Humor speaks truth to power. Trump fears it. Musk fears it. Dictators fear it. So do the 'woke'.
Suggested new Twitter title for Elon Musk: Bertinelli's Bitch!
After Twitter's new 'free speech' fanboy rendered 'blue checks' available to everyone for eight Washingtons a month (no verification required), the adorable little blue-checked 'Barbara' from the 1970s sitcom One Day At A Time 'pwned' the richest man in the world. The Barbie Badass led an army of copytrolls against the Head Twit by changing her account name to his, tweeting and retweeting pre-midterms pro-Democrat vote-blue messages. Other blue-checkers followed suit and the 'real' Musk, who said he's voting Republican for the first time in his life (I guess he's finally rich enough), pitched a twitfit and began suspending anyone impersonating him. Starting with comedian Kathy Griffin, and including Sarah Silverman, who proved Musk to be a lying sack of--well, she Musk-tweeted, "I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day".
Bertinelli was not suspended and no one knows why. Maybe Musk had a crush on her when he was a kid. Maybe he suspended Kathy Griffin because she once tweeted a photo of herself holding Trump's bloody, decapitated head (Spoiler alert: It wasn't really his). Musk and Trump have an uneven relationship with each other - mega-narcissists can't stand rivals - but Trump is sorta-kinda-maybe-potentially- not-really-sure-after-Tuesday the putative head of the Republican party, but more importantly, he's permanently devoted to protecting the rights of billionaires to ruin the environment while pursuing obscene amounts of money, even Elon Musk. And who knows, Musk might be Kathy G's next bloody head.
For 24 hours Bertinelli made Elon Musk the laughingstock of the Internet who says he doesn't want 'impersonation' on Twitter.
The guy who nailed the truth about power
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Who said it?
Incorrectly attributed to Voltaire, who's probably rolling over in his crypt for not thinking of it before this bozo, the oft-quoted truism is actually the 1993 brainchild of Kevin Alfred Strom, a white nationalist and neo-Nazi later convicted of possessing kiddie porn and trying to coerce a 10-year-old girl into a relationship with him.
While a neo-Nazi pedophile likely isn't right as often as a broken clock, he still penned one of the most inarguable truisms of the modern era.
Those with the real power today shut down those they can. And nothing scares the powerful quite like humor.
Trump only holds power - for now - over members of his party. He can't do a thing to stop the memes, jokes, and Baby Trump air balloons. But his followers have power.
They're better-armed than the left, which is why we shouldn't rest easy just because Michael Moore was more right about the midterms than the pollsters warning of a 'Red Wave'.
The MAGA set famously shuts down speech with stunts like the voter intimidation tactics of armed, armoured men stationed as close to ballot boxes as legally permitted, or the guy who put Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband in critical condition when he came to their house armed with zip ties, demanding to know where she was. Politicians, journalists, celebrities and female gamers regularly get death and rape threats when they express or support policies angry entitled men or white people don't like, especially if it comes from 'uppity women' criticizing male hegemony. The right's 'lone wolf' mass shooters are comparable to Islamic single-cell terrorists.
The left's top powermongers are trans-activists. Critics have observed how incel forum language and opinions often weave trans-activist discourse with white nationalism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and of course traditional misogyny, and how 'incel' vocabulary has suffused trans social justice language on social media. Perhaps the right has managed to infiltrate the too-tolerant left. And masquerading misogynists have now consensually penetrated feminist brains saturated with idiot compassion.
But this summer, the edges began to fray around misogynist drag power with Mr. Menna's release of a Village People-inspired parody around the incontrovertible biological facts of gender/sex, and the influence of 'sissy porn': Y Chromosome!
The 'free speech absolutist' at the helm of a twithole Titanic may return the hate speech banned after January 6, but also what should have been acceptable speech to begin with - criticizing gender ideologists. #TERFs and #JKRowling are trending more and with much more support from women than was safe before. A newer regular trending term is #WomanFace, accusing many in the trans movement of gender 'blackface'.
For several years now, criticizing or making fun of the trans movement in any way has been a risky proposition. These guys have had real power, dick-tating what is and isn't 'transphobic', quick to complain and get anyone banned, especially any biological woman, who challenges their power.
Their Twitter Reign of (T)Error might be over.
Dictators fear nothing more than humor. Mr. Menna's outrageously gay parody, incorporating real videos from transgender women, took Twitter by storm and signaled to women, gays, and lesbians that angry male Misses' power was wilting like an autogynephile's ladydick in Army shorts.
Comedy is THE most power-reclaiming protest there is. If people are laughing at you, they don't fear you. They might fear laughing publicly, but every time they laugh behind your back it erodes your power, where you can't see it. You'll miss the signals they no longer fear you, which is when they rebel. Perhaps even overthrow a government, as happened to Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.
Why the woke fear humor
For all its faults the left still remains the truly embrasive bloc that mostly wants to see equality for all, regardless of how one 'identifies' or dresses. It wasn't wrong in making the world less safe for genuinely divisive 'jokes'. But the more seriously you take yourself, the more humorless you become, and risk becoming the absolute power you fight absolutely.
America's humophobia reflects the unstable, uncertain times we live in exemplified by the unstable, uncertain leaders we elect. It's hard to be funny when you're worried about everything, like the price of everything shooting higher than Elon Musk's SpaceX. Nobody feels like laughing when they exist in a chronic state of depression, stress, anxiety and fear, and that describes most of America. Even for the rich, who worry about losing it all, and what retaliation they'll eventually face for their crimes against humanity.
If someone does feel like cracking a joke, it's as likely he'll be incinerated by an online mob rather than be told, "LOL! That's a good one!"
We come to fear the pain relief we seek.
The left's suffering cultural paleontologists dig deep to uncover ancient grievances so they may torture others to relieve their own pain. They've become so super-sensitive to perceived slights against marginalized groups they fail to recognize a so-called marginalized group has been hijacked by the most powerful human beings on the planet - men - and it's lost sight of when humor makes fun not of people, but of bigotry.
You destroy the power of ugly ideology by holding it up to the light and making fun of it. Laughter diminishes wrong power.
Real social justice lies in the courage to call out power's hypocrisies, extremism, its oh-so-serious self-importance even as you support its real grievances. Yes, people DO have the right to dress and identify how they want.
Trans rights aren't a problem for anyone who holds a 'live and let live' approach. It's no skin off anyone's nose how you see yourself, but know that not everyone will validate you. That's life, for all of us. Just ask the most aggrieved man in America why he still can't get over half the country to validate his self-image that he won the last presidential election.
"I used to do business with a transgender in Hollywood. Man everybody would be scared of her in the boardroom. She'd walk in there, newly-minted woman, high heels, purse, wouldn't say anything just walk around lookin' mean and shit, and then she'd walk to the head of the conference table, stare at us all, reach into her purse and pull her old dick out and throw it on the table. "Let's talk business, gentlemen!" "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!" - Dave Chappelle
Somehow, we're supposed to believe that transwomen are the most put-upon, suicidal, abused, marginalized, oppressed people ever. So when Dave Chappelle cracks a joke like the above, people laughed because they got his point: Some transwomen are still a lot more male than advertised. No transwoman could slam her ex-manmeat down like that, but one can certainly laugh at the entitled grievance of angry men for whom the dress and makeup fail to cover their aggressive, traditionally dominant, phallocentric behavior, along with their five o'clock shadow.
Dave Chappelle doesn't 'punch down on transpeople', he speaks truth to power, i.e, men, some of whom have adopted the trappings of a real marginalized group - women - to gain sympathy and acceptable grievance from otherwise anti-patriarchal feminists. The problem with transwomen marginalization is that underneath them all are powerful biological men who made a choice, most of whom still possess their 'original equipment', not to mention their sense of aggrieved entitlement.
Women fighting to keep transwomen out of women-only spaces aren't 'transphobic', they're afraid of the very real potential predator underneath who looks exactly like a man in the ladies' shower room.
Everyone hates hypocrisy, except their own
"Our population has split into two camps. On one hand there are those who support Putin; on the other, there are those who can read, write, and reach logical conclusions." - 25-year-old Russian comedian Aleksandr Dolgopolov
Donald Trump hated how every member of his Cabinet was portrayed by the biggest fuck-you to his hyper-masculine view of himself and the world, by women portraying men on Saturday Night Live. Some antiracists can't stand jokes calling out black racism. Some feminists can't stand jokes making fun of their misandry and 'patriarchy' obsession that borders on QAnon conspiracy theory. Hyper-he-man Putin has forced a comedian to flee Russia and cancelled the popular Russian TV show Puppets which regularly made fun of the new President. His big burn back at G7 leaders who joked about his shirtless photos was, "I don't know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist. But I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case." The Turkish government couldn't stand a pop star who joked about the 'perversion' one can learn in a religious school. The oppressive Myanmar government fears and loathes comedian Zarganar, whom they forbade to perform any sort of comedy in the country.
"I wonder why they never said that you normalize transgenders by telling jokes about us." - Transwoman Daphne Dorman to Dave Chappelle
Normalization brings equality, but it also eliminates 'coolness' and claim to victimhood. Celebrities no longer 'come out' about being gay; it's boring. You can't even get a podcast interview for that anymore. Now everyone comes out as 'trans' until they find some new, probably invented, 'marginalized' identity. Narcissists require a constant stream of validation and professional victims have to invent oppression when they no longer shock their audience or punk the far right.
We need sharp, incisive comedy more than ever now, when the world looks so dark. Humour holds power to account. Now more than ever we need to speak truth to that power while we still can. Humor can harm, but it can also bring about a real equality that brings to those oh-so-special little snowflakes - professional dictators or the wokenati - what they fear.
Normalcy. And irrelevancy.
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