We seem to have forgotten something important in our public life. The world is serious, but it is also absurd. We are surrounded by real problems, real responsibilities, and real consequences. Yet somewhere along the way we convinced ourselves that the only respectable way to face them is with a furrowed brow and a lecture. It is not working. Humor reaches people in a way moral sermons never will. Laughter disarms. It opens the door to honest conversation. It creates the kind of human connection that facts alone cannot achieve.
We live in a culture that is too earnest for its own good. Everything becomes a crisis, a battlefield, or a reason to scold. It is no wonder people tune out. The human mind can only take so much proclamation before it shuts down. George Carlin understood this better than anyone. Give people a moment of levity and the whole room relaxes. Suddenly they listen. They might even think!
Life is serious. It demands effort and responsibility. That is exactly why joy matters. Joy is not the opposite of seriousness. It is the proof that life is still worth caring about. Emma Goldman captured this perfectly when she proclaimed that “if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” She understood something basic. A movement that forgets how to laugh is a movement that forgets why it exists.
So let us keep perspective. Let us argue hard when it matters and refuse to take ourselves too seriously in the process. Let us remember that humor is not trivial. It is a tool for clarity, humility, and human connection. If we want to reach people, we should meet them where they live. And people live in the space between struggle and laughter.
Ian Journey
Pismo Beach
This article appears in Dec 4-14, 2025.
Good advice.
“A Republican, a Democrat, and a dyslexic cannibal walk into a bar……”
There’s nothing humourous about going hungry.
There’s nothing humourous about working harder for less.
There’s nothing humorous about the ladder to upward mobility being removed for millions of Americans.
There’s nothing humourous about unemployment.
There’s nothing humourous about being called a racist because you want our borders sealed and the rule of law to be restored in the US.
There’s nothing humourous about dollar debasement and bank bailouts.
There’s nothing humourous about living paycheck to paycheck.
There’s nothing humourous about a certain figure who wears a mitre in Rome wanting to turn the US into a vassal state of a resurrected Holy Roman Empire through the importation of its (heretical) religion by millions of its adherents in the US illegally and crowding out the United States Protestant faith, whose members it previously murdered by the millions in Europe’s wars of religion. This religion, based in Rome, has been biding it’s time, waiting for this very moment for the US to become so distracted that large portions of its population forget who they are and where they come from. Not religious myself and quite aware of this country’s faults, we are still a Protestant nation. It was Protestants who risked death sailing across the Atlantic to found the 13 colonies. If not for them and their religious beliefs, where would we be? Would be in the same condition every single nation south of our border to the very tip of Argentina where this religion, based in Rome, got a foothold? No, we would not be. We would not waiting for anyone’s permission, especially this religion’s central figure or his pedophiles masquerading as clergy, to become the great nation we still are. As an example, Joe Biden was a member of this religion, based in Rome. It was his administration and other democratic administrations that threw open our borders and provided the 40 million illegals an incentive to come. America is not their country unless they go through the vetting process provided by our immigration authorities, as millions have before them. We have got to prevent the expansion of this religion, based in Rome, from getting a further foothold on the levers of government AT ALL COSTS.
Ladies and gentlemen, secular or religious, we are in a fight for the survival of the American culture and spirit. We have got to stop illegal immigration and restore our industrial base ASAP.
Quit complaining, Mr. Fly. To paraphrase the Treasury Secretary of the presidential administration you support, you just don’t know how good you have it.
Michael:
Or, to paraphrase you, “get off my lawn.”
You are boomerphobic.
JD:
Once bitten, twice shy.
Fly: Aging Boomers, with their dental problems, aren’t a threat to bite anyone. But watch out for those college kids with their expensive orthodontia.