This all sounds so familiar. It's ugly, so I knew I'd have to dig. Like a cat though, I'd only loosely covered the mess, as if I'd known that such a stinker would have to be unearthed eventually. That stinky day has arrived. Today, a lot of people have been told to be scared, and now a lot of people are scared. The crazy infection that seems to be spreading through the USA lately is called politics, and the mental illness that comes with it is normal. The warming of the political climate is man-made, though, and I've seen something like this before. It was a long time ago, but we were being conditioned then and trained for obedience just like today.

1979, USA

We were teenagers, or at least me and the knuckleheads that I hung around with were, so we thought we could easily make a better world than the one that we were being trained for. Besides, we were still sore-- the music had been taken away from us in a disco coup a few painful years earlier, and we were cautious and highly suspicious of any new stuff happening in the world. We stayed busy driving around looking for each other in our parent's cars, and as teenagers, our solution to the world's issues was what issues? 

Bored In the USA
 

Sometime in March of 1980, Ted Koppel got a gig doing a nightly roundup on TV of what seemed like the only issue in the world;  The IRAN HOSTAGE SITUATION. Most of us had lost interest in that story after the first few days way back in November of the previous year, so the nightly show was a boring hostage recap of how the hostages were still being held hostage, until the word 'hostage' became excruciatingly dull. Teenagers are against anything dull, so we ignored it for a solid year like the experts that we were. 

It was right near the middle of the USA where we were doing our ignoring, and a new story had begun to compete with Koppel's hostage show-- a hollywood actor that we'd never really heard of was seriously running for President of the USA, and as the news showed the guy with a chimpanzee in an old promo photo, we were assured by those broadcasts that we were to hate this guy with all of our might. Finally, something to do besides count the days with Ted Koppel! 

 

 Ronald Reagan

 The hippie crew that I rode around with had become interested in the new Reagan story, and they found it simple to hate the actor just because he was Red Team and not Blue Team. Those team sports where everybody is just talking were just more boring stuff for me, but if everybody was going to hate on something all at once, I didn't want to be left out, so I did my best. 

 
Jimmy Carter
 

As it turned out, the United States already had a President, and while many people didn't dare to criticize Jimmy Carter for fear of being labeled a "Reagan supporter", there began to be whispers that perhaps a stronger leader would be able to handle the ongoing hostage situation that Koppel was still going on about every night. Carter was a nice guy-- there was no denying that-- but it was used against him, and eventually that niceness became common humor. The rhetoric continued for months, and all of the nice people of the world watched as this nice guy president was utterly dismembered by the ruthless pack.

 
Reagan Wins!
 

And while he is being sworn in all of the Iran Hostages were released. To make a long story shorter, it was just like that. Very suspicious. 

 
Whatever had just happened, me and my freak friends had employed all of our hate to try to get rid of Reagan, but obviously there were some back-room deals going on up there that we were not informed of, and we hated him even more for it. This was the end. Our country, that we'd hated so hard for, was lost. If this is the kind of person that America wants, then fine, we QUIT! 

(UPDATE) Didn't happen

 
Going Pro

 A few years later, I got the chance to draw cartoons for a college newspaper-- the UALR Forum. An exciting moment-- I was actually going to get paid for drawing, and I hopped on the opportunity. I soon found that they didn't want me to draw my usual psychedelic action stuff necessarily, but that I'd be drawing the sport of people talking-- I would be drawing political cartoons. I think it paid about $80/month, and there was a new issue published every week.

  
Drawing Reagan
 

Starting my new job in editorial journalism around 1982, it didn't take long for me to figure out that I'd long since become bored with hating on Reagan, but now I was expected to try to rekindle my old simulated outrage, and the newspaper was going to pay me for it. I didn't watch the news, didn't know who I was supposed to like or hate, and I had to ask the editor of the paper-- often just a few hours before press time-- what in the world was going on every week. My part-time job; professionally hating politicians. Somebody is willing to pay for that. 

Here's some of the stuff that I was paid to do:

Fear-- the common tool of tyrants, used to manipulate people, and embarrassingly enough, image source therealpaul

clearly running out of ideas on how to make Reagan look like a jerk after 4 years of it

[author's note; today, I wouldn't think of illustrating such divisive fear mongering as this, for any money-- I post these images for educational purposes only. Editorial cartooning often = drawing things that aren't based in a solid reality, and the cartoons aren't even funny. It's a steam valve, so that things go on the same as ever. Treadmill grease basically, with a nice humorous balm]

Conclusion?
 

That whole time as a political cartoonist, I'd been told by an editor who to hate, but the actual reasons for the contrived emotion were too boring to detail, so all of us fitted ourselves with handy 'OUTRAGE' buttons which could be pressed by anyone with the right trigger word, a key phrase or a name. Whether our little buttons were set to 'BAWL', or adjusted to the full 'OUTRAGE' setting, we had the thing on auto-pilot because everybody was tired of thinking about outrage anymore. We were utterly manipulated into supporting a system that served some faraway entities and their nefarious ends. Lured into the gang war by money, I was being paid to spread hatred. I was supposed to indoctrinate the students at that college in the ways of hate, how to kindle it, and how to direct it at an approved target so huge that they could hardly miss. I was training recruits for somebody's army, somebody's mental wars.
 

Thinking back, I can't remember being engaged in the drama of politics like many of my friends had been, and some of them still are addicted to the game. If I had any real hate in those days, it might have been that I hated to see Jimmy Carter getting creamed on TV-- he really was a nice guy, but that was about as deep as it got for me. Later working for the college newspaper, I had to find out from the editor who to hate, and I could give an artist's rendering of that manufactured rage because I needed the money, and except for the art of drawing, I had no idea what I was doing.  

 I didn't mean to stink the place up here. The political scene is perhaps less boring now in 2016 but it still stinks-- maybe worse, I dunno, my nose is beat. This recent circus of politics, the whole thing-- these latest turds were just left in the walkway like they were meant to be stepped in-- tracked into the house and onto the rug in front of the TV, and I recognize that smell. We've been here before. It's déjà poo. I recognize that stench, because once long ago, I was involved in one of these cultural engineering projects, and I promise, some of these people really are getting paid for this. And some of them probably don't even know what they're really doing.
 

---------------- 

all images by @therealpaul

follow me @therealpaul