"I Take Umbrage at That!"

Of course you do. But could you leave it at home once in a while?

A strange phenomenon has been occurring lately as more leftists and progressives become “red-pilled” or at least have non-confrontational brushes with conservative people. They are genuinely surprised that conservatives are welcoming and respectful— and not the bigoted hate-mongers that leftist lore insists.

This comes as no surprise whatsoever to most conservatives and Republicans.

Lisa and I ran into this a long time ago, before red-pilling was a thing, when we were having drinks with a couple we had recently met. We were having a great time and lots of laughs¹ when it was revealed that we were conservatives. The wife of the couple blurted, with a look of shock on her face:

“But you’re so interesting and funny!”

For some unfathomable reason, we never got together with them again.

There is something about the contemporary progressive mindset that renders the sufferer incapable of perceiving nuance, subtlety, context, and most of all, humor and sarcasm.

These are people who can’t take a joke.

It’s also why the left can’t meme.

To make a meme— or a joke for that matter— one must be able to see the absurdity in a position, belief, action, or occurrence and point it out in an unexpected way.

This is impossible for someone so attached to and embedded in a belief that they cannot see whether it contains any absurdity, self-contradiction, or flawed reasoning. Evangelicals of all stripes have this blind spot— but especially these days, progressives.

I get it. If I believed that the world was coming to an end in twelve years, five of which had already elapsed, I wouldn’t find anything funny about it. And I’d probably be furious at those who do. Certainly, I wouldn’t be capable of making a funny meme about it.

Which brings us to, as my favorite nonexistent batshit psychiatrist, Dr. Ernst Angst, would say is “The crucial crux” of the matter:

If you can’t see the humor in yourself, you can’t see it in the world around you, either. So nothing is funny.

That is why there is no such thing as progressive comedy. There are progressive “comedians” who get in front of audiences and declare: “Orange Man bad” to uproarious clapter and delirious, deleterious hooting— but that’s not comedy.

Comedy is how we cope with the absurdity, unpredictability, and unfairness of life. It requires that we recognize that these things are true, and that they’re not going away. So we laugh at them. Humor is essential for good mental health.

The inability to perceive irony is how you get Skittle-haired, screaming loonies gluing themselves to things. This kind of existential panic produces outrageous, pointless, fish-flopping-on-the-dock demonstrations designed— and failing spectacularly— to convince the rest of us Trumpanzees that we have our heads in the sand.

They set their hair on fire at every utterance of Donald Trump, not realizing that much of his bluster is not intended to be taken seriously. I suspect that people who have adopted the progressive view of the world can perceive it in one way and one way only. Literally.

They don’t realize that when Donald says he’s going to “take” Greenland, he’s softening the target for later negotiation. When lefties hear the word “take,” they immediately imagine fossil-fueled tanks despoiling the fragile tundra while hapless, peaceful Greenlanders flee on electric bicycles from Trump’s flamethrowers.

During Pete Hegseth’s inquisition for the Secretary of Defense cabinet position, he was grilled mercilessly by impotent leftist shrill harpies Mazie Hirono, Tammy Duckworth, and others, who, flexing their angry, feminist, Cluster B bona fides, demanded Hegseth reveal whether he would obey Trump’s orders to invade Greenland, should they occur. I found myself internally screaming at the screen:

TRUMP’S TROLLING YOU, YOU FUCKING HALF-WITS!

This is a perfect example of the leftist literal interpretation of what the rest of us can clearly see it is just Trump being Trump. Calm down, ladies.

There is a case to be made to have a strong presence in the Arctic because if the ice disappears, as the Greens would have it, there will be a territorial free-for-all among us, China, and Russia— both of which already have interest and holdings in the region. Trump is announcing to our foes that there will be a territorial tug-of-war and that the U.S. will participate. It’s a warning shot, Mazie.

If your emotional radar is constantly searching for offense, the best place to look for it is comedy and satire— ways of expression built on a solid foundation of offense.

If you believe that the end of civilization is nigh, nothing is going to seem funny. Worse yet, those who poke fun are perceived to be dangerously naive about the coming calamity— making the humor that much more offensive.

These activists don’t realize that they are just the latest incarnation of misguided doomsday predictions and activism reaching back through the ages of human history. And like most of the previous versions, the doomsayers are often the most scientifically and historically “educated” of their times. This makes no difference. In fact, over-education may be one of the root causes of this delusion.

I think it’s human nature to assume others think the way you do, but that is flawed reasoning. There may be as many cognitive systems as minds. Progressives seem to be deeply pessimistic and fatalist and appear to assume everyone else is, too.

People who are obsessed with race, gender, and everything immutable appear to assume the same in others— especially conservatives— and since conservatives won’t get on the woke bandwagon, the only reasonable conclusion, using their mindset, is that we are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and all the rest of the narrative.

So, when they are exposed, after the tiniest amount of red-pilling, to conservatives, they are shocked to discover reasonable, fair-minded, accepting people instead of the monsters they were expecting.

1. This occurred before the current woke mind virus when liberals could still laugh. This is now verboten.