Being Jim Davis

“The next panel asks us to consider whether the West will survive. In recent years, this question would invite accusations of hyperbole and alarmism. Not this year. If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now. This question was real, half a century ago, for Ewald von Kleist and the founders of this conference. Indeed, it is why they first started coming to...

You know what Garfield is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with Garfield. Including some bad things. Today's strip

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the tru...

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    Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Lyman." Today's strip

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Who the fuck bakes a pie the weekend immediately AFTER Thanksgiving?? Let alone an intricate lattice crust job like this one, amiright? A goddamned psychopath , that's who. I mean, look, I'm not saying it's one-hundred percent   certain that Jon Arbuckle was about to have sex with pie, but, come on, we both know Jon Arbuckle was definitely about to have sex with that pie. Anyway, if you've ma...

Hey, what if Russell's Teapot entered Searle's Chinese Room? Like, would that be interesting? Would it, huh!?!?! Today's strip Make America Kittens Again

This one's highly unremarkable, so we talked about vampires instead. Enjoy! Today's strip

    Because this is 1978, we don't have a fascist monster for our president. In celebration of that fact, we talked a lot about Jimmy Carter in this episode, and it reminded me of this clip mentioned in a recent episode of the Talking Simpsons  podcast. Shout out to the Talking Simpsons podcast I guess! Then, because this is the show that it is, we argue about various definitions of...

Today on our program, we make some jokes and laugh at them, and then argue about various methods of preparing coffee. It's pretty much a normal BJD day. Oh, and let's not forget: Our country is currently being run by literal white supremacists. Today's strip

Y'all reading Mel Gurtov's excellent foreign affairs blog, In the Human Interest ? I know I am. Anyway, here's some Garfield  or whatever. I was going to give you guys a picture of Fred Astaire here, but that isn't working right now because Squarespace is apparently shit. Today's strip

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White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way. But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded—at least, in the same way. For my part, the fate of the Jews, and the world’s indifference to it, frightened me very much. I could not but feel, in those sorrowful years, that this human indifference, concerning which I knew so...

The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality—for this touchstone can be only oneself. Such a person interposes between himself and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes. And these attitudes, furthermore, though the person is usually unaware of it (is unaware of so much!), are historical and public attitudes. They do not relate to the present any more than they relate...

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themse...

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852 Hey, whi...

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hol...