A group of friends vow to do whatever it takes to stop evil corporate overlords from destroying the Earth. How? They aren’t sure. They explore various strategies, but so far nothing has worked. As they build a resistance movement, those who love them the most can be their biggest obstacles.
© Stephanie McMillan - All Rights Reserved.
Mike du Jour by Mike Lester
Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler
Comments (14) (Please sign in to comment)
Prof danglais said, 6 months ago
‘Watership Down’
Radish
said, 6 months ago
The bunnies on my front lawn were not meant to be caged.
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
The rabbits in my backyard are meant by nature to starve, get hit by cars, reproduce like crazy, steal from gardens, get and transmit disease to each other and be rodent problems.
aircraft-engineer said, 6 months ago
Wascaly Wabbits are not rodents – they are langomorphs
Patrick JB Flynn
said, 6 months ago
Left Harvey’s door open the other day. He stayed put. Good food, fresh water, and a room with a view of the chickens. Hard to beat in this econ.
Pets or meat?
Night-Gaunt49 said, 6 months ago
Humans have made it very hard for the animals and plants of the wild to survive. So they either adapt or die off.
Stephanie McMillan
said, 6 months ago
This is what ideological domination looks like.
How many times have you heard these arguments?
· “There will always be inequality and injustice.”
· “You’re too idealistic.”
· “Nothing will change.”
· “You’re throwing your life away for an impossible dream.”
· “You’ll end up in prison, or dead, for nothing.”
· “It’s not worth it.”
· “You can’t win.”
· “There’s no point.”
· “It’s time to grow up.”
From family members, friends, co-workers, meddling strangers. Even the Bible argues, “The poor you will always have with you.”
This is ideological class struggle.
It’s repeated in countless ways all around us, every day.
You can’t live without me, commerce asserts—I feed you. Competition is natural, says science. Shut up and obey, snarls Homeland Security. Don’t complain, says your supervisor. Advertising reassures us that the latest pill or consumer item will make us forget the pain. The talking heads of corporate media decide for us what matters and what doesn’t. The entire weight of this culture whispers without pause into our ears: “The way things are will always be.”
The multitudinous voices for the status quo jabber so relentlessly that we start to believe that they’re coming from inside our own heads. Not only do we refrain from taking action; many of us even dissuade others from doing so.
Are these arguments true? At least partly—that’s why they’re so convincing. Social change is indeed difficult. Revolution is a long shot, with an uncertain outcome. It requires hard work, determination, and often sacrifice. Even then, there are no guarantees.
However, they’re also partly not true.
Many well-intentioned people justify inaction by allowing themselves to be convinced that nothing can be done. But if they were honest, they would admit that even if something could be done, they still wouldn’t stick their necks out. Especially if the results aren’t guaranteed. To act, and possibly (or probably) fail, is not worth risking whatever level of comfort and security they currently enjoy.
Heartless as that calculation may seem, it’s not wholly irrational. Why would you throw yourself at the machine and possibly lose your freedom, or even your life, and make your family suffer, if it has only a slight chance of accomplishing anything?
Really, why would you? Why does anyone?
· Because we can’t go on this way.
· Because it’s right.
· Because our human dignity depends on it.
· Because if we don’t, the alternative will be worse.
· Because there is that chance.
Without people willing to stick their necks out, the United States would still have slavery. Women wouldn’t be allowed out of the house. The fourteen-hour workday would be the norm. The United States military would still be killing people across the world—oh wait.
Nothing changes, until people decide to make change happen. Until we decide to act, even if the odds are against us.
Silence those voices pushing submission and resignation. Raise our own.
Penny Robinson Fan Club said, 6 months ago
@aircraft-engineer
Technicality. They were considered rodents until they invented a new order to put them in. Two more teeth? They’re TWICE as ratty as rats.
Penny Robinson Fan Club said, 6 months ago
@Stephanie McMillan
Without people willing to stick their necks out, the United States would still have slavery.
Those people were the Republicans, by the way. Also BTW, they tried that creamy-dreamy “Revolution” shtick a couple times before, and once it was a nightmare called the Soviet Union. I would tell you to go ask 20 million Ukrainians about Communism, but you can’t, because they were murdered in an engineered famine. Oh, and if little bun-bun wants to find out out about liberty and freedom — start with the Constitution of the United States of America.
banjoaah said, 6 months ago
Stephanie, science doesn’t say “competition is natural”, if you are referring to evolution. It says adaptation to a particular environment is natural.
Competition, beyond symbolic, is not natural to our species. We survived the savanna thru egalitarian group co-operation.
With the advent of agriculture humanity gave up the niche to which we evolved, hunting and gathering. Giving up the nomadic lifestyle produced excess population and aberrant behavior, such as hierarchical societies. This is why we consider uneven distribution of resources and hierarchy to be unjust. It rubs against our evolved temperament.
Now, if you are saying that the “science” of economics says competition is natural, you are correct. Fortunately for us there is no “science” of economics. It is science in the same sense that astrology or phrenology is a science.
Real scientists, be they physicists, psychologists, geologists, or those in any other field of endeavor point their fingers and laff at economists for claiming to be scientists.
Economics does not and cannot apply the scientific method. Economic “science” consists of unproven and unprovable assumptions and bogus mathematics. Economists routinely
toss out any mathematical variables that do not support their foregone conclusions.
Economics as a “science” is just another capitalist con-job.
As a side note, there is no Noble prize in economics. There is an award presented for economics by the Central bank of Sweden in “the name of Alfred Noble”.
My understanding is that Alfred Noble would point his finger and laff at anyone trying to pass economics off as a science. He believed some clown divining ways to increase profits was a not a scientist. He felt “economists” besmirched the respect that real scientist worked for and deserved.
banjoaah said, 6 months ago
@Penny Robinson Fan Club. A little history. The Republican party under Lincoln was considered far left radical in his time. The South was the wealthiest part of the Union at the time of the Civil War. The Southern aristocracy, for that is what they were, were afraid of the Republicans because they were afraid of losing their privileges slaves and land. And that is what happened. Lincoln is rolling over in his grave at what the Republican party has become.
After the North won the war the radical Republicans sought to ensure full and active citizenship for the former slaves. The plantations were to be broken up and given to the former slaves. The famed “50 acres and a mule.”
The Republicans were what we would now call socialists, as was most of the nation, regardless of political affiliation at that time. The earlier population of this nation are rolling over in their collective graves over what capitalists have done to democracy.
Within a decade or so after the Civil War our nation became a one party nation, the Republicans, which was “bought” by the growing capitalist class. The Republicans became, and continue to be, the political arm of the elite. The Democrats under Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson and especially FDR was periodically the party of the people. FDR is now rolling over in his grave at what the Democratic party has become.
We now again have a one party nation. The elite have succeeded in buying both parties this time. Thank you ron reagan, AKA the Great Traitor. He is very happy in his grave.
As for our nation being about liberty and freedom (homonyms by the way) it was that way for rich white men only at it’s birth. Remember, the constitution does not consider voting to be a right. It considers voting to be a privilege. To make our nation come a little closer to its stated beliefs, men and women have died and suffered to gain the “right” to vote and to be treated as equals, at least within their class. Think of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the labor movement. All these movements occurred to gain supposedly constitutionally guaranteed “freedoms” to groups that had been denied those rights. The American revolution still continues to this day.
Communism’s two failures were to make atheism the official “church” of the state, thus guaranteeing hostility from religious groups. It would have been better to have co-opted religion, as Constantine the Great did to Christianity, instead of making it an outside force. The other great mistake of Marx/Engels was not providing a political system, beyond the vague idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” set the stage for tyrannical
governments, which would allow psychopaths like Stalin to come to power. Thus the tragedy of Ukraine. Marx did not consider the way people actually behaved. He was too influenced by Rousseau’s concept of “the natural man”. Communism, if cleared of those two flaws, and using the behavioral sciences as a guide, might possibly be made to work.
Wabbit
said, 6 months ago
Wow. a hard post to follow. Personally, bunnies are all meant to live free, run free and take care of the business of being bunnies.
People likewise were meant to spend time out doors and work at some physical stuff at least part of the time.
It is very important for our kids to have unscheduled free time outside.
I wish it were still safe for them to be out doing nothing but seeing things in clouds and who can swing the highest!
joe waskiewicz
said, 6 months ago
could have been one of the jackrabbits from the dust bowl that got clubbed to death, so quit yer bitchin’.
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
[How many times have you heard these arguments?
· “There will always be inequality and injustice.”
· “You’re too idealistic.”
· “Nothing will change.”
· “You’re throwing your life away for an impossible dream.”
· “You’ll end up in prison, or dead, for nothing.”
· “It’s not worth it.”
· “You can’t win.”
· “There’s no point.”
· “It’s time to grow up.”]
Every society in the world from time beginning has said these words. They are truly universal.