I read a thread on Twitter by a woman whose father had recently died of covid. When her father got sick, her brother convinced their father that going to the hospital and receiving treatment would be a fatal mistake. The brother also believed that the reason the father had gotten sick was that he had gone to a family funeral where there were many vaccinated people, and vaccinated people are spreading disease in some fashion.

After the father died, the brother got sick with covid, too. His sister (thousands of miles away) begged him over the phone to go get treated. He went to the hospital, but then checked himself out and died at home a couple of weeks later.

Whether it's a deadly disease or climate change, people on the right seem increasingly immune to argument. Climate change is a hoax. Covid is a plot. January sixth was just a bunch of tourists in the capital to snap some photos. Trump was the actual winner of the election.

Of course, some on the left are also immune to argument. But the right-wing immunity to argument isn't just on the margins of the conservative movement; it dominates their party. Donald Trump was their last candidate for President, and very will might be their next candidate too. And no evidence - not even death - can convince them they're wrong.

Wow, is this post a bummer. But thinking about this stuff led to the image of a right-winger standing in a blasted hellscape crowing that he'd won. And that thought led to this comic strip, which I think is pretty funny. 

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My biggest worry, drawing this strip, was making the right-wing character recognizable to readers even after he's gone through an enormous change in circumstances. Hence the red hair, the widow's peak, the chin-only beard, and the distinctive glasses frames. I think I did enough so that most readers will recognize that it's the same character without having to think about it.

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Thank you all so much for supporting this patreon. (And welcome to a new patron!) Doing these strips can feel like shouting into a void, except shouting is quick while doing each of these strips takes soooo many hours. Knowing that people find them worth supporting (as well as reading the comments from you folks after each strip is posted) makes a huge difference to me.

As a thank you (and as usual), you're all seeing this cartoon at least a month before I'll post it in public. But if you're supporting at the $5 level or above, please feel free to show it to folks without waiting.

The next two cartoons are already mostly done - one about purple people (with Kevin Moore on art), and one about qualified immunity (which is currently being colored by Frank Young - hi Frank!). So I'll be back with a new cartoon soon.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1

A woman and a man walk on a path in a hilly park (drawn mostly in shades of green and blue). The man, who has red hair and a red chin-only beard (no mustache), is walking ahead, not looking back at her as he talks. He's wearing a white button-up shirt with a necktie, brown slacks, and glasses. The woman has black hair, and is wearing a white v-neck shirt with red arms, jeans, and red sneakers. She is holding her hands out imploringly as she talks to the man's back.

WOMAN: This shouldn't be a partisan issue! We'll all suffer if the world is destroyed! But if we work together-

MAN: You're wasting your breath.

PANEL 2

The man, who has crested the hill, turns to look back at the woman, who is still climbing the hill. He sneers with contempt. The woman looks taken aback.

MAN: Don't show me articles from the New York Times or whatever. Fox told me I can't trust mainstream media!

WOMAN: But--

MAN: Don't quote "experts." Newsmax warned me that those people lie!

PANEL 3

A close-up of the man's head as he speaks, grinning and intense.

MAN: I know everything outside my bubble is false. Nothing you can say will reach me, and there's no evidence I can't dismiss as fake.

MAN: Face it -- I've won.

PANEL 4

A caption says "YEARS LATER."

We're looking at the wreckage of an absolutely destroyed town or city, drawn mostly in shades of brown and orange. There are tree stumps, and telephone poles which have fallen to diagonal positions, wrecked buildings in the distance, a dark brown smog rising into the air from those buildings. Closer up, there are tree stumps, a window lying on the ground, bricks and pipes and a shattered smartphone and other junk scattered around. 

Sitting on the concrete slabs of a broken sidewalk is the man from earlier in the strip. His clothes are torn and ragged, and his hair is grown much longer and looks tangled. One lens of his glasses is shattered. He is grinning (missing a tooth) and pumping a fist in the air in front of him.

MAN: Well, I certainly told HER!