323

Socialist
Posted on July 4, 2018 by David M Willis

323 thoughts on “Socialist”

  1. Doctor_Who

    I think the more parts the series needed, the less convincing it was.

    1. Clif

      BUT. TWELVE. PARTS.

      1. Chaucer59

        Given twelve parts of, say one half-hour per part, you could prove just about anything: Satan is God, God is dead, Jesus Christ was a reptile man from the city of Zatar at the Earth’s core, Mary Magdalene was an alien from the moons of Jupiter. You could even prove stuff that’s just unbelievable: Trump is a feminist, f’rinstance.

        1. Clif

          I never knew that about Mary Magdalene.

        2. Jamie

          I mean, what did you think those moons were named for?

        3. Pablo360

          That last one seems farfetched but all of the others are true, I am Christian I can confirm

        4. HeySo

          Only two of those things are false.
          It’ll be amusing watching you try and figure out which ones.

        5. NinjamaId

          Obv the Trump and Jesus ones. One of the reasons the reptile men reside in the earth’s core is because they haven’t yet developed camouflage technology able to disguise them as passably human. While there is significant evidence that Jesus interacted with the lizard-folk, there’s no real support for him actually coming from Zatar himself.

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      If anything, Jesus was so socialist, even most actual socialist would be saying “WHOA, that’s going just a bit too far, Jesus!”

      https://youtu.be/h0PepyWE4ug Darkmatter2525

  2. Julez

    SOCIALIZMS

    1. Aeron

      Social-ish.

  3. Ana Chronistic

    pastor, more like ASS-tor amirite

    1. Lokitsu

      I think Joyce was being a little Past-tense.

      1. K^2

        I don’t know, she still seems pretty tense.

      2. Deanatay

        He’s contagious, like a Pastor-lence.

  4. AeromechanicalAce

    Don’t forget the whipping Bankers thing.

    1. JetstreamGW

      I’m pretty sure his issue wasn’t with them inherently, but with the fact that they were set up in the Temple.

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        If seeing someone in a place where all are welcome makes you violently angry, it’s probably personal.

      2. Reltzik

        More specifically, that they were charging money for the implements for and privilege of worshiping at the temple.

        …. on the other hand, usury’s still a big no-no.

        1. JBento

          That’s the CHURCH’s job.

  5. Puckish Rogue

    Dorothy: good friend, lousy wingwoman

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      Looking at panels 1 and 2, I’m starting to kinda sorta ship Dorothy and Jacob.

      Not that either of them is interested at this point — they barely know each other, and she’s just broken up with Walky because she doesn’t have time for romance, and he’s still dating Raidah and (unconsciously, I think) flirting with Joyce.

      But Dorothy and Jacob are at a more equal intellectual level, and a more compatible maturity level, than the Dorothy-Walky or the hypothetical Jacob-Joyce relationships.

      Not that any of that matters if there is no particular interest, separately or mutually.

      1. FireAtWilliam

        Look, i’m still on team “These 4 should be in a nice, happy, poly relationship”

        1. Vi

          HARD AGREE ON MORE POLYAMOROUS RELATIONSHIPS IN DOA. WILLIS PLEASE I DESERVE IT I’VE BEEN GOOD I’VE BEEN GAY.

      2. Puckish Rogue

        I agree, Joyce and Jacob don’t have much in common (apart from being attractive and decent people) whereas Dorothy and Jacob both want to go onto to achieve higher status positions, both understand and embrace the need for study, Jacob already dresses like hes going to court (or parliament)

  6. Tacos

    Out of curiosity, how would one choke on their own butt-for-a-face?

    1. Kernanator

      I’m not going into detail, but it involves poop getting stuck in your throat.

    2. cbwroses

      I imagine it’s similar to how people choke on their own tongue.
      I can’t imagine how they do that either, but it’s said to be possible.

      1. HeySo

        I assume it’s less “tongue gets yanked backward into the throat” (though I imagine a severe enough injury could manage that) and more of a “throat/back of mouth swells, and the tongue is thick enough to block what passage remains”.

        Either way, choking without any kind of outside catalyst seems like something that’d only be possible if you have a tongue that is unusually detached from the floor of your mouth.

    3. Reltzik

      You can’t breathe because your cheeks are way too big.

  7. William Leonard Reese Jr.

    One day you’ll tell him that to his face Joyce. Luckily one of priests I knew, Father Shreck a Roman Catholic priest, was quite accepting of gay and queer folk. No idea how he felt about Socialism though. I myself, despite being VERY liberal, still have some hang ups on the ideology purely from a historical perspective in how the ideology had been corrupted. Plus I truly feel the conflicting hang ups that Joyce has rattling in her brainspace right now. That happens when your beliefs get shaken to their core.

  8. Deathjavu

    Ah, the tortuous mental gymnastics involved in squaring ultra-capitalist dogma with “it’s easier for rich people to fit through the eye of a needle than get into heaven” or however that goes.

    It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

    1. Yumi

      I think there’s something about a camel in there, only that part is a mistranslation.

      1. Deathjavu

        No, it’s not possible for [insert favorite bible version here] to be mistranslated, because God made sure the translation from ancient Hebrew to Greek to Latin to German to English was perfect. Even if that’s not possible because the languages are too different.

        1. Agemegos

          You left out Aramaic.

        2. Rukdug

          *applauds*
          Seriously though, thank you. So many people forget about Aramaic, and it’s a real shame considering how important of a language it actually is.

        3. Marsh Maryrose

          One of the things I am still trying to get a handle on is how, even though the Arameans were never an independent major political entity in the ancient world, nonetheless their language became a lingua franca in the Neo-Assyrian age that would persist as such for over a thousand years.

        4. Rukdug

          It’s definitely one of the more interesting languages historically specifically because of that fact.

        5. thejeff

          Of course it’s possible. “With God all things are possible.” God directly inspired the translators, so of course it’s correct.

          Mind you, that’s not all translations. In fact, many translations were corrupt. Which is why God sent us the King James Bible, fixing errors that had crept into the older translations they worked from.

          It’s a fundamental problem for any literalist sect. They pretty much have to pick one version of the text and claim that is the one that counts. And, since their members aren’t all going to learn Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, certainly not the classical versions, it pretty much has to be a translation into their native language, of which there are many. Which differ.

      2. Chris Phoenix

        The way I heard it, it was a camel fitting through the needle. And one theory is that the “needle” referred to an especially narrow gate in the Jerusalem wall. Thus, the more stuff the camel is carrying, the more difficult to fit through.

        1. Agemegos

          The narrow gate in the Jerusalem wall is a myth devised by an American preacher about 1850. There’s not trace of it in Jerusalem or any document before the middle of the 19th century.

        2. thejeff

          I think it does appear earlier than that, but I can’t track it down right now. 15th century, maybe? Doesn’t change the basic point that it was long after the fact and there’s no real evidence supporting.
          There’s another argument that “camel” is actually a mistranslation and it should actually be “rope”.

          None of which changes the basic point of the passage: Jesus tells the rich youth how to get to heaven – “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
          However you finagle the part about the eye of the needle, the meaning remains.

        3. JBento

          I heard “camel” was a type of knot, which makes sense, but I don’t know how true it is.

        4. thejeff

          It really is amazing how many ways people try to make sense out of that passage. Mostly to avoid grappling with Jesus’s actual advice.

        5. Portland

          I think a big part of it is “but… but… a camel COULDN’T get through the eye of a needle! That would be impossible!” Which, I think, is kind of the point.

        6. OBBWG

          You can get a camel through the eye of a needle. You just need a really, really big needle. (Thanks to Al Jaffee of Mad Magazine for pointing that out.)

        7. thejeff

          Alternately, a very fine meat grinder and a funnel. 🙂

        8. Roborat

          Or a LOT of pressure.

        9. miis

          Or a very tiny camel.

        10. DavidMcG

          I heard it was a common saying and the original animal was an elephant, but Jesus changed it because the camel was the largest animal in the area.

        11. thejeff

          The Talmud apparently uses it, so that’s quite possible. As both elephant and camel, I think.

      3. Annonymouse

        It was a colloquialism that lost context in the passage of time – The Eye of a Needle – is that little tiny night door in or beside the main gates to the city or fortification which gets closed at night, that you have to stoop down to get through.
        Heck most tourist types would need to scooch to try to get through that type of doorway and a camel, believe it or not, does not scooch.

        1. Annonymouse

          Oh and Agemegos pointed out the the modern fairy tale about a door in the wall of Jerusalem. When you think about it, when you put together a story with a real world example you want to use something everyone in your audience can relate too, not something specific to one location that some have never been to.

        2. thejeff

          Except the modern fairy tale is that it was a door or gate at all, instead of an actual needle. Which everyone in the audience could relate to.

        3. Conuly

          This is not true. There is no evidence for “eye of a needle” meaning anything of the sort at the time. There IS evidence that “camel” and “rope” were astonishingly similar in Aramaic, and there is ALSO evidence that “elephant through the eye of a needle” was already a common expression meaning “something impossible”.

    2. Pylgrim

      I’ve heard some of it. It involves painting Jesus’s miraculous healings as
      “getting people back on their feet so they can rejoin the workplace and earn their keep, as God decreed” and “see, among everything that Jesus did, he never ever gave a single penny to the poor”.

      1. Julez

        You know who liked giving money to the poor? Judas. You want us to be like Judas? (/Sarcasm)

        1. JBento

          I heard Judas was so generous he didn’t even keep 30 talents he got from honest work.

      2. Rabid Rabbit

        But he healed them without taking payment. Surely that’s evil, evil socialized medicine?

        1. Jamie

          What if the currency he was dealing in wasn’t money… but SOULS!?

  9. Side One

    Ah, Socialism… The New American Witch Hunt. Wake me when People Who Fart in Crowded Elevators are ‘The Enemy’. I’ll throw the first brick.

    1. Kernanator

      I will be shoving people against the wall when the revolution comes for People Who Stand in the Middle of Thoroughfares.

      1. Deathjavu

        I’m making a list of People Who Get Out A Stopped Line Of Cars To Race Ahead And Cut Back In The Line Further Ahead.

        They’re destined for the gulags.

        1. Puckish Rogue

          People that can’t park between the car park lines really grinds my gears

        2. adjudicus

          People that stay on the side of the escalator thats meant for people to walk, and refuse to budge no matter what

        3. Jon Rich

          Yeah, this. I’m from Massachusetts, where that’s considered somewhat rude, but not a really big deal, or anything. That completely changed when I went to college down in D.C. They call it “esca-lefting” and get really, really pissed at you for it. Whenever I’d come home for breaks, I’d find myself getting really annoyed at people who I saw doing it back in Massachusetts.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Let’s add “people who camp out in the passing lane doing the speed limit then cut across three lanes of traffic without looking when they get to their exit” to the list. See this all the time on 128…

        5. Roborat

          And a special ring in hell is reserved for the ones who seem to think they get bonus points if they turn so late that they have to turn 90 degrees or more to make the exit.

        6. Marsh Maryrose

          I’ve only been to two cities in Massachusetts: West Springfield, which struck me as a pretty normal East Coast city, and Boston…

          …Boston was the scariest city I’ve ever driven in, hands down, and I learned to drive in a place where anyone who could afford a car could basically purchase a driver’s license. What I remember of traffic in Boston — and this was 20 years ago, so things may have changed since then — but what I remember most, 20 years later is this: those lines painted on the roadway were for decorative purposes only.

          So it wouldn’t surprise me that people from Boston might have a certain attitude toward toward pedestrian forms of transit as well. And I apologize to anyone who is from Massachusetts but not from Boston for unwarrantedly lumping them in with Bostonians.

        7. Needfuldoer

          Eh, only the core of the city is a terrible vehicular hellhole now. (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Back Bay, Murderpan, etc.) It was a lot worse before the Big Dig.

          Everything outside 495 might as well be a different state. Springfield and Northampton are basically South Vermont.

        8. Annonymouse

          Well if you want a different flavor of swearing associated with horrible driving, I suggest Paris France [not Paris Ontario] where they gave up on painting lines on the boulevards.

    2. Reltzik

      PLEASE. Mob violence is not the correct response to such offenses. True justice would require the state to execute them by gas chamber.

    3. thejeff

      Socialism is the new American witch hunt? It wasn’t a new witch hunt back in the 50s with McCarthy.
      It’s probably more popular now in the US than anytime in my life.

      1. JBento

        “First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak out, because, well, fuck those guys.”
        “Then they came for the socialists…”

        1. Delicious Taffy

          When are they comin’ for the Nazis, please? If it’s not soon, I’m going to Australia.

  10. Stephen Bierce

    *plays The Guess Who’s “Share The Land” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. m-m

      Waits patiently to play “All this time” by sting because I’m feeling mad literal

  11. Passchendaele

    pffft angry Joyce is still mostly adorable to me

    1. Puckish Rogue

      Obtuse Joyce is damn annoying though

      1. King Daniel

        Wouldn’t you say she’s acute?

        1. King Daniel

          Shoot, wrong email led to a hated gravatar.

        2. Passchendaele

          A+ pun. also ew, mary

      2. Passchendaele

        Yeeeep, I can’t disagree there (especially because I agree with Dorothy), but it’s negated by Joyce’s refusal to swear.

  12. Bathymetheus

    And Islam forbids the paying of interest.

    For which there are religiously OK workarounds.

    It’s not actually possible to forbid commerce, even when it’s exploitive. The thing is, people don’t really want to forbid exploitation. They hope to become the exploiter.

    1. Schpoonman

      I just don’t get the people who choose to hurt. Like, there are ways to do pretty much anything in the world (including harboring actually dumb amounts of money) without hurting people, but they choose to.

      1. Bathymetheus

        It’s a lot easier to make money by taking it from other people than to innovate and thereby create new wealth.

      2. ShinyNeen

        I’m terrified of harming others personally, in any fashion, so for a long time I couldn’t understand how other people could bring themselves to do it either.
        But, as I see it, people convince themselves that the violence is somehow allowed. Like by convincing themselves that their victim/s deserve to be hurt, or that the violence they’re committing isn’t actually hurting anyone (even though it is). Stuff like that. Which, when it gets to the level where you’re damaging the livelihood of other people, physically or economically or emotionally or w/e, is… really bad!

        1. Bathymetheus

          You are correct that people will convince themselves that their victims deserve to be hurt. You will hear terms such as “subhuman” being used. It’s called “demonizing” i.e. convincing oneself that the targets are demons, not worthy of the consideration due to a fellow human. When you hear a politician say “Mexicans are rapists” that’s demonizing.

        2. Krys Brynhildr

          Its all a matter of acceptable targets to a lot of “People” in a pretty wide variety of societies, really. Which I guess makes sense looking back to the tribal nature of early societies and the sort of group oriented focus they had based on “other peoples”.

          After all, controlling access to limited resources that your group of “Us” needs, particularly taking them from some nebulous “Them” is something that early on boosted survival rates of your group on the whole? Before most of these groups had the ability to literally blow up the planet on a whim if pushed far enough anyways?

          That said, even the idea of “Acceptable Targets” or causing harm is actually “Good” kind of disturbs me personally. I mean I can accept some cases of it being a “Necessary Evil”, like I dunno, fighting Nazis, defending oneself or others from someone intent on doing harm, but that doesn’t mean its not an “Evil” or that it should be glorified like especially Americans do with harm to anyone “deserving” of being harmed.

          Then again, the obsession with what people “Deserve” is also a big problem, mainly because the focus is denying people things cause they don’t deserve things, regardless of if they need them or not. Or alternatively, doing horrible things to people because they deserve to be punished for something.

    2. No Name

      Technically speaking, so does Christianity (or did, at any rate). That’s why everyone hated Jews: they could charge interest.

      1. Agemegos

        … and were forbidden from everything else, since they couldn’t own land or join a guild.

        1. No Name

          I’m sure there’s a vicious feedback loop in there somewhere….

        2. StClair

          ya think?

        3. Rukdug

          Oh yeah. Really, really bad one too.

        4. Agemegos

          You could always convert to Christianity an risk getting burned at stake for using a clean tablecloth on Friday.

        5. Rukdug

          Or being accused of secretly still practicing your old religion and killed as an apostate by someone who wanted your money, even if you had converted and been faithful for years. Really not a surprise that a lot of Jews went to Poland in the late 1400s when the Sjem said “Hey, what if didn’t persecute Jewish people?”

        6. Agemegos

          Years later is only the start of it! In Spain they would do it to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of converts.

      2. Reltzik

        One of many reasons, yes.

        (Also, they were employed as tax collectors, and didn’t want to convert, and they were DIFFERENT. Oh, and Matthew 27:25.)

        1. Krys Brynhildr

          I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of Americans who’d like an excuse to burn their tax collectors at the stake, or other forms of mob justice.

          Y’know despite the fact that taxes aren’t innately bad and are at least potentially something that can be used towards things that benefit society on the whole, provided that you don’t just elect the extremely corrupt on the basis of assuming that being morally bankrupt is one of the required job skills for public office? I guess normalizing things is a lot easier than actually dealing with them though.

        2. Marsh Maryrose

          The American attitude toward taxes for the last 242+ years:

          “Taxes are wonderful and necessary when they are collected from other people and spent on things that immediately improve my life. Taxes are evil when they are collected from me, especially if they are spent on things that don’t immediately improve my life.”

        3. thejeff

          Though tax collectors back in the day were a whole different animal than modern times, however much we complain about our taxes.
          Taxes were usually land or head taxes rather than income based and thus would still be do even when the crops failed and you were at the edge of starvation. The tax collector himself usually got a cut of the proceeds (or whatever excess he could collect beyond what his superior demanded) so he had strong motivation to not be lenient.

          Tax revolts back then usually were desperation moves by the peasantry, not much like our current grumbling.

    3. Reltzik

      Of COURSE you can forbid commerce.

      ….. it won’t stop, but you can still forbid it.

      1. thejeff

        Commerce and interest aren’t quite the same thing.

        1. JBento

          I think Reltzik was referring to Bathymetheus third paragraph (where they say you can’t forbid commerce) not the first.

          I’m not sure how you would forbid commerce, though. “And now you are no longer allowed to trade stuff”?
          “But can I GIVE stuff?”
          “Yeah, sure.”
          “Uh, okay. Hey, Jimmy, I’m gonna give you this chicken. By the way, I could really use a certain amount of money which is, amazingly, the same amount a chicken would be worth when we could trade stuff. Would you give it to me?”

  13. ShinyNeen

    So she could only tell the moon how stupid the pastor was. But she could punch Ross in the face.
    While I do wonder if she’d ever call the pastor stupid to his face, I also wonder if Joyce will ever get to punch the moon.

    1. Schpoonman

      I need someone to do Joyce in Saitama’s suit.

      1. Puckish Rogue

        Kinky

      2. ShinyNeen

        I interpreted “do” as “draw”, and gave it a shot!

        I’ve been awake, like, an hour and a half longer than I should be, so I really should not have given it a shot, but I gave it a shot!

        1. Eldritch Gentleman

          [clears his throat] One Puuuuuuuunch!

        2. abysswatcher1993

          Joyce would think her strength came from Jesus and not from all the body fitness she did during the summer. Then she is joined by Becky, who hired Carla to make her robotic arms.

    2. Savail

      Max Facepuncher could probably give her some pointers.

      1. Roborat

        Wow, I never thought I would run across someone else who read that webcomic.

  14. Raen

    And lo, Jesus said, “give not unto the poor, for it taketh the onus off Caesar.”

    1. Wolfbeckett

      Ha. Well said.

      Jesus advocating giving to the poor does not make him a socialism. Voluntary charity is not socialism. Socialism is redistribution of wealth at the barrel of a government gun.

      1. ego

        yeah, the suggestion of the owner and final judge of the universe is WAY LESS coercive than government authority.

      2. Fart Captor

        Bring it the fuck on then. I’m sick of people being allowed to die because they couldn’t crowdfund enough money for treatment.

  15. Opus the Poet

    “I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:24 and also Mark 10:25

    1. Yumi

      I’ve heard that the passage might have actually meant to be written with “rope” or “cable” in place of “camel,” but even if that’s true, I think it’s better with the camel.
      And Jesus would agree.

      1. Bathymetheus

        I heard that “eye of the needle” was a term for a narrow passage into a walled community when the main gate was closed. It was intended to make it difficult for armed invaders to attack in force. To be effective it had to be small enough that a camel would have great difficulty getting through.

        1. Yumi

          That’s way more boring than attempting to use a camel to sew.

        2. Bathymetheus

          OK, ya got me there.

        3. Grikmeer

          That was a myth made up later when the church was trying to sell Christianity to the rich people – at least according to the QI episode I watched…

        4. BBCC

          That is incredibly unlikely to be true. It was something made up later to make Christianity more palatable.

        5. Agemegos

          There is no record of any narrow passage called “the eye of the needle” before about 1850, and the first mentions of it appear in American sources.

      2. Agemegos

        There is a similar saying recorded from about a century before, except that its was an elephant rather than a camel. Jesus’ remark is probably an old saying adapted for people who were not familiar with elephants.

        1. Bathymetheus

          You imply that Jesus was familiar with elephants . . .

        2. Rukdug

          Well, to be fair, up until around 100 BC, there was a species of Syrian Elephant, so it’s possible Jesus and some others of his generation had heard vague stories from their grandparents. Especially if Jesus and his contemporaries had ever been told about the Macabbee revolt, which did involve elephants. At the same time, if the historical Jesus had spent part of his childhood in Egypt like it’s suggested in the bible, then he may have had some idea of what elephants were because the Ptolemies had imported African elephants for centuries. It’s not impossible that a decent number of Galilean and Judean Jews had some idea of what an elephant was, but much more people would have been familiar with camels. Of course, that is all speculation. He might have just heard the phrase, wondered “What the Ghenna is an elephant?” and then switched it too camel after it was explained to him that an elephant was a really big animal.

        3. not someone else

          I don’t know how educated Jesus was, but Imperial Rome in general certainly knew about them.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe

          They were also used very famously by Hannibal in the 2nd Punic War (Carthage vs. Rome). The Mediterranean countries actually had a lot of contact with each other, India not excluded.

        4. Agemegos

          No, I imply that people in Syria and Mesopotamia a hundred years before Jesus were familiar with elephants.

          Which is not terribly remarkable: the Parthians and Sassanid Persians used war elephants (from India) against the Roman Empire in about that area in about that period.

        5. Yumi

          Do you know what the elephant quote was exactly? And/or who said it, if known. Sounds interesting.

        6. Agemegos

          Sorry, I don’t. I tried to find it on Snopes yesterday, but did not try very hard.

        7. Agemegos

          There’s an article about it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle

  16. newllend(henryvolt)

    This is a interesting revelation.

  17. BBCC

    Eye of the needle, kids, eye of the needle.

    1. marianne

      ?Risin’ up to the challenge of our riiiiival!?

  18. Bagge

    I just love Dorothy’s apologetic smile in the fourth panel. She knows this is dangerous territory, she doesn’t want to stress out Joyce or pick a fight, but she still stands her ground.

    1. ShinyNeen

      This is part of why Dorothy is, like, my favorite character! She always has to tread carefully around Joyce, while trying not to deny what she knows to be true by staying silent when Joyce says awful things. But she never thinks less of Joyce, loves her for the honest good in her, and celebrates her progress. She basically treats Walky the same, and I honestly think she would be like this for the entire world if such a thing were humanly possible. She undoubtedly gives too much, tries too hard, and it gets self-harming even though she knows on some level not to let that happen. But to see someone who’s problem is that they need to try less, that cares too much, is just… really humbling, to me.

      1. Bagge

        That’s a very good rundown of the Dorothy we know and love.

        And a great gravatar!

        1. ShinyNeen

          The characters of DoA and why they’re great is definitely my favorite thing to talk about here in the comments!

          … Of course the comic is 8 years old so I’m undoubtedly super late to the party, but whatever!

        2. Bagge

          Haven’t stopped us so far 🙂

          And they ARE great, aren’t they. Especially this strip makes me happy, because here are all three of my favorite characters – Joyce and her two ladies.

        3. ShinyNeen

          Hah. Am I correctly inferring that you ship the three of them, then?

          Joyce and Dorothy are undoubtedly my favorite characters! And I do like Becky, but I feel like I don’t yet fully understand and appreciate her character. But, as always with Willis characters that don’t quite click in my mind, I look forward to fixing that with time!

        4. Jason

          I don’t think you’re late to the party! Because this isn’t a party that just ends- it’s a party that changes, and our understanding of it changes, so we find new things to talk about and enjoy. The discussion of why we like the characters we do is, for the most part, a different discussion than a year ago, or two, or five!

  19. tbf

    Jesus was not socialist because the industrial revolution hadn’t happened yet. If anything, he advocated something like Marx’s primitive communism.

    1. No Name

      NO! Not COMMUNIST! That’s even worse!

      (That was sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious. Darn you, Poe!)

    2. Jon Rich

      Thia. Jesus wasn’t a socialist as we understand the term because the idea of socialism, of the state taking even partial control over the means of production and distribution of goods, or of anything resembling modern socialism, hadn’t happened yet and wouldn’t do so for almost two milennia. There’s a huge difference between saying, “people should give to the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick,” and so on on the one hand, and “the government needs to support the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick,” etc. So no, Jesus wasn’t a socialist.

      But he sure as hell wasn’t a capitalist, either, and not just because capitalism wouldn’t show up for nearly two thousand years, either. Jesus may or may not have approved of modern socialism; we’ll never know. But there’s all sorts of evidence, basically everywhere, that he was pretty pissed at the idea of very wealthy individuals acting selfishly.

      Tl;dr, we don’t know whether Jesus would be cool with Marx or Engels or Bernie Sanders, but he’d absolutely *despise* Donald Trump, Martin Shkreli, and Joel Osteen.

      1. Krys Brynhildr

        I mean, he’d probably despise people claiming to be his followers but then gleefully gaining wealth by undermining the support structures for the poor in general. He really wasn’t big on hypocrites from what little I recall of that part of the bible for that matter.

      2. thejeff

        Yes, especially on capitalism not showing up yet either.
        Or “the state” really. In anything like the modern sense.

        I’m not actually real clear on what the economy of Biblical Israel was like. Sure, everybody farmed, but were they small landholder farmers? Sharecroppers? Tenant farmers? something else?
        I know about the Jubilee – essentially every 50 years all debts were to be forgiven, slaves freed and land returned to its original owners. No idea how that actually would work in practice.

        Still, I’d say he wasn’t even so much against “very wealthy individuals acting selfishly”, but very wealth individuals at all. They were all inherently acting selfishly, because they had much and so many had so little. I never got the impression Jesus was much concerned with government structures and the like.
        “Take what you have, sell it and give to the poor. Then come and follow me.”

    3. not someone else

      This objection I buy. Also, lest we forget, the concept of the nation-state and national sovereignity is also pretty modern, as well as any number of other concepts of what laws and government are for that had to predate Marx.

      …But I’m pretty sure in the context of the strip, Dorothy’s just saying Jesus’ beliefs rhyme with stuff she agrees with, not that he literally identified as a socialist, so eh. Pedantry about history is super fun though. 😀

      1. erejnion

        But wouldn’t it be easier to just call him “liberal”? Or the liberals get the bullet too, so just calling him “liberal” wouldn’t rhyme with what she believes?

        1. not someone else

          *shrugs* “Jesus was a socialist” is the memetic version and liberal means a lot of things? I don’t think a lady whose most dominant personality trait is “wants to run for President” is going to be even an ironic believer in accelerationism.

  20. Purblebirb

    Wow floofy haired Dorothy is cute

    1. Lingo

      Man, I am vicariously annoyed by all that hair in her face. I really want her to cut her hair. I want most of the characters to cut their hair actually, including Joyce, but particularly Dorothy and Amber.

      1. cbwroses

        I like Amber’s hair.
        It’s her other personality’s hair I’m not to fond of.

  21. Keulen

    In addition to being socialist Jesus also probably wasn’t white.

    1. Mel

      You’re denying the literal revelational truth of The Children’s Picture Bible??

      1. Deanatay

        DIVINELY INSPIRED!!

    2. erejnion

      Frankly, it’s quite iffy where does “white” stop in that direction. He may have been whiter than many Greeks.
      The whole “white” thing is mostly about the US, we here in Europe were more than happy to discriminate and kill each other on the basis of ethnicity. So the question whether Jesus was white or not doesn’t make much sense.

      1. BBCC

        There’s plenty of colour based racism in Europe too, let’s not pretend ethnocentric racism is the only kind there.

  22. Derek

    now this part is fascinating to me because I’m not that familiar with the USA-flavour of fundamentalist Christianity. Joyce seems really offended at the idea that Jesus was a socialist, as if somehow that went against her religion.

    Is US the only country that so heavily conflates capitalism as being equal with Christianity and (judging from the news) democracy?

    1. Yumi

      Part of it is that there’s the belief that socialism=bad. So if Jesus is a socialist, than Jesus=bad, and that can’t be right. Therefore, he’s not a socialist.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Exactly. In America, any type of -ist (besides capitalist) is automatically bad commie nonsense. We can probably blame the Cold War for ingraining that oversimplification into the minds of the Boomer generation, which is ironic when you think about it. They grew up enjoying the benefits of the New Deal, the Interstate Highway System, Social Security, and Medicare.

    2. Bathymetheus

      There is a thing in the U.S. – and I have no idea if it exists elsewhere – called the “prosperity gospel”. To the extent that I understand this (which is not much) the idea seems to be that if you are “in” with God He will make you rich. If you’re not rich, you’re not worhipping right, e.g. Not contributing enough to the church. This, of course, is a way of extracting money from the followers. I am rather cynical about this.

      1. CJ

        That’s just the residual Calvinism.

        1. Roborat

          What does worshipping a comic have to do with this?

      2. Needfuldoer

        Not only that, they can legally enjoy tax exempt status as they use empty promises and vague threats of deity disappointment to extract every penny they can from an unfortunately high percentage of the elderly and destitute.

        Praise be to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption!

        1. Spaz

          Praise be!

          …..that was a weird reflex.

      3. OBBWG

        If being rich is how God shows He loves you, then, since most of the richest people in the world are atheists or agnostics, God must really love non-believers.

    3. Agemegos

      In the 1950s a lot of Americans were not at all confident that the free market is a more efficient mode of production than dirigiste state socialism — they actually agreed with Krushchev that the communists were going to bury us. So they heavily promoted the opposition to Communism on the ground that it is godless. It was under Eisenhower that Congress changed the motto of the USA to “In God We Trust” and required that it appear on all the money (a strange juxtaposition if there ever was one). Since then a lot of American conservatives (who don’t actually mind people exercising power over other people, so long as it is the right people in both cases) have conflated religion with crony capitalism and conflated communism with atheism (and personal liberty for women, children, employees, “coloured folks”, students, QILTB&G, and other not-the-right-kind-or-people).

      1. Rukdug

        I forget, I know Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses” but did he consider the abolition of religion as a necessary part of communism, or just the abolition of religion in its current hierarchical state? When it comes to socialism, I like to study the primary creators as opposed to the later translations. Seems more genuine in a way. Oh, and Engels as well.

        1. drs

          “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” -Marx

          “All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.” -Lenin

          “It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism.” -Lenin

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_and_religion

        2. Rukdug

          Thank you for the link. It’s very helpful. Also, very interesting.

    4. erejnion

      Good question!
      I would have an answer for you, but somebody else wrote an entire book on it. So, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism

    5. thejeff

      I wouldn’t say so much the US as a whole conflates Christianity and Capitalism, but the broad Religious Right does so.

      Socialism being evil is also strongly held on the right, but increasingly less so for the rest of the country – as we get farther and farther from the Soviet Union as the Big Bad and also as triumphal Capitalism gets nastier and nastier.

    6. Elisto

      According to one book I read (Bind Us Apart), there’s long been a strain of thinking in the US that a “civilized” society means Christian and capitalist, and this is part of how both slavery and taking First Nations children (and land) were justified: that these people need to learn to be “civilized” by learning/working under Christian and capitalist (and patriarchal) system, or else remain separate in conditions where they really can’t fully practice their “uncivilized” culture/way of life (Native American reservations). “Uncivilized” people aren’t capable of participating in a “civilized” democracy without damaging it.

      1. thejeff

        Though I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have used the term “capitalism” for most of that time. It not being coined until the mid-19th century and not really becoming common usage until communism was created to oppose it.

        For most, it was just the way things were.

        That description seems generally right about the strain of thought to me, with that caveat.

        1. Elisto

          Well, yes, not with that specific term.

  23. JessWitt

    I assume Joyce would get along great with Buzz Aldrin.

    1. Tacos

      Would she like to yell at the Moon with Buzz Aldrin?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvG8qI0HCfY

      1. JessWitt

        Exactly.

      2. Needfuldoer

        Who wouldn’t want to?

  24. 3-I

    Anyone else really miss Historical Jesus Christ right about now? He was a good dude. And he performed a lesbian wedding on-panel!

    1. 3-I

      Nobody? Seriously? No love for Historical Jesus Christ?

      We couldn’t have faced the Soggies without him, you guys.

  25. Rukdug

    And let’s not forget the first Christian communities sold off their excess property to divide the excess wealth of some members according to the needs of the poorest members and formed proto-communes. And that when one couple hoarded some of the excess money for themselves they were struck dead in public by the holy spirit. It’s always bewildering just how much of the four gospels and the acts of the apostles one has to ignore in order for prosperity gospel to “work”.

    1. StClair

      but, but, I like having stuff

    2. Schpoonman

      I don’t remember the one with the Holy Spirit.

      1. Rukdug

        It’s in the Acts of the Apostles. A man and his wife hide some money they’ve made through a property sale to keep for themselves. Peter asks the husband if they have given the full amount to the community. The husband lies and says yes. And then dies on the spot. The wife, not knowing this has transpired is then brought in, and asked the same question. She also lies, and then dies on the spot. Holy Spirit does not mess around.

  26. Crusading Barista

    The whole Jesus the socialist, wrong.
    When the early church were giving away their riches, it was what my pastor call “Commonist,” not “Communist.” They willingly gave, while the communist forcibly takes the belonging.

    Also, when commanded to give away everything, it was also an act to trust in God completely, as they would not rely on material things.

    1. BBCC

      I mean, the ones who didn’t were struck dead in public, so it’s hard to call that willing.

    2. Hoodiecrow

      Showing that your pastor doesn’t know very much about the early church or the communists 😉

      1. Crusading Barista

        Why would many people want to leave their communist country that the democrats love so much?

    3. drs

      Getting eternal life for giving away wealth, and possibly eternal hellfire for not doing so, puts an interesting spin on ‘willing’.

      1. David M Willis

        me: it is evil when the government requires you pay taxes at risk of punishment, and this is extortion

        also me: it is love when jesus sends me to hell for all eternity if i don’t follow him correctly, and this is free will

    4. vivid grim

      im gonna go one step further from these comments disagreeing with you and propose that forcibly taking the means of production and capital from capitalists is good

    5. David M Willis

      yup, this was all 12 of the sermons

      it’s not very convincing

    6. Krys Brynhildr

      I mean, the biggest problem with basically all recorded cases of “Communism” to date, is most likely that they’re actually just some sort of dictatorship wearing the economic system as sheep’s clothing to divert attention away from the fact that they’re still very much a hierarchy that rules over the proletariat masses?

      Just like Capitalism might not be bad if there were actual proper regulations in place to prevent all sorts of exploitation and abuse of the system (regulations that various large businesses who are very much bought into at least America’s specific brand of Venture Capitalism would like to do away with because it gets in the way of them making obscene amounts of money at the expense of both their employees and the economy overall)?

      1. Agemegos

        I’m pretty suspicious of any plan that involves applying the same solution to a whole bunch of very different problems.

        1. Clif

          Relax. When the machines take over from us they’ll do much better.

      2. erejnion

        Krys, the problem is that no other version of socialism is even feasible. You may want to read up on early USSR. Just as an example, it was pretty LGBT-friendly… but two decades later LGBT rights were completely down the drain.

        Of course, capitalism is also not feasible without regulations, no matter what libertarians may tell you.

        tl;dr: the only stable systems feature some amount of social democracy. The discussion is only about what amount of social democracy can be afforded – the better the market is doing, the more social democracy you can afford.

        1. thejeff

          But that’s tricky (and depends partly on what you mean by ‘market’). Nor is it entirely clear to me what you mean by “social democracy” as something with a cost.

          Leaving that aside, there’s considerable evidence both that the economy actually functions best when wealth is less concentrated and that the natural effect of any economy is to concentrate wealth. Given that, the redistribution of wealth is actually key to maintaining a healthy economy. Poor people with some money can buy more stuff, driving demand and boosting the economy. Rich people save more, which doesn’t circulate money through the economy.
          It’s theoretically possible that such a flat distribution of wealth could occur that despite demand no one would have the capital to invest in new production, but I don’t know of that ever occurring. (Societies have been too poor overall to do so, but even then there tended to be great inequality.)

    7. Sunny

      Your pastor might want to read up on Communitarianism and Communalism instead of making up words.

    8. erejnion

      To be fair, bogomils were the ones bent on giving away personal wealth and material belongings. They were pretty anarcho-communist in that regard.

      And they got a crusade up their ass.

      In the end, the more capitalistic interpretations of Jesus won out. And it’s not like there isn’t plenty of room for interpretation.

  27. shadowcell

    MYSTERIOUS AS THE BUTT SIDE OF
    THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

    1. stoodmuffin

      TIME IS RACING TOWARDS US

      AS THE BUTTS,

      ARRIVE

  28. stoodmuffin

    Oh Joyce. Identity conflicts grow when we are exposed to new information, huh? Hugs.

  29. drs

    I’m surprised no one else noted that Dorothy avoided just saying “I’m atheist”.

    1. Reltzik

      I noticed. I don’t think she’s backing down, though, just going into more detail rather than just the label.

      1. ZerglingOne

        Atheism is a spectrum, just like any set of beliefs. And no, agnostics don’t fall in that spectrum.

        You have the hard liner fundamentalists that say there is no god, shame on you for believing in one. Admittedly fundamentalist atheists are just kinda assholes, not murderous like some religions. So at least they have that going for them.

        You have the educated in religion ones that don’t believe in any god, nor do they believe there can be a god.

        And you have the moderate atheist that doesn’t believe in any god, but doesn’t deny that there could be, there’s just no proof of its existence.

        I fall into the latter-most category, but am still very aware and learned of many religions’ doctrines. I don’t deny that there *could* be a god, just that probably no religion has it right if there is one, because if there is, it probably doesn’t give a flying fuck about us.

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          Genuinely curious — how is that not agnoticism?

        2. Reltzik

          ….. oi, definitions.

          It turns out that there are a handful of different definitions for the word “atheist” floating around out there in frequent (if not fully-agreed-upon) use, and another complimentary handful of definitions for “agnostic”. Two version of the word “atheist” are relevant here.

          The first is “someone who believes that no god exists.” The second is “someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or gods”, which is also phrased as “lack of belief in any god” or “non-believer” or so forth. An important aspect of this is that not-believing-in-gods allows for the “unconvinced” position — if you can’t decide whether or not gods exist, then you don’t believe they do. The first position, firm disbelief, is sometimes known as “strong atheism”, because it makes the stronger claim, and in contrast the second position (which is a superset of the first) is “weak atheism”.

          When someone assumes or defines an atheist as being a strong atheist — that is, atheists are only people who believe that no god exists — then the more middle “unconvinced” territory is unlabeled. Often, that gets the label of “agnostic” when one is using this definition of atheist, creating a spectrum from atheist to theist with agnostic in the middle.

          When instead someone uses the word atheist to simply indicate nonbelief, meaning weak atheism, that changes. There’s not much middle ground — you either believe or you don’t. (I’ve encountered a few indecisive people who believe one day and not the next and do again the day after that, usually as part of a crisis of faith, but let’s not count them for this.) Here, “agnostic” ceases to be a middle ground between the two and becomes something else: a measure of one’s confidence in one’s position, whether they “know that they know that they know”, or are fairly confident but open to evidence to the contrary, or aren’t confident at all. This leads to the categories of agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, and gnostic theist. (I’ll just leave aside the question of where exactly the line between gnostic and agnostic lies — is it 100% or you’re agnostic? Will 99% be enough to be gnostic? — and also the distinction between strong and weak agnosticism.)

          In my experience, most people who describe themselves as atheists are weak atheists willing to reconsider if offered evidence, and most people who describe themselves as agnostics are weak atheists willing to reconsider if offered evidence. There are exceptions to both, but that seems to be the way to bet. As far as I can tell, the choice of labels is more often about what aspect of their belief-status one wants to emphasize (the nonbelief or the openness to consider the question) rather than any huge substantive difference.

          And a whoooooole lot of pointless and angry arguing past each other happens when someone assumes that someone who calls themselves an atheist is a strong atheist (when they’re actually a weak atheist) and launches an attack on that position (which they don’t actually hold). This is one of those things where often A means X when they use word Z and B agrees with X but B thinks A means Y by word Z and B really disagrees with Y and so flame war.

        3. thejeff

          And most people making such assumptions are actually trolls trying to win the flame war with semantic games.

        4. Agemegos

          Agnosticism, as defined by the chap who coined the term (Thomas Huxley) is the philosophical position that knowledge of whether god exists is impossible. The agnostic not only says “I don’t know”, but also “you don’t know either”.

          So a person who believes that knowledge is possible in principle, but does not believe in an god, is a gnostic atheist, while a person who believes that knowledge is impossible, and therefore does not believe in any god, as an agnostic atheist. Then you have people who believe that knowledge is not possible, but believe in a god anyway as an act of faith — they are agnostic believers. Of course there are the people who believe that knowledge is possible and that they have it.

        5. Arianod

          “doesn’t believe in any god, but doesn’t deny that there could be, there’s just no proof of its existence.” “I don’t deny that there *could* be a god, just that probably no religion has it right if there is one”.

          Dude… that is… agnosticism. That’s exactly what agnosticism is.

        6. Emily

          I think the difference between plain old agnosticism and and agnostic atheism is that an agnostic atheist believes there’s no god due to lack of evidence whereas a straight agnostic is undecided either way.

        7. Agemegos

          An agnostic is not necessarily unsure. An agnostic denies that knowledge exists and my be very certain about that!

        8. Reltzik

          Strong agnostics, specifically. Weak agnostics may view it as perhaps within possibility that the subject is knowable… but they just do not know it themselves.

        9. thejeff

          There is no “exactly what agnosticism is”.

          There is only “what I can define it as to gain momentary advantage in an internet fight.”

          The reality is that 99.44% of athiests/agnostics/whatever variety of nonbeliever you want to talk about, never even think about splitting such hairs. They know they don’t believe in God and that’s about as far as they care.

        10. Arianod

          If that is true, then the remaining 0’56% must be really busy, because I see a lot of time wasted on the Internet arguing and fighting over such splitting hairs.

          Me, I like to go by the widest definition: if you don’t believe in gods, you’re an atheist. If you hold the position that such things as gods might possibly exist but there’s no way to know for sure, you’re an agnostic. If you’re an agnostic, you’re an atheist for all practical purposes.

        11. insomniac

          …okay, no.

          “God/s cannot possibly exist” is not the position atheists, in general, hold, outside of the strawman arguments of people trying to assert that “atheism is just another faith!”

        12. Arianod

          As I said, I’m not interested in splitting hairs. But go on c:

        13. Liliet

          ‘not murderous’ yeah unless it’s Soviet Union 😀
          atheists can be just as horrifying when they’re dominant religion and interested in staying that way as any others 😀

        14. thejeff

          Atheists are human beings and thus not exempt from such failings.

          I’d actually argue that in the case of most such “atheist regimes”, the ruler or the state or the philosophy becomes the religion substitute and the crimes are committed in its name, rather than for atheism per se.
          It’s much easier to get people riled up to spread “communism” than to spread “not believing in God”.

        15. HeySo

          By definition, absence of belief wouldn’t impart any sort of belief system so, yes: Saying that tyrannical systems directly relates to foundations of atheism is akin to saying that kings beheading people directly relates to foundations of Christianity.
          Atheism mostly relates to absence of religion, rather than absence of belief system, and belief systems are plentiful and not necessarily inherently better due to their lack of organized framework of divine attributions.

          In short, you can’t attribute “atheist governments” with atheism anymore than you can attribute metrosexuality to homosexuality. They’re just simply not directly related, regardless of any overlap they may share.

        16. CJ

          The Soviet Union killed people because of a believe system (also, because of having people in power who didn’t think twice about killing people who were opposing them. The belief system just allows them to look good while doing so). Like all fundamentalists, not matter if their belief system is based on religion or anything else.

        17. Arianod

          May I point out that atheism is precisely the absence of religion, and thus cannot, by definition, be “the dominant religion”. At most, it can be the dominant philosophy.

        18. Roborat

          Atheism is not a religion.

        19. OBBWG

          What is the difference between Agnosticism and Atheism? I don’t know and I don’t care.

        20. CJ

          Agnostics say they can’t know if there is a God, Atheists are sure there isn’t one.

        21. OBBWG

          Exactly. “I don’t know” and “I don’t care”

        22. Arianod

          Don’t worry, the difference is irrelevant to nearly all effects and purposes.

    2. BenRG

      Which is odd; she knows Joyce is, if not cool with it, at least doesn’t regard it as a dirty word. Was she afraid that she might offend Jacob?

      1. JBento

        Oooh, oooh, I can field this one. Dorothy has been conditioned by, at least, her mother that way, by example if not by word.

        And, since nobody else will tell you, I will: this attitude is responsible for much of the present real-world fuckery that’s going on. It’s just another facet of “oh, you can’t tell racist people they’re racist or they’ll feel bad and angry and then what will they do?”

      2. Clif

        Perhaps she didn’t want to offend Jacob.

      3. thejeff

        Or she was just describing her background in a little more detail.
        She’s certainly been willing to call herself that before.

    3. Hoodiecrow

      She has learned the hard way that doing so is likely to put Joyce in a loyalty conflict.

  30. Needfuldoer

    [In the Preacherbot-from-Futurama voice] And THAT’S why, the only TRUE path to salvation is for YOU to give ME ALL of your MONEY!

  31. Cholma

    Poor little moon! Always getting yelled at for things it didn’t even do. Luna’s all: “Why do all the little carbon things on the planet below always yell at me? I’ve never done anything to them! I PROTECT THEM FROM DEADLY SPACE ROCKS!”

    1. Reltzik

      Because you’re a buttface! You’re always mooning us!

    2. Marsh Maryrose

      She’s close enough to touch, but careful if you try. It’s hard to love her well.

      (This is the best version I could find online in quick search.)

    3. Marsh Maryrose

      All this time, and I never realized: the Moon is here to protect us from THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE!

      1. StClair

        pak chooie unf

  32. Deadjolras

    I think we can all agree that Jesus was, at least, way cool.

    1. Reltzik

      Cool? If you’re going by the Bible, the dude had anger management issues. Cursing a fig tree for being out of season, whipping moneychangers through the streets… definitely not someone with the emotional stability I associate with the word “cool”.

    2. JBento

      I find it hard to attribute the word “cool” to someone who says it’s totally okay to beat your slaves provided they don’t die within 2 days of said beating, unless it’s “cool” in the sense of “we dunked him in freezing water and he’s dead of hypothermia”.

      But you do you.

      1. Deadjolras

        I was making a reference to the trope Jesus Was Way Cool but I guess I failed at conveying that by not capitalizing it properly. I should’ve linked to it, too.

        (I’m still not linking to it because I don’t trust my HTML skills.)

        1. Clif

          You can always just put in the URL and it automatically converts to a printed link. Just don’t run the url up against anything else

      2. drs

        Is that in the Gospels?

  33. BenRG

    Actually, Dorothy, socialism would involve giving all your money to the state to redistribute. Private charity is choosing which poor people to whom to give your wealth and that isn’t socialist at all as it is based on personal judgement rather than the determination of the community. Additionally, Jesus didn’t say that having wealth keeps you from gaining the reward, he said that loving wealth more than being one of his disciples keeps you from gaining the reward.

    It’s sort of a shame (and tells you have weak Joyce’s spiritual education actually was) that Joyce wasn’t able to point this out.

    1. Ferdinand Rosenthal

      Yea, Jesus was sort of some sort of Communal and anti-wealth guy but that’s different from Socialism outright.

    2. Kamino Neko

      That is not what Socialism is. That is Socialist in the same sense that the Southern Baptist Convention is Christian.

      Which is to say, it is, in fact, one of the multitude of systems that fit under the umbrella of Socialism, but it isn’t the only one.

      1. erejnion

        Nah, it’s generally accepted in all versions of socialism that your money should go to the state for redistribution, one way or another. Unless the version doesn’t want a state, but these versions don’t make sense, as early USSR intellectuals found out the hard way.

        Note: social democracy is generally not considered socialism.
        Presumably, Jesus would be a social democrat kind of guy, as he wasn’t big on tyranny, but who the fuck knows. He didn’t have much of a stance on economics and the state involvement in it; maybe he was hardcore right-wing libertarian who just thought rich people should care more for charity than for accruing personal wealth.

        1. erejnion

          I mean, it makes sense to presume Jesus would support social safety nets and state regulations of produce and work environment. These are in their cores about caring more for people than for personal wealth; they just have the added bonus that you earn more money in the long run.

        2. Conuly

          Somebody here hasn’t heard of either Kibbutzim or the Hutterites, I see.

        3. 3oranges

          Nothing of the sort is generally accepted. Even throwing aside “libertarian socialists”, as if they make less sense than any other ideology, political words are not regulated by some central body and tend to mean different things to different people. In America, Scandinavian-style regulated economies are commonly called “socialist”, as would be most people who argue nobody should be rich.

        4. CJ

          I think most Germans would be gaping with shock at the idea that they live in a socialist country. And they are not. The GDR had “real existierender Sozialismus” which turned out to be lots of burocracy, wrapped in militaristic form hard to distinguish from a lot of stuff the Nazis did (if you look at the form how things were done, which in my mind explains why they are loads of Nazis in the Bundesländer formerly belonging to the GDR – also, there are loads of disenfranchised white guys there which also tend to turn that way even if they are not used to the forms).
          Th idea to redistribute wealth through the state starts out with the (totally valid) idea that some people have lots of money just by luck (I.e., being born into a rich family, being born into a family that could afford to give them the good education to get a well paying job, the luck to be healthy, …) and as there is no reason to have luck be the reason for some to live and some to die, redistribution some of that money to people who are less lucky (this also tends to keep down riots and is therefore a good reason for any capitalist state to do that.)
          In the US, the ideas from Calvinism are just so ingrained that redistribution of wealth isn’t even considered to blunt the edges of capitalism’s brutality. Instead, individual charity is called for.
          Both mechanics are ideas of how to deal with inevitable capitalist crises and brutality and not anything that is opposed to capitalism.
          The original capitalist idea that letting “the markets” control what services, foods, and stuff are sold will lead to a more efficient way of doing that suffers from several fatal misconceptions.
          1) that markets fairly factor in all costs and effects of a service, food, or device. They don’t. Technology invokes all kinds of debts to the future (like global warming, radioactive waste, biohazard, …) that do not influence the pricing of things in a valid relationship to the costs they will incur.

          2) individuals don’t decide with a reality-based cost/benitfit analysis what to buy and what not to buy, but with an emotional one that is based on stuff like status et all (if you manage to be some way up on maslow’s pyramid of needs).

          So we need a concept to organize a division-of-labour based society that creates in and of itself a more fair distribution of wealth while creating and environment that is open to new ideas to do things and encourage people to want to do things, factors in the real environmental costs of stuff, and has a concept of applying responsibility instead of bureaucracy.
          If anyone has heard of a realistic sounding concept please give me a link.

    3. Lena

      Mathew 19:24 “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

      1. BenRG

        Yeah, that’s the one: He was saying that love of wealth instead of love of spirituality was a major stumbling block that made it basically impossible.

        1. Conuly

          That’s one interpretation, but you gotta kinda squint and twist the wording in order to get there.

        2. JBento

          I thought that was the “one cannot serve two masters” part?

        3. thejeff

          Forget the eye of the needle line, quotable though it is.
          “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
          Selling your stuff and giving it to the poor is kind of a recurring theme. It’s hard to miss, though a lot of people try.
          It’s also hard to twist into “You can keep all your riches as long you care more about spirituality”, though that’s common too.

          And as Arianrod says below, Jesus wasn’t really thinking in terms we’d recognize. Not in terms of government redistribution vs private charity, but apocalyptic “feed the poor until the imminent end of the world” terms.

        4. StClair

          In every time, there are those who are convinced that the Lord is SURELY gonna end the world real soon now, because it’s not like He’ll just let it continue in this horrible state, and it’s not like it could POSSIBLY get any WORSE.

    4. Arianod

      Actually, socialism wouldn’t involve “giving all your money to the state to redistribute” but “putting the means of production in the workers’ hands so that wealth distributes itself” (and reducing the state to its minimal expression)

      And Jesus was not a “socialist” as we understand it today. He was more of a “get rid of your material possessions because the world is coming to an end, you FOOLS” kind of guy.

      1. Agemegos

        Even in Marx’s version, the State was going to whither away….

        It doesn’t suffice to argue that socialism isn’t workable without the state, for the same reason that it is ineffective to explain to Randites that free market capitalism is unworkable without the State. They believe what they believe, however stupid it seems to you and me.

        1. StClair

          And then along came Lenin et al to say “but it’s not going to do so on its own, so you NEED us coffee-shop hipsters to lead the fight! You see, we’re NOT useless and up our own asses, we’re VITAL to the revolution!”

          thus buying themselves job security, at least until the revolution actually succeeded.

        2. Arianod

          On that note, let’s not forget that people like Marx and Bakunin defined “the state” as a hulking, sprawling, top-down authoritarian power structure. The communist society they envisioned would have a government, but it would be a small, horizontal government, based on direct democracy. And as far as they were concerned, that kind of government was not a “state”.

    5. Hoodiecrow

      Wrong on both counts, actually. Socialism does not require you to give your money to the state (other than paying taxes, which is really just a subscription fee on state-provided services). And Jesus saw wealth in itself as something that necessarily turned a person away from God. It was St. Paul that amended that to put more stress on greed as a character fault. In any case, the early church regarded any desire to gain wealth or status as alien to the Faith.

    6. drs

      There are many socialisms, but the one idea that seems common to all of them is “wage labor for a private boss/employer is bad and shouldn’t exist.” This can be abstracted as “social control of the means of production” or “worker control of the means of production”, which have different implications (democratic central planning vs. worker-owned co-ops + individual self-employment, say). It’s an opposition to “I own this, therefore I can make you work for me” whether that’s owning land or factories or piles of shares.

    7. Felis Leo

      Thank you for pointing that out.

  34. JoeCovenant

    “Jesus is NOT Socialist!”
    There’s a book title!

    1. Clif

      Well yes, but hopefully for a completely different book by a completely different artist or writer.

  35. Desslok

    Nitpick, but socialism does not require the state. That is a very common misconception. It is simply “social” control over the means of production. Democratic government is but one, albeit one of the more practical, methods to achieve that. However complete citizen control would still be considered socialist.

    Mind you, that still doesn’t relate to what Jesus advocated, as socialism doesn’t take a stand on equal distribution of wealth. You could have worker cooperatives that would still be socialist but there would be wealth disparity depending on which cooperatives you belong to.

    I do think it is fair to say that the biblical Jesus probably wouldn’t have been a fan of capitalism as practiced today, though. However, I don’t think his problem would have been the economic system so much as our willingness to allow greed and covetous behavior be the end all be all of its motivating factors.

    1. Agemegos

      Gonna pick a nit right back at you.

      I agree that there is a bunch of socialist schemes other than state socialism, which involve the means of production (except for labour, sometimes) being in the beneficial ownership of the workers or of the People without their being held by the State. Syndicalism, for instance. Communitarianism. Even, bizarrely, some versions of distributism.

      But I’m going to argue that the anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-socialist and so forth are dead wrong and that socialism does require the state to exist both to discharge its basic functions and to keep syndicalism, communitarianism, socialism, or whatever from degenerating.

  36. Wigggs

    Why hasn’t anyone appreciated that it was twelve yet? Twelve! Very Bible friendly and therefore preacher loved number there.

  37. Coma

    Damn…my brain couldn’t avoid making a connection between this insult and “Preacher” (probably because season 3 just started), though Eugene is a much better person. WHY BRAIN WHY??!

  38. darkoneko

    Jacob stop being a perfect big bro !

  39. Abel Undercity

    Becky serving up the drinks and a dose of reality. How many weeks until her shift ends? We need more Becky/Dina interaction.

  40. Liliet

    <3 <3 <3

  41. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

    Hmnph. Babbitt-wannabe Conservatives first, devout Christians second, that Brown family’s Church….

    1. ValdVin

      Speaking of Babbtt, isn’t Joyce’s hometown in Sinclair Lewis’ mythical state, like where Zenith is?

  42. Eldritch Gentleman

    Oh yeah this is what amuses me about US’s hyper focus on religion. They claim to believe in Jesus but somehow miss most of what he said… except the bit about gays which was never even said by Jesus.

  43. SlothfulCobra

    While many of Jesus’s statements may align with general principles of socialism, socialism’s not about vague general principles. There was a whole big thing hammered out in the 19th century that was a response to an order of the world that wouldn’t exist until well over a thousand years past Jesus’s time.

    Also I don’t think Marx ever would’ve cursed a fig tree for being out of season. Seems unfriendly to workers’ rights to me.

    1. JBento

      Of course, if the fig tree was fruiting out of season, maybe it was a scab, therefore weakening the negotiative power of all the other fig trees.

      1. Agemegos

        The tree was not fruiting out of season. During the season when fig trees have no fruit, it had no fruit exactly as normal. Jesus cursed it for that.

        1. JBento

          *eyetwitch*

        2. StClair

          Hey, it didn’t give him what he wanted when he wanted it, so he cursed it, “fair” or not. Par for the course in mythology.
          (Most divinities are real assholes.)

  44. Gamaran Sepudomyn

    I’m not sure “give everything up for the sake of this guy I’m telling you about who is already really powerful” can legitimately considered socialism. Depending on whether the mechanics of the afterlife as featured in modern christianity were in any way part of Jesus’s beliefs, that’s more like enforcing loyalty to an employer using threats.

    1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      Agh. “legitimately BE considered”.

  45. Toes14

    Dorothy likes socialism? So she’s not perfect after all!

    1. Sock_V

      Not smart enough to see the difference between charity and socialism, either. Shame.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        You are confusing socialism with communism. One is about giving social services to the public, like universal health care and having enough tax money for space programs; the other is about imposing a dictatorship where everyone is forced to share the same income, except a small society of rich men that rule from behind the scenes and use a secret police to arrest non conforming people.

        1. thejeff

          I think you’re confusing “social democracy” or “capitalist welfare state” with socialism.

          Think “social ownership of the means of production”. Whether that’s the state as in communism or things like co-ops and worker owned companies and the like, but as the dominant form of business, not minor experiments.

        2. BBCC

          Is there an appreciable difference between social democracy and democratic socialism?

        3. thejeff

          I think I’d argue that “democratic socialism” as normally discussed or practiced in Europe isn’t really socialism. It’s still a protective wrapper around a capitalist economy.

        4. Agemegos

          Their adherents distinguish between “social democracy” and “democratic socialism” as different things. Social democracy is practised, and is as you say, a protective wrapper around a “capitalist” mode of production. Democratic socialism is an unexampled ideal that will be prpoerly socialist, but without the tyranny, oppression, and gross ineffectiveness this time — honest!

        5. Agemegos

          In democratic socialism the farms and factories are taken into public, collective, communal, or state ownership, and run democratically.

          In social democracy the farms and factories remain in private ownership, and though there are laws and regulations to curb antisocial behaviour, the firms are managed for profit with the allocation of resources being controlled by the price system. Part of the profits and other large incomes are collected as tax and used for common purposes or redistributed. Some industries may be socialised, most are not.

        6. BBCC

          Both of those explanations make sense, thank you!

      2. thejeff

        It’s not like “take what you have, sell it and give to the poor. Then, come and follow me” is quite what we normally consider charity either. I mean, I donate, but I haven’t sold my house and computer and given the proceeds away to the poor on the street and gone off to preach the Gospel.

        Neither the socialist or the charitable rich man are actually following that Gospel. For different reasons.

    2. JBento

      Counterpoint: Socialism is awesome, provided you give at least a minimal shit about other people.

      1. thejeff

        Well, depending on exactly what’s meant by socialism and how likely you think a decent version of it is to be implemented, rather than a horrific failure.

        I mean, I like the idea as I understand it, but it can definitely go wrong.

        1. Kamino Neko

          Name one concept that can’t.

        2. thejeff

          Well, there are the ones that start out that way. 🙂

    3. Arianod

      Dorothy likes socialism? So she is perfect after all! 😀

  46. Sporky

    BTW, in case youre wondering whether the new Slipshine is worth it… yes. It’s super hot, has Malaya being annoying, and also kinda sorta has a DoA plot point at the end?? I mean you don’t NEED it but I was just a little like “Oh, this seems important actually”

    1. thejeff

      Haven’t read it yet, though I’m planning on grabbing another month’s worth of Slipshine to do so when I get the chance.

      I don’t actually find Willis’s style to work well for me as porn. I really do read it for the character bits. 🙂

      1. Sporky

        I don’t necessarily love his style for porn but there will never be enough DoA smut so it’s a godsend that the author makes it

        1. Inahc

          heh, I like it, and there are very few porn-things I can say that about. (then again, I haven’t spent a huge amount of time looking; I haven’t even seen much of slipshine yet.)

        2. Sporky

          I like it, it’s just not my favorite

        3. Inahc

          …although, the malaya one was more entertaining than sexy. malaya was very malaya.

          at least joe is smart enough to use protection! 🙂

    2. Bibulb

      Honestly, that end was an “OOH. SHIIIIIIIIT” moment for me.

    3. Cass

      I have a bunch of overtime on Friday’s check so I might actually finally splurge on a month! It helps that Malaya’s always been the hottest character either here or in SP! to me. (Well… maybe second to Marcy)

  47. Vulcanodon

    Socialism? Oh Dorothy, can I interest you in the philosophy of “I got mine, the Hell with you”? It’s done wonderful things for our country so far. If by “our country” one means “a tiny group of the super-wealthy” and not “the working poor who can’t afford life-protecting necessities”. It’s all right here in the book of Rand.

    1. JBento

      I think we can all look wistfully to the bad, old “I got mine, the Hell with you” times. Welcome to the even worse, new “I got mine, and now I’m coming for yours” age. It’s gonna be… well, not FUN, but it’s gonna be something.

      1. Vulcanodon

        You know, Kool-Aid has artificial flavorings in it.

        1. JBento

          I’m… not sure I follow.

        2. Vulcanodon

          I should have looked at your other comments. I thought you were arguing that socialism = confiscation of all property. Reagan’s line that “a government that can fulfill all your needs can take everything that you have” etc. But in context of your other comments it appears I was the one who did not follow.

        3. JBento

          Oh yeah – I meant that we’re past the crappy time where a bunch of people merely didn’t care about other people as long they themselves were happy. Now? Now what we’re getting is top shitstain: the people on top are only happy if they have what they have PLUS what the people on the bottom had. It’s the race to the moral bottom, and the biggest losers are the ones not in the running.

  48. abysswatcher1993

    I am with Dorothy on this one (I still don’t forgive her for her unhealthy obsessions though). Many times Jesus does and says stuff that by today’s standards would be considered leftist. Sooner or later Joyce will have to realize that many pastors and televangelists worship money instead of the word of Jesus. Do we need to call Jay and Silent Bob to help in this epiphany quest?

  49. Reltzik

    Also, Joyce? Please take Intro to Logic. You’re mathy enough to be able to actually process the logic, and having common handles like “non-sequitur” and “straw-man” which you understand will make conversations like this approximately 84.7% less difficult.

    1. Reltzik

      …. I mean, it’s something like 10 years IRL until the next term, but I can hope, right?

      1. BBCC

        If nothing else, her visits home will get a LOT more interesting.

  50. Puckish Rogue

    Panel two Dorothy showing some slight interest in Jacob perhaps? It’d be a nice change for her to be with a man…

  51. kayelem

    I must say… I love the characters and the spectrum of identity that Willis presents in this comic, but I am routinely disappointed by the Jewish representation. There are several Jewish characters, but none of them are any sort of religious. Is it wrong for me to want Joe or Ethan to join Hillel? For Dorothy to engage in the intellectualism of Judaism? College was a time I took control of my religion and defined what it my Judaism meant to me.

    1. Rabid Rabbit

      Ethan strikes me as the only one vaguely likely to do such a thing, and he’s already accepted *insert random Transformer here* as his lord and savior, so I don’t know how much one could hope for that. Joe is not at all likely (was it here or in It’s Walky that he defined Judaism as being able to get your grandparents’ life savings, but only once?). Dorothy is only partly Jewish and quite atheist so would probably keep her distance (acknowledging it’s in her background does not mean she’d be comfortable with getting close to it).

      So, no, not necessarily wrong to be disappointed (though from the statistical point of view, I can’t help but wonder what the proportion of cultural Jewish to religious Jewish people in the USA is), but I think you’ll have to wait for a new character.

    2. poofdepoof

      I like this idea a lot! I hope God (or at least Willis) hears you 🙂

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