I'm no longer capable of complex thoughts.

I was thinking about what we were discussing in class the other day about political cartoons in Germany. While we were talking about it I heard a lot of different opinions shooting back and forth about how some people believed that they were more a representation of the cartoonist’s feelings than they were of the society as a whole. I find this point of view somewhat difficult to side with though. Typically, if a political cartoon is put in a paper or a magazine there is always going to be someone who had something to say about it. Whether that comment is positive or negative, someone is going to hear about. If a paper’s sales begin to drop and the owner of that paper hears negative things about his or her paper then their probably going to do their best to find the source of the problem and get rid of it.
This isn’t to say that a cartoonist’s opinion is left by the wayside, but the cartoonist will usually belong to a group that has a good amount of followers with it won’t they? A paper or magazine reflects the readers that purchase it. I also feel like many people that are dissatisfied with the way things are going will usually find a way to express it. Many people do find freedom by using cartoons or press freedom so why wouldn’t people push the bounds at the time of some of the cartoons we were discussing in class?
I just feel like in a lot of situations, political cartoons are a way for people to express what they’re actually feeling about a situation regardless of if the powers that be would like it very much or not. On top of everything, political cartoons are a great way for people to look back and get an idea of how people may have seen politicians or situations that occurred during their time. In our class alone we’ve had several articles that contain political cartoons. Most of them have helped shape our opinions of a lot of the people that we’ve studied in class, especially if we have no other from of reference. I realize I’m rambling at this point, but I’ve been writing papers all week and my mind is shot so please bear with me.
I can’t help but think about some of the political cartoons and propaganda that were put out during the time of the Nazi Party. I’m not saying that I think these cartoons necessarily represented everyone’s feelings about Jews, or any other subject matter that was being represented at the time, but things like that did have an enormous amount of power and sway over the people that read those cartoons. It would have been incredibly difficult for people not to observe these cartoons and wonder if there was any kind of truth in what they were reading. Cartoons and propaganda probably stuck in people’s minds.