The Joke's On Us

Wrestling the Darkest Demons of America's Past

The Fool, 1925 Fox Films PUBLIC DOMAIN WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hello, Friend,

I have a confession to make. I’m not a fan of pranks. I don’t like humor that arises from fooling other people and laughing at their expense. Maybe it’s because I was bullied as a kid, but I’d rather laugh with people at life’s indignities than laugh at other people’s misfortune. Unless they’re malignant narcissists, in which case I feel laughing at them is a karmic duty. I’m looking at you, Manchurian Candidate and also you Dogeball.

Lately every day feels like April Fool’s Day, waking up to see what absurdity will be thrust upon us. What ridiculous things will they do or say? What ludicrous excuses will they make when exposed?

Ludicrous Excuses:

We don’t owe you an explanation. We do what we want and you do what we want, too!

Who did what to huh? Not us! It was Soros…or her email…or (points at imaginary frenemy) Woke! Woke did it!

Never heard of him, her, them, that…whatever. How dare you even ask, so nasty!

Incapable of shame and insatiable in their need for adulation, they cannot comprehend why everyone doesn’t adore them. Like all bullies, they’re self-absorbed, cruel, weak, insecure, and hypersensitive.

They revel in lying to us, gaslighting us, hurting us, and dividing us. They got stuck somewhere on their journey and it has caused them to lose sight of the path. They think themselves superior. Believing that gives them permission to devalue and dehumanize the rest of us. They feel no guilt taking from us, because they believe everything belongs to them. Whatever doesn’t yet is owed to them. This is the kind of thinking that has led to many of the worst moments in human history.

Here’s a little nugget of inconvenient truth for you. America is constructed from a series of careless and cruel precepts. Our country was built on the belief that this land belonged to us by some imaginary divine right. It was owed to us. It did not belong to the people who were living here when we showed up. They weren’t worthy. So we took it from them. Then we dumped tea in Boston Harbor, gathered our citizen militia, and told the Mad King to fuck off.

This land is made for you and me, and by ‘you and me’ I mean us but not them.

We stole this land, slaughtered and subjugated the people who lived here, wrenched African people from their homeland, shackled them in chains, shoved them into boats like sardines in a can, and if they survived the perilous journey, forced them into slave labor. We used the descendants of freed slaves and the immigrants who came here seeking a better life to fight our wars, erect our cities, toil in our factories, and build our infrastructure. Our nation was built on their backs, yet we have vilified black people and immigrants again and again throughout our history.

So, tell me, friend, when was America great? When have we ever been a nation of liberty and justice for all? Is the illusion that we ever were the ultimate prank played on all of us? As we continue to reach for a future where everyone has access and opportunity, if we cannot come to terms with the complexities of our past, it is unclear how we’ll ever move beyond it.

We cannot rise to our better angels until we wrestle with our darkest demons. If we don’t face that reckoning, it appears the joke’s on us, only no one is laughing.

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