Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 11, 2019

Morality isn’t that moral.

way to gather your thoughts, Calvin

Tell a teacher, Calvin.

I actually feel sorry for Calvin!!

The truck is history!!

If you take it back you are recovering your property, not stealing.

Have the H. Clinton firm look into it.

Congrats Calvin, you’re thinking like a neoconservative.

That sounds defeatist.

It sounds like the way the world often goes, but not how it ought to go, no. Poor Calvin.

Get some help, Calvin! You can’t battle this on your own!

You and the principal or on good terms, so go to him and tell him you will stay out of his office for a month if he goes and gets his truck back and kicks Moe out of school. I think he will go for it.

Tell the teacher, tell your parents. Suddenly you’re a dummy…

How long ago was this strip actually drawn? The more things change, the more they stay the same….

Never Forget!

It’s not stealing if it’s yours.

Seems like about the time this strip originally ran we were taught to stand up to bullies. “Poke him right in the nose” was common fatherly advise. I expect Calvin would get the same results poking Moe in the nose as I would if I poked you-know-who. Except, in the latter case, some secret service agent would have to retaliate for him lest he bruise his little hands.

What you do is bring together a like-minded group of people who, with strength in numbers, decide to no longer put up with that sort of dickery and take back what was stolen!

I love the way Watterson left out the panel dividers to heighten the sense of being rudderless.

That was me. Calvin, not Moe.

Philosophy is a walk on slippery rocks.

Life 101.

Why does this sound so familiar these days?

Sic Hobbs on him ….. GGGGRRRRRRR CHOMP BITE SCRATCH ETC…………

The right of self defense is enshrined in just about every legal system on the planet – unless you are in school, where they will punish the defender just as severely as the attacker. This is their version of “justice”.

Rat him out, but be sneaky about it so that Moe admits it. Like claiming it’s lost and radioactive or something, so Moe reacts strongly before realizing it was just fake news.

Hire Big Vinny The Repossesser. He has a busy calendar also serving subpoenas and divorce decrees, and forecloses, so sign up early.

Sounds like the way of the world, then and now, sadly.

I am firmly convinced that the biggest problem with the human species as a whole is bullying.

The second is greed.

All bad things that we do to ourselves is rooted, somehow, in those two things.

We have all probably been in a story like this. Moe the world class poop head.

There in a nutshell is the history of the world

Calvin, you have one of the most fiendishly creative minds on the planet. Surely you can overcome brawn without even working up a sweat. If not, get Lio to help you. He’s got toys.

Take a pipe and start hurting him till he is crying then hit him just one more time to quiet him. Then walk away.

At least learn a lesson from this Calvin – don’t take any of your personal stuff to school that you can’t afford to lose.

When injustice becomes law, then resistance is duty. Getting back your property, however you do it, is your duty.

Every act has consequences, they tell us, but “Karma” had to be invented (like dark matter) to explain how some things don’t seem to fall into the stated pattern. I generally fall back on “he’ll eventually come to no good end / be sorry” / etc. but I really don’t have good evidence of that.

It’s Moe. Is Calvin immortal

Oof-Duh!

Just smile, and “Keep on truckin’.”

Use your tact to out power Moe. Remember he takes hours to understand a long sentence punctuated with high vocabulary content. And you are the best in that.

If Moe is a “smart” bully, like some of the ones I’ve known, he’ll claim the truck is his if Calvin tries to rat on him. And unless Calvin marked it somehow, there’ll be no way to prove it’s his and the teachers won’t do anything. Then Moe can do with it as he pleases. I witnessed this so often when I was a kid; it’s what happens when punks from moneyed families always get their way.

Hit him in the head with a bat.

Aren’t today’s kids being taught to grab whatever they want, beat up whomever they want, and never, ever admit you are wrong or say sorry.

Trump is Moe. Calvin is all of us.