Detecting Bullshit in Nate Powell’s “Save It For Later”

While so many aspects of Nate Powell’s Save It For Later stand out and make me stop to think, the one theme that resonates with me the most has to be the ways that our children view the world. “Their bullshit detectors,” as Powell puts in near the end of “Wingnut,” “are much better than ours.” This assertion is what drives me, partly, when it comes to my own children. They know, as Powell’s do, when someone is spewing bullshit. They can detect it. They know when a person’s words don’t match their actions or when someone acts in a morally reprehensible manner. The detection abilities of children is something I have been thinking about a lot over the past few years, especially when it comes to combatting the ever expanding roots of racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, oppression, and more. Before those roots have a chance to dig themselves deep into one’s psyche, they must be extracted and replaced with roots of justice.

For me, Save It For Later kicks off when Powell’s daughter, while watching her mother at the Women’s March in D.C., asks him, “Can we have a march?” She says she wants to march to the courthouse, and Powell says that they can. In the page where he depicts them…