Is there a point when satire, even great satire, isn’t funny anymore? The situation is so sad and so pathetic that trying to laugh at the absurdities is just too much. This is the feeling I’ve had recently when it comes to political comedies and even dramas. When I watch Veep or House of Cards, part of the entertainment comes from it being a “What if?” fantasy, but it’s not a fantasy anymore. We’re living in it.
For real, we seem to be living in a Joseph Heller novel, but not one written by Joseph Heller. More like a drunk hack trying to imitate Joseph Heller, and we’re at the chapter where they also stole elements from RoboCop (e.g., making money off of services for stealing immigrant children is a program worthy of Omni Consumer Products) and threw in a little Manchurian Candidate and Red Dawn. Donald Trump standing next to Vladimir Putin this week so reminded me of the collaborator mayor in Red Dawn kissing commie ass, and all the Helsinki fiasco was missing is someone screaming “Wolverines!!!” in the background.
And maybe since our government is in the hands of a reality TV show host, I shouldn’t be surprised things are turning more and more into bad fiction, especially in a culture where “alternate facts” is an accepted viewpoint in some circles.
This dynamic is also true for comedy news. I love Last Week Tonight, The Daily Show, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Sacha Baron Cohen, and others who make us laugh about these issues as much as anyone else. The use of humor allows many to get beyond their normal aversion to politics in order to understand. But I sometimes wonder if it can be unproductive in some ways to turn disgraceful behavior into ... a joke. If one approaches these things as absurdities to laugh at, one reaction might be to throw up one’s hands and say: “Fuck it. What does it matter? It’s all one big joke anyway.” And I worry that’s the reaction of too many, particularly the half of the country who can’t be bothered to get off the couch and vote even when they’re getting fucked over the most.
From Heather Long and Scot Clement at The Washington Post:
Dave Walton gave a deep sigh as he heard soybean prices just hit their lowest level in a decade. It happened hours after President Trump took another step toward tariffs on even more Chinese goods — a move China would almost certainly answer with more tariffs of its own.
Walton’s family has been farming the same plot of land in eastern Iowa since 1835, and he wants his sons to carry on the legacy. But Trump’s trade war is making that uncertain. Walton’s son, who just finished college, had to get another job because there probably won’t be enough profit this year to pay him for a full-time role.
China and other nations aimed their counterblows at farmers and small manufacturers in “Trump country” in the hopes that some voters would reconsider their support for the president.
So far, there’s little sign that is happening … “President Trump has my support now, but that could always change,” Walton said. “Personally, I’m in wait-and-see mode.”
To a certain extent, modern culture is predicated on making everyone’s life into a story. The entire concept of social media works by making people’s thoughts, pictures, and other assorted moments into a way to pass the day for followers and “friends,” while allowing Facebook, Twitter, and Google to sell stuff and use your personal data. We’ve become a culture which makes our own lives into a form of entertainment that we give away for free. For some, this is a way to connect and keep in touch with people in a more intimate way, one that goes beyond picking up a phone. For others, it’s an ego trip where they get to feed their own inflated sense of self-worth, like a small child standing in the middle of the floor screaming: “Look at me!” Unfortunately for us, someone in the latter category is now president of the United States and the world has to revolve around the crazy shit a former reality TV show host might tweet out every day, because he’s in charge of important things … like national security
Throughout history, there have been more than a few examples of people suffering through horrible rulers. There have been presidents who’ve been dumb. There have been presidents who’ve been killers. And there have been presidents who’ve been crooks. But we’ve never had a president who’s the equivalent of a child-emperor, issuing orders and pontificating about things he doesn’t know for likes and retweets, all while everyone with two brain cells to rub together in the room looks around quizzically while thinking: “Is this for fucking real?” For many, watching a clown defile American government by trying to declare the nature of reality by executive order is outrageous and a call to action.
But for others, it’s amusing and something to be indifferent about … like a TV show. And not only a TV show, but a TV show where a real-life Archie Bunker wanna be says stupid shit every day and sticks it to the libs. And for those people who enjoy the entertainment of watching this shit show, they may be poor, uneducated, and their lives might suck, but at least they’re white and have someone defending their “culture” from the blacks and immigrants who have a hand in their pockets.
From Thomas B. Edsall in The New York Times:
Let’s start with a concept known as “last place aversion.” In a paper by that name, Ilyana Kuziemko, an economist at Princeton, Taly Reich, a professor of marketing at Yale, and Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton, both at Harvard Business School, describe the phenomenon in which relatively low income individuals “oppose redistribution because they fear it might differentially help a ‘last-place’ group to whom they can currently feel superior,” … Among the findings of this group of researchers: people “making just above the minimum wage are the most likely to oppose its increase.”
Applying last-place aversion theory to means-tested federal programs for the poor reveals that the group most likely to voice opposition is made up of relatively poor whites right above the cutoff level to qualify for such programs.
Even more important than “last place aversion,” though, is the issue of what we might call deservingness: white Americans, more than citizens of other nations, distinguish between those they view as the deserving and the undeserving poor and they are much more willing to support aid for those they see as deserving: themselves. “Americans believe that the poor are lazy; Europeans believe the poor are unfortunate,” report [economists Alberto F.] Alesina and [Edward L.] Glaeser.
Different portraits have their origins in what social psychologists call “ultimate attribution error.” This error means that when whites struggle, their troubles are generally attributed to situational forces (e.g., outsourcing); but when nonwhites struggle, their plight is more often attributed to dispositional traits (i.e., poor work ethic). Consequently, whites are considered ‘more deserving’ than blacks.
—Michael Tesler, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine
Donald Trump is a creature of ego. That’s why he’s usually more concerned about his own personal image than policy, and has a conniption if someone mentions his small hands or dares to think his bank account might not be as big as he suggests. But with the way things have unfolded for more than two years, one way to look at this is to realize Trump operates on the dynamics of Reality TV. Because on Reality TV, you can lie and be obnoxious and still have fans. In fact, those fans make excuses for the people’s terrible behavior. And one can do horrible things, some of which are criminal, and people will still watch the stupidity every week. In the end, the people on these programs feel validated in their behavior because they get attention and someone is paying them to be horrible people.
And all of it is absurd and hilarious in an abstract, on-the-outside-looking-in kinda way. It’s the reason it makes for great comedy. But it’s also disgraceful and infuriating once the laugh wears off.
The problem for the world at this moment is that a significant part of this country’s population was willing to turn the executive branch into an extension of The Apprentice, just because Donald Trump had an (R) next to his name. No matter what crimes may have been committed, how many lies are told, or the damage that’s done to institutions and people, they can never admit they’re wrong … just like a diva on a reality TV program.
And after a while, it’s not funny anymore … if it ever was.