12 What if the Resistance was Funny? With Mark Fiore

Pacific Time: The "What if...?" of West Coast Independence

Is satire still effective when reality becomes a cartoon? Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore joins Pacific Time to talk buffoonery, burnout, and drawing the line on tyranny.

Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Mark Fiore joins Pacific Time to talk about the absurdity of American politics, the moral range of satire, and why cartoonists are often the first to be jailed (or fired) when democracy erodes. We cover buffoons left and right, the limits of visual journalism, and what happens when Stanford cartoon labs meet AI-generated propaganda. If the West Coast ever got its own constitution, Mark might be the one to draw it—literally.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Satire remains powerful—but it's harder than ever when politics becomes self-parody
✅ Mark Fiore sees cartooning as both journalism and civic engagement
✅ Visual humor bypasses intellectual defenses and reaches emotional truth faster than op-eds
✅ AI could help satirists—not replace them—if it’s ethically deployed and style-controlled
✅ Fiore’s Stanford fellowship revealed striking warnings from global journalists who’ve seen democracy unravel and live through Orwell-like disinformation
✅ Satire can’t fix everything—but it reminds people they’re not crazy to see what’s happening
✅ The West Coast might just need its own constitution, drawn panel by panel

Guest Bio:

Mark Fiore is a political cartoonist and animator who has won the Pulitzer Price and the RFK Freedom Award. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, KQED, and Mother Jones. He recently completed a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, focusing on AI and visual satire.

Related Resources:

• MarkFiore.com
• Mark Fiore’s Substack
• JSK Fellowship at Stanford: jsk.stanford.edu

Related Episodes:

• Ep 08: Leave America and Discover Ecotopia?
• Ep 02: How Can the West Coast Redesign Itself?
• Ep 10: What If Blue Cities on the West Coast Got It Together?
  
  

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💬 Participate in active, civil conversations with your neighbors on the West Coast who are asking ‘What if…?’ Come to the community center for Pacific Time at Substack.

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