Ted Rall for August 30, 2010
Transcript:
Got a problem? Call the guys who have a problem- with your problem...the solutionators! A child in danger- and the solutionators leap into action! (Woman: Done fell down the well!) (Man: Not good. Don't worry. We'll get your daughter out.) (Woman: God bless you!) (Voice: Mom!) (Man: I'd say this calls for a free market solution.) (Man 2: Exactly! Let's give billions of dollars to corporations!) Later. (Man: Odd. We've given billions of dollars to corporations, yet the girl is still in that well.) (Man 2: Weird.) (Man: Help!) Later still (Man 2: Maybe if you'd taught her how to swim-) (Woman: -She wouldn't be dead. I know. Thanks.) Next: another crisis. Another solution! (Barack Obama: The sun is going supernova!) (Man 2: Mr. President, we recommend giving billions of dollars to corporations.)
I can’t help but thinking that Ted took his first panel here from a classic locus in Confucian philosophy - Gongsun Chou I 6, where Meng Zi (Mencius) uses the image of the spontaneous feeling of compassion that arises in an observer when a child falls in a well to argue that human nature is good. The following panels show how far we have progressed during the last 2300 years….
Henri