I love the subtle detail of their mouths being orange from certain activity.

I mean, they do it because it fucking works. We’ve seen this pattern repeated with everything from a recognition in the hazards of smoking (peaked in the 1930s, then plummeted into the 1970s thanks to aggressive marketing by cigarette companies, then had to pull itself up again into the 2000s) to asbestos to climate change.

Another case in point, The McDonald’s Coffee Case in which a 79-year-old woman received 3rd degree burns and required a skin graft thanks to a McD’s staffer spilling a cup onto her lap in a drive-through. During discovery, it was uncovered that McD’s keeps their coffee at 200° as a corporate policy, because it discourages people from taking advantage of their “unlimited refills” policy by slowing down how fast they can drink it.

Subsequently, the case became the center of a corporate-led public media campaign to poison popular opinion against “excessive” rewards for pain and suffering. John Stossel, ABC’s go-to libertarian flavored corporate shill, made his career off repeatedly citing, exaggerating, and bemoaning the results of the lawsuit on behalf of conservative think-tanks and tort reform advocates.

And the campaign largely worked, with tort reform becoming a central issue of US politics over the next ten years. Legislation to limit damages a court could award, to limit the availability of class action lawsuits to poor defendants, and to limit civil liability to businesses and governments generally speaking swept the nation under conservative state and federal legislatures in the 90s and 00s.

Trump is a product of this era. He knows what buttons to push in order to move popular opinion. And he’s slamming that feed bar until it breaks off.

Now? The Supreme Court has always been full of evangelical psychos with contempt for democracy.

Probably could erase the “GOP” part from Congress. Maybe add a “sternly worded letter” off to the side or some shit.

forgot panel 5 when suddenly all Americans agree with panel 4 even though the “talking point” was never there but since Trump said it, it is now gospel.