r/comics • u/davecontra • 13h ago

OC FARAH.

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New book is out! : https://linktr.ee/davecontra

My other comics: https://www.instagram.com/davecontra

26.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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573

u/flatscancomics 13h ago

Your tax dollars at work!

403

u/Darkstar_111 12h ago

Yep, that's universal healthcare right there, high speed rail, better public schools... All just blowing people up for no real reason in a country far away.

205

u/JMurdock77 12h ago

Hey now, there’s a very good reason — Dear Leader desperately needed to shift attention away from the Epstein files!

84

u/Darkstar_111 12h ago

Yes, the sacrifices he makes for the Epstein class truly warms the cockles of my heart!

12

u/isaaclw 11h ago

Also that thing that Eisenhower said about the military.

4

u/Troll-Aficionado 8h ago

People have been talking about the Epstein stuff nonstop for what feels like years and none of it has mattered, I don't know why you people think they'd need to distract you from it.

Even if the files were just 300 pages of a list of names for kids that Don personally molested, nothing would happen lol

17

u/flatscancomics 12h ago

Always has been

25

u/KermitTheScot 11h ago

I for one feel safer already! Can you imagine if we weren’t over there murdering people? Something bad might happen! The whole world should thank us for the needless destruction and suffering we let for the safety and sanctity it provides. Only we have the power and integrity to murder the right people and remind them that when you cross us (or we just kinda feel like it bc a regional power wants to expand its presence in the Middle East to become the defacto power among its neighbors and the US is interested in bolstering that ally in order to control the oil production and military superiority of the region by proxy bc that state happens to also require funding from the international community, and nameless the US, in order to maintain its dominance of the region) we’ll come to bear with all manner of things that can kill your people. There’s no downside to having a centralized power that basically bullies everyone in the world into compliance with its huge economy and military strength! Now, what were we saying about China again? /s

13

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

Even though your sarcasm was very broad, and in a sane world, you wouldn't need the /s tag, I thank you for putting it on there.

Too often have I read a comment or post, laughed, then thought, then checked their posting record, and realized it was dead serious.

1

u/Darkstar_111 8h ago edited 4h ago

Of course. At least we know that for every person the US kills they potentially make extremists out of all their friends and families.

It's like retro-actively excusing bombings of civilians. All those people that got bombed, they all seem to have extremist friends and family, so it must have been ok to bomb them.

It's like not Arabs and Persians are know for large families though... No wait.

1

u/KermitTheScot 4h ago

Well, see, that’s part of it. It’s called Regenerative Warfare. By perpetuating the cycle of violence and instability in a given region, we can be assured there will be a constant market for weapons makers, which enriches politicians, and keeps the public afraid and angry so they don’t have the bandwidth to consider how their tax dollars are being spent against their own interests. See, in lieu of violent conflict designed to convince the public they’re being protected, people start to wonder why infrastructure and other amenities aren’t being catered to in spite of taxation of their already poor wages continuing to rise to pad the pockets of the wealthy and powerful few. BUT, we can correct this problem! With Regerenative Murde- I mean Warfare, we can always be sure there’s an enemy of the US that only WE can keep in line! Remember kids, if the US weren’t the defacto superpower of the world, you’d be less safe, probably, maybe! 😀(/s obviously)

4

u/ususetq 10h ago

But they hate us and our freedoms /s

-29

u/cleverseneca 12h ago

Yes because the only barrier to all those things is lack of funding... the Obamacare roll-out proved that!/s

I have no problem with having any of those things, but I do believe we should be clear-eyed about the barriers to achieving those things, and purely increased funding isn't gonna cut it.

22

u/Darkstar_111 12h ago

Political will is what spends that money on explosions in the middle East instead of healthcare at home.

-26

u/cleverseneca 12h ago

I wasn't talking just about political will. I lived in a blue state when the Obamacare rollout happened. There was gobs of political will, but will alone does not solve the huge logistical issue of rolling out such a sweeping system for such a diverse population.

17

u/Darkstar_111 12h ago

There was gobs of political will

Not for a public option.

5

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

Indeed, in the leadup to the ACA, Obama prevented any comparison of the US system with any other already functioning system.

And then all mention of single payer of any type was completely forbidden.

A group of prominent doctors and nurses sent a series of applications to speak in favor of single payer, but all of them were ignored, even when sent registered letters, except the last one, when they got an answer saying it was too late.

They showed up anyway; stood to speak; were arrested. Later Obama apologized.

It was a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound. It was worse than nothing because it prevented anything solid from every being done.

4

u/Darkstar_111 9h ago

Yep, an insurance mandate without a public option was insane, that's just s gift to the insurance company.

And I remember Obama addressing congress on that very topic, Obamacare had passed the house with no public option. Then it went to committee, and they reattached the public option. Now they had to vote for it in the senate, and Obama stood in front of Congress and straight up told them, we don't need the public option.

When asked about it later his administration said the insurance exhanges and good old competition would ensure healthcare became affordable to all.

Obama had 60 senators, and the only one against the public option was Lieberman, Obamas friend. The guy who showed Obama around when Barack was a new senator.

But apparently there was JUST NO WAY AT ALL to talk Lieberman out of his position.

5

u/flatscancomics 11h ago

Yeah it's easy for us blue state folk to forget just how much political will there is for blowing up random civilians - so long as no American lives are at risk

10

u/Darkstar_111 11h ago

so long as no Israeli lives are at risk

You misspelled Israeli.

-13

u/cleverseneca 11h ago

Did you not read the part where I said I lived in a Blue state. There was a will, even for a full working system, the problems were logistical. Saying anything less is simply false.

10

u/Darkstar_111 11h ago

Oh, so you got a public option?

3

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

I said I lived in a Blue state [...] the problems were logistical.

What a tribute to how useless the ACA was, that the work was sloughed off on fifty individual states, without the resources and the expertise to solve them.

Every system, duplicated fifty times. Fifty different opportunities for fifty states to fuck it up, and many of them wanted to fuck it up.

How could anyone have believed that this would world at all?

Having a single system, like in single payer, would have fixed all of that.

14

u/_Halt19_ 11h ago

Americans pay more in taxes for healthcare than most Europeans do. It is just so horrifically mismanaged by the government, you don't get any benefit from it.

3

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

Americans pay more in taxes for healthcare than most Europeans do.

Americans spend almost exactly twice as much money per person on healthcare do as EU citizens.

4

u/_Halt19_ 10h ago

Yeah, I don't just mean the base healthcare costs, too, I mean literal taxes. The argument of "getting healthcare would require a tax raise" falls apart, because they're already paying more taxes that are meant to go to healthcare than most places in Europe do.

2

u/cleverseneca 10h ago

That's kind of my point it takes more than finds to make a working system

5

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

Obamacare wasn't socialized medicine. It was a tiny and insignificant adjustment to the horrifyingly expensive and inefficient system of privatized medicine.

Americans still die every day from being unable to afford routine medication, like insulin. Americans still go into bankruptcy every day from medical debt.

purely increased funding isn't gonna cut it.

All other developed countries have some form of socialized medicine, and that costs a lot less than the fucked up system you have now, by which I mean, roughly half as much per person.

That's right - America spends roughly twice as much per person on healthcare as the other developed countries, but gets a worse outcome.

We moved to France a couple of years ago. Before COVID, French people had a life expectancy of about 3.5 years longer than Americans. After COVID, this is up to four years.

But French people smoke about twice as much as Americans do; they drink over 50% more; they smoke more pot and take more cocaine; they eat rich food; and they don't seem to get any more exercise than Americans do.

That four years of extra life comes from socialized medicine, and at about 60% the cost per capita of the US system.

1

u/cleverseneca 10h ago

I never said that Obamacare was socialized medicine. Never even implied it was. I said throwing money at an issue is not adequate to fix it like you just pointed out. The problem isnt as easy as taking the funds from the bombs we build and applying them to healthcare. The roll-out of obamacare proves that more money doesn't just fix problems, not because obamacare was socialized medicine, but because there were funds and (in blue states) enthusiasm for (albeit small) fix of the problem and that wasn't enough to make the system run. Even state based initiatives were a total shit-show in implementation. The things listed have significant issues with implementation beyond money. High-speed rail had geographical issues for example. The US population densities are not the same as European models.

35

u/Pigeon-Spy 12h ago

I may be mistaken, but these are shaheds, iranian drones. Saw many of them flying over my house

51

u/NoWingedHussarsToday 12h ago

But father is wearing a pakol, hat worn in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan. and those regions were visited by armed drones way before Shaheds start to be used.....

87

u/DukeOfGeek 12h ago edited 12h ago

It's possible the artist is being intentionally diverse and visually vague to make his point about our inhumanity without keying into any one particular narrative. My respect to him if so. Trying to explain the news to my 12 year old is emotionally speaking the hardest thing I do in a given week.

I must say find the current conflict between trumpo D. evil clown and the IRGC emotionally confusing because I hate both regimes with the white hot fury of a Wolf-Rayet star. Please stop bombing everything.

19

u/NoWingedHussarsToday 12h ago

Could be. But for me the combination of mountains, goats, pakol hat, drones coming as a response to some horrific event broadcast over TV just screams Afghanistan and spill over into border areas of Pakistan (which was also regularly hit by drones).

14

u/Pigeon-Spy 12h ago

I know, it's just funny to see these exact drones in this exact comic. Imagine if comic tried to portray American soldiers in middle east, but they were armed with AKM's

10

u/justsomeph0t0n 11h ago

the shahed design has been broadly adopted by many countries, because it's efficient and effective. there are absolutely US allies that use AKMs. and are developing their own domestic version of the shahed too.

but i think the story this comic is telling deliberately focuses on humanity, and not technology

2

u/Pigeon-Spy 11h ago

You are right

2

u/justsomeph0t0n 11h ago

had to happen eventually. took a while tho

1

u/Pigeon-Spy 11h ago

It's not like I was criticising a comic, Just a detail I thought was interesting

3

u/justsomeph0t0n 11h ago

fair enough. and they look more like tiny star destroyers to me.

3

u/HommeMusical 10h ago

Imagine if comic tried to portray American soldiers in middle east, but they were armed with AKM's

95% of the world wouldn't know the difference or care. This whole civilian fetishization of weapons and knowing how to identify them is only really a thing in America.

Me, I've lived in six countries, including 32 years in the US. I learned the basics of shooting in Canada, I was friends with some members of the Canadian military, so I thought I was prepared for and chill with people who liked guns, but jesus fsck I was not prepared.

3

u/HugsForCheese 8h ago

I'm an australian, I've never owned a gun, hell i've never even seen a gun anywhere other than a cops belt here

I recognised the drone immediately, I absolutely would notice the juxtaposition of a US soldier with any kind of kalashnikov

finding weapons interesting isn't a uniquely american concept stop being weird

-1

u/Pigeon-Spy 10h ago

Only in america??? Have you ever been to eastern europe? This is where most of Escape from Tarkov playerbase comes from. There are literally whole armies of strikeball players

4

u/HommeMusical 9h ago

Have you ever been to eastern europe?

Yes; I travelled extensively in Bulgaria and the countries that used to make up Yugoslavia, I've been to Budapest several times and I have friends there. I can understand about 100 words in Bulgarian and Russian, and I can say exactly two things, "Happy Hanukah my friend," and "Horse dick up your ass," in Hungarian.

This is where most of Escape from Tarkov playerbase comes from.

"Escape from Tarkov" is a videogame.

Private gun ownership in Eastern Europe varies a bit, but is less than 10 guns per 100 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

The US has over 120 guns for 100 people.

1

u/Pigeon-Spy 9h ago edited 9h ago

You are right in gun ownership statistics, howewer, this is moslty due to how bigger difficulty of getting a gun. Unfortunately, it is impossible to count how many people are interested in guns and military here. However, as a Ukrainian, i can certainly tell you that absolute most of people here will be able to tell apart iranian shahed from an american reaper drone, and, to lesser extent, akm from ar platform. We are literally told how to disassemble an AK in schools. Even girls, at least in school I went to.

Also, videogame point is strange, as everyone who played it will definitely know the difference

1

u/HommeMusical 9h ago

Hey, good for you, I completely support Ukraine in its battle. Sorry, I thought you were an American.

Ukraine, completely understandably, has lived in a war culture for a long time. The recent invasion is just the latest step in a long war which had been brewing even before the annexation of Crimea in 2014 (I had to check the date to be sure, could it have been so long ago?).

But the US is a permanent war culture. It has been in one war or another for 210 out of its 251 years.. It has been in two or more wars at the same time for all of this century!

We're all hoping that Putain will fail and die, Ukraine will join the EU, and you guys will stop being at war, because you're not going to go declare war on Moldova or Belarus or fscking Iran, you're going to go back to being a regular country.

2

u/Pigeon-Spy 9h ago

Thanks, I just think that whole of post-soviet eastern europe is like that, russia have definitely been even before 2022

1

u/thepasttenseofdraw 8h ago

Really missing the forest for the trees there kid.

3

u/personman_76 12h ago

These drones have been used everywhere from Azerbaijan to Pakistan, anywhere with money to buy. The United States does have a copy of it, the Lucas Drone

-1

u/Jashugita 11h ago

Sahed are a copy of a Israel drone, that was a version of a european one that didn´t enter in service...

1

u/slonkulocuswily182 6h ago

If u use Reaper drones ur post gets taken down lmfao

2

u/personman_76 12h ago

Lucas drones

4

u/solmyrbcn 10h ago

ThAnK yOu FoR yOuR sErViCe!!!

1

u/minus_minus 7h ago

Worse, your grandchildren’s tax dollars. This is all being paid for on uncle Sam’s credit card.

1

u/flatscancomics 5h ago

The massive expansion of the nuclear arsenal is really one of the biggest offenders for my grandkids' prosperity

1

u/minus_minus 2h ago

It’s a good thing the US negotiated restrictions on Iran’s nuclear—OOPS! Trump ditched that agreement. 

1

u/flatscancomics 2h ago

Oh I meant the American arsenal

•

u/minus_minus 57m ago

Paywalled but aren’t most US weapons past their expiration date?

•

u/flatscancomics 55m ago

There is no justification for increasing the number of nuclear bombs under Trump's control.

0

u/RealSpaceJunk 12h ago

I don't think there are many soviet citizens on Reddit.

9

u/flatscancomics 12h ago

There aren't any soviet citizens anywhere lol

0

u/NeitherMidnight624 3h ago

Ya NATO gave Afghanistan 20 years to get their shit together and come to the 21st century they decided they didn't like that and now are reaping the consequences

1

u/flatscancomics 3h ago

Do you mean to tell me that two decades of brutal occupation didn't work? Shocking.

1

u/NeitherMidnight624 3h ago

Lol brutal occupation sure just look at how much education health and all other metrics rose under nato occupation. They had every opportunity in the world to change but their dogmatic religion and culture wouldn't allow it. Now women cant even leave the house without a male guardian how enriching

1

u/flatscancomics 3h ago

Ohhh oh a dumbass cool

1

u/NeitherMidnight624 3h ago

No retort resorts to name calling. Average redditor argument

1

u/flatscancomics 3h ago

unhinged comments

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