the cartoon above, which is barely a cartoon at all. It’s not just that, like most Mallard Fillmore cartoons, it isn’t funny. It’s that this cartoon isn’t even trying to be funny. It is an anguished cry for help, and for a return to honest communication and meaningful dialogue. This essay is an attempt to answer that cry. I will now lay down my snark and try to give an honest answer to his honest question.
You’re right that all authentic conversations have to start with some point of shared agreement. I don’t think, however, that you have found that starting point yet. We don’t all agree we want to save as many lives as possible. Those who want to re-open the economy usually acknowledge that the disease and death rate will go up, but they think that is necessary price to pay to preserve the quality of life for those who survive. It is similar to when a country sends it’s young people to war to preserve the way of life for the people at home. Or when people decide to tolerate cars in spite of the numerous deaths from traffic accidents.
Some people do think that saving every single human life is an unconditional moral imperative. Many fundamentalist Christians say that no matter how much human misery may be caused by giving birth to an unwanted child, the only possible moral choice is supposedly to save her life. There may be some people on the left who similarly think that not one life should be sacrificed just to keep the economy going. I think, however, that almost everyone actually does agree that there is a balance between these two ideals, and that neither one should be treated as an absolute. I don’t think anyone would accept a plan in which no one dies from Covid-19, but only by having every single business, industry and utility shut down and pull us back to the Stone Age. Conversely, no one wants to start up the economy again if it produces so much death and illness that we are back to square one in a few months. The balance between these two extremes can be found only by looking carefully at the facts with an expert eye. Unfortunately we have a president who makes up his own facts, and a large minority of people who believe him. The sensible thing is thus to ignore him, and believe the experts—something even he reluctantly acknowledges occasionally. You can’t con a virus the way you can con investors or voters. Experts are sometimes wrong, and often disagree with each other, but they are all we’ve got. Their job is to be less likely to be wrong than anyone else about their specialty, and so far they appear to be doing that job as well as could be expected.
So, Mallard, how about changing your position from Libertarian to Realitarian? How about standing up for the facts, and using all of your skills to ridicule Trump whenever he tries to make up his own alternative facts? A lot of people would listen to you who wouldn’t listen to anybody else.