I think I'm beginning to understand why humor is so unpopular an element in our serious discourse today. And especially in our political discourse. Humor is always politically dangerous, because it makes us aware of the fallibility - not to mention the unintended foolishness - even of causes we might otherwise deem good, or noble, or righteous. Including, yes, even political causes. And of course we always need our chosen cause to be as good as possible, if not more so. I mean, how can the thing we are opposing be totally black, if the thing we're supporting isn't totally white?
And so there is a reason why we consistently hesitate, or refuse, to apply humor to a lot of what nowadays matters most to us. We of the 21st century don't much like the color gray. But particularly when it sullies the purity of the hill we've chosen to die on. Indeed, our solemnity often extends even to those issues where the most natural and obvious response would be at least one of satire, if not good-natured humor. E.g., to concerns, or even entire causes, that started off well enough, but which now we see carried to an extreme. And sometimes, not just to any old silly extreme, but one that seems to engulf whatever legitimacy lay in the original grievance.
My point is that even the best causes can get carried away with themselves. That doesn't mean the good has now become bad; it merely means that it has become stupid, and thus blind to itself. Humor has many uses, of course. And it has never been more useful than when it allows us to see something clearly. But in particular, I think, is it useful in these Days of Rage, when - like nothing else - it permits us to see at once the absurdity of some ostensible good that has veered out of control, without making it irremediably evil.
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