Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 10/09/02
Artist's Statement
As of this writing, the Bush administration is clearly determined to invade
Iraq, over the protests of half the American people and everyone else in the
world. Some people say it's about the oil reserves, some say it's all about
approval ratings and re-election, or revenge, or just making an example of
one defiant dictator to establish unchallenged American global hegemony for
the twenty-first century. I have no fucking idea why they want to invade Iraq;
the only thing I know for certain is that it is not for the reasons they're
giving us, because 1.) they don't make sense 2.) they keep changing and 3.)
whenever they fall through the administration just comes up with new ones
or, lately, doesn't even bother and goes ahead with the invasion plans anyway.
And this, in truth, is one of the main reasons I'm opposing them: because
I just don't trust them. It's obvious that they must have ulterior motives
too opportunistic and scummy to be publicly owned up to, or they'd just explain
them instead of trying to frighten and bully us all into it.
What I can't believe, in spite of my thirty-five years of consistently disappointing
experience with my fellow human beings, is that it's working. It just
amazes me that anyone is taking the administration's claims at face value,
or pays attention to the President's speeches and considers and debates them
as though they contained information, as though they were actually intended
to communicate. I'm like: have these people never heard of being lied to?
Have they never seen an advertisement, or bought a used car, or been to a
singles' bar?
And it was this last idea that stuck, and turned into this cartoon. It seemed
like a universal situation to use to point out that the reasons people give
for their actions (especially people in power) are hardly ever the
real reasons. The South clamored about "States' Rights" because
they wanted to keep the blacks in their place. Pro-lifers weep with love for
microscopic zygotes because they hate human beings and want fornicators to
be punished. The wealthy don't support tax cuts because it'll stimulate the
economy -- they just want More Money for Them. And this administration insults
our intelligence by claiming to care that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator--shit,
our government supported him while he was comitting all his infamous atrocities.
So let's cut the bullshit: there is no point in refuting the administration's
"reasons" for attacking Iraq because they don't believe their reasons
any more than we do.
In other words, they do not love us. They just want to fuck us.