Fun As A Sociopolitical Weapon (UPDATED)

     Good morning, and Happy Pi Day, to all my Gentle Readers. It comes but once a year, so make the best of it. Do something round. Do something irrational. Perhaps – if you can work it out – do something Eulerian:

     And do it loud!

     Now, on to the day’s chosen subject. I wrote some time ago that the Left hates fun for a critically important reason: it’s inherently apolitical:

     We play – i.e., we engage in activities that have no deliberate gain in view – specifically because it’s fun. It comes naturally to us to do so, especially when in the company of those we love. One of the great quantitative differences between America and other nations is the fraction of our resources we have available for play. It could justly be said that Americans are the world’s foremost players – no pejorative intended.

     Americans are so fun-oriented that we devote whole industries to it, most emphatically including the video gaming industry. We even seek to make our work lives fun, to the extent that might be possible. My favorite source of business advice, Robert C. Townsend, put it this way:

     If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

     (Granted that not much can be done for coal mining or grave digging. But note how such jobs are the ones most swiftly put to automated techniques.)

     George Orwell, that hugely important voice to our time, came at it a bit differently:

     “When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”

     Fun is at the core of the contemporary sociopolitical struggle. One side is massively, scathingly, bellowingly against it. The other – that’s our side, Gentle Reader – is mostly puzzled about “what’s crawled up their asses and died?” The matter is not trivial, and must not be treated as such.

     This is on my mind for several reasons, not the least of which is the way the anti-Funnists behave on social media. I had an example of it thrown my way just this morning. Someone on Gab.com, noting how certain persons were straining to divert all attention to the invasion of Ukraine, asked her interlocutor, “Are you going to blame Putin for everything from now on?”

     I, being in a jocular mood, remembered something someone else had said during the Obama years, when the Obama-led Left was trying to blame George W. Bush for everything. So I resurrected and “adjusted” it:

     The traffic outside my front windows is horrible at 3 PM on school days. Damn that Putin! 😉

     My effrontery drew a response I should have predicted:

     At least your children and family aren’t being murdered by putin for the last two weeks, right? Would it be as funny if putin was making your family dead?…You compare school traffic to children dying and cry that your morals are being questioned? Your mom did a bad job. Really bad.

     Yes, Gentle Reader: they’re even on Gab, that hotbed of conservative sentiment. So I backhanded him:

     Oh! I see your problem! You lack a sense of humor, or at least the ability to detect sarcasm. Perhaps you should see a professional. Your malady is definitely outside my skill set.

     Because the one thing the anti-Funnists cannot abide is having their sense of humor lampooned. It reveals their essential emptiness, which they struggle to fill with Causes and moral indignation.

     This sort of thing rams home how important it is to have fun, to poke fun at what’s inherently ludicrous, and to laugh like donkeys at the anti-Funnists. They hate it; it’s “the unanswerable weapon.” Not only does it express disdain for their monomania; it also makes them look ridiculous: an invaluable twofer in these days when the Left seeks to politicize all of human life. Remember “The personal is political” — ? They mean it – and they mean to inflict it on you.

     And what better motto to proclaim and implement on Pi Day?

     I’ll be doing so with the rest of my day. Go thou and do likewise. Maybe with pizza. Or ice cream. Or both! On a roller-coaster! With fireworks and Beach Boys tunes!!

     Whew! Apologies, Gentle Reader. It got away from me for a moment. But do have a nice, fun day.

     (Sorry, Pascal: No interesting graphic today. I’m having too much fun.)

UPDATE: EVEN DOGS are smarter than anti-Funnists! — and Newfs are very smart dogs!