Saturday
16 December 2017

— strange orangey red orb rising from the horizon

Good Morning All,

Here are a few responses to my friend’s letter chastizing me for indulging in lame humor vis-à-vis the present mess in America and my response to that letter.
 
Before you read them, however, I need to make sure you understand something I should have made more clear before putting in the letter. My friend and I were part of a group that helped invent each other. We did back then and still do look out for each other, care for each other. We came together in a different time, a different world. We formed each other, and ever since then we have taken each other very personally. It is almost as if the error/failure (real or perceived) of any of us is the error/failure of all of us. 
As such, we were then and still are hard on each other. To the extent that polite and decorous behavior towards others manages to keep up a wall between oneself and those others … well, we did not have that problem. And for the most part still don’t.
It’s hard to explain, but they are my friends and will always be my friends. I have never in the least suspected their corrective motivations to be anything other than well intended. I love them, as they—I am reasonably sure--do me, and we are lucky for it.

 Anyway, thanks for the support below in the order they came in:

1. Whoever is taking you to task re: making jokes about Trump is absolutely out of their fucking mind. You know who else has no sense of humor? Trump! Humor is fighting back; satire is resistance; to be witty about it all is to engage in the battle. The comparison to talk-show hosts is preposterous; is being on television the only way to resist? Do you have to be organizing industrial action and marching in the streets to be fighting back? Everything helps, including keeping others' spirits up. (I'm guessing this is the same person who admonished you not to make fun of the feelings of the poor aggrieved anti-immigrant white voters.)

2. Your friend has demonstrated Godwin’s Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches.” Godwin’s Law is now an OED entry. (NB from Bheka: Mike Goodwin an American attorney formulated the law in 1990. Since then, a corollary of the law says that the first person to trundle in Hitler automatically loses the debate.)

3. I haven't read this entry, but I read the Shakespeare poem. I think Shakespeare is a funny person. Nonny nonny and all those funny words he invented *giggle*

4. I thought your friend’s email unnecessarily harsh. I think that being humorous about politics is a separate thing from working to make changes. Humor may not change anything, but there is nothing wrong with it per se. It can be criticized for its bad taste, not because it has to do anything to alter politics. None of us is going to be a Steven Colbert, but that is no reason to stop. You have a good sense of humor.
If your friend is interested in trying to change something, I’d love to have him subscribe to my website. As you know, the site is  Stopgunmadness.org I’m attempting a counteroffensive to the power of the NRA. Their influence is not just with gun laws; they get Republicans elected.

 5. I say joke about the current political situation as much as you want. That is doing something. Maybe some think it isn’t enough. But it is something. Do it. 

6. I’m reminded of the joke you told years ago (and several times since.) Guy marooned on deserted island manages to survive by eating palm tree leaves, discovers in the process that he is cured of constipation. Gets rescued. Goes home. Develops a new laxative with the slogan: “With fronds like these, who needs enemas?"

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. One Johs snap, one Holly snap: