14 Comments

Someone here says, "Laughing will not fix it." The two things such a response misses, disastrously, is that, 1) this kind of laughing is not intended to "fix" it, and 2) this kind of laughing will outlive it, hence conquer it. Which, in retrospect, will look something very like "fixing" it, actually....though in reality something far deeper. Much as, for instance, the Resurrection "fixed" the Crucifixion.

Expand full comment

You blew this one. "Woke people are funny. They are funny because they are stupid, and stupid people are funny." Neither woke people nor stupid people are funny. Usually they lack a sense of humor. To the degree that they want to put bad ideas into action, they certainly are a harmful variant of the do-gooder, humanitarian, and revolutionary. As with all groups, there is a variety, so the people you are thinking of might be different from the ones I'm thinking of. I've been able to maintain a healthy sense of humor throughout my life. But I've noticed (I recall, too) how easily kids and teenagers laugh, how easily dumb people laugh, and how easily drunk or drugged people laugh. And what a variety of laughter there is. Aside from its virtues, laughter can be fraudulent, excessive, mocking, cruel, simian, and an indication of immaturity and superficiality. I haven't read Freud on this subject, but I probably should.

Expand full comment

You know mockery has effect when the NYT's, Facebook and Snopes try to get the satirical Babylon Bee censored for 'misinformation '. Itself an example that it's no laughing matter how ascendant the left has become. The 20th century's 'great' leftists revolutions resulted in millions of murdered fellow citizens. They were all preceded by their own versions of 'cancel culture '

Expand full comment

What cannot finally work...won't. Which is what makes it absurd, and all the more so, the more deluded souls foolishly clamber and scramble to make it work. Which is what there is to "laugh" at.

Expand full comment

Funny or not, mockery is a bludgeon.

I use it often, to great effect.

Expand full comment

Laughter in this context could also mean don't take it seriously, get past it, it's temporary like everything else. Democrats do terrible things every day. Lots of people do. Should I, in response, shake my fist at the world? Rage against God or the order of the universe? Try to make it better? More fair? Nicer? What for? I could easily make it worse. I didn't build the chess pieces. Who am I to rearrange them? Get over it isn't bad advice, though it can be difficult to do.

Expand full comment

We've been laughing at them for years. It hasn't worked. Things have gotten worse. At this stage, buullets, not jokes are necessary.

Expand full comment

Huzzah! Obviously, laughter is not going to stop or reverse evil by itself. But evil is, in the end, stupid and foolish (if we have any faith in the good Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer), and needs to be mocked as well as opposed by more direct means. Evil - especially political evil - cannot tolerate anything as cleansing and fully human as a good honest belly-laugh, and will always be enraged to the point of apoplexy to be made the butt of jokes. To be able to laugh freely and honestly at oneself without being deliberately hurtful is one of the, perhaps the greatest, hallmark of a person secure in the presence and activity of divine justice and righteousness. An evil man can only fake such laughter, and never for very long before giving way to jealous rage.

Expand full comment

Great article! I had up to now been laughing at the woke mainly in the dismissive sense. I will have to move over to laughing at them in the 'absurdity of evil' sense. Much more constructive! The same applies to the Covid situation where many administrations have been using it to express their power lust.

Expand full comment

Leftists have the conceit that they are so much smarter than the rest of us. But then they believe that a man can become a woman. No that is laughable. And Caitlin, you are a prime example.

Expand full comment

We’re F’d. And laughing will not fix it.

Expand full comment