Paper Tigers?

When I first drew this cartoon both characters were frowning all the way through. And the cartoon just did not seem funny ...so I played with the "mouths", first giving the mustached guy a gloating smile in panel two, then a straight mouth in panel three, and finally the "realization" face in the last panel. But it still didn't seem to work. I then took the frowns which were on the face of the blond guy and literally turned them upside down ...establishing that the (dumb?) blond guy is just answering a hypothetical question. Funny at last.

So did it work for you? Did it make you laugh? Even though it carries the subliminal message of growing Western dependency on a cruel, massive totalitarian state as supplier of goods for our creature comforts? And do you think that the powerful nations of the West have become "paper tigers"?

Nu?