It is so easy to be constantly aggrieved these days and to succumb to the dreary conclusion that our current political reality can not be changed or salvaged. Today a further grievance surfaced for me, that is the tendency of pundits and other parties to find the behavior of Trump and his partisans amusing. We are often laughing when we should be screaming.
The philosophy of humor reveals many of the reasons for our thinking that high crimes and misdemeanors are a chuckle. Thinkers from Bergson to Marteison have pondered why we think things are funny. Many of these interpretations seem to fit our circumstances. The first is, perhaps, the most obvious. Laughter is often a defense mechanism that we use to combat despair … we laugh so we don’t have to cry.
There is also the argument of implied superiority, the thought that we are better-morally superior- to the person who lies and distorts and we are certainly more intelligent than the poor folks that believe the garbage they are fed. We can feel that we are not saps. A bit of schadenfreude is at work here…. we are pleased that the descent into ignorance has not happened to us. The incongruity that powers most jokes is a driver here.
Certain conditions for humor are clearly manifest, including the discovery of incongruity, the wild narrative and the disregard for social and moral norms are all part of a good joke. But what we are currently experiencing is not funny despite the existence of these elements. When the talking heads report on the latest lie or tone deaf pronouncement and then treat it as comedic, gifting us with their sneers and titters they give a certain license to the perpetrator.
We laugh because it is unpleasant to scream. The news show on cable would lose its flow if everyone paused to scream and cry about the horrors they are reporting. But… I hope for the day when lies and crudities are met with disgust instead of the, “there he goes again’ reaction we are now getting. There are many ways to be conned by a criminal and one of the most powerful ways is to get a diminishing-and humorous response from those you seek too victimize.
Outrage is required now. We’ll laugh when it is all over.
Olio Folio 