Tim Blair: Last laugh may still go to comedy king Trump

Leftists long ago lost their ability to laugh. Sure, they applaud and make a kind of forced laugh-like noise when watching social justice stand-up, but that’s more an indication of approval than amusement, writes Tim Blair.

Leftists long ago lost their ability to laugh. Sure, they applaud and make a kind of forced laugh-like noise when watching social justice stand-up, but that’s more an indication of approval than amusement.

“There’s a lot of clapter going on,” US comedian Donald Glover observed in 2016 of this basic group-reinforcement behaviour.

“But what you did isn’t funny. They’re just clapping and laughing to be on the right side of history.”

It’s not really laughter, then, as normal people know it. They’re faking it.

And this has become such an embedded woke characteristic that genuine laughter, when leftists hear it, strikes them as jarring and strange.

Which is yet another reason why Donald Trump so distresses them. He’s entertaining. He has exceptional comedic timing. He can land a punchline. He’s able to improvise.

Trump’s sane critics can accept this. “I never said he wasn’t funny,” my US comedy writer friend Jim Treacher, a never-Trumper forever, recently posted in response to some or other Trump japery.

Donald Trump is entertaining, has exceptional comedic timing, can land a punchline and is able to improvise.

But devotedly Democrat or woken never-Trumpers, an entirely different commentary class, sense something sinister about Trump’s comic patter.

Not able to generate proper giggles themselves, they’ve decided that the Donald’s ability to do so is a sign of evil.

Laughter scares them. And they’re becoming more frightened still as the orange man’s polling numbers hold.

“Trump, obviously, is far from the first president or pol with some capacity for comedy,” jittery Michael Kruse, a staffer at anti-Trump site Politico, wrote a few days ago.

“But over the past few months, at events of his that I’ve been to – in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – it’s felt to me particularly conspicuous.

“His destabilising rhetoric has gotten even more dark. It’s what’s made the laughter all the more stark.”

There’s nothing worse than stark laughter. Except when it’s dark. How dare he.

“That he is or can be funny is not the point,” Kruse continued, in a piece entirely about Trump being funny.

“The point is what being funny in the way that he’s being funny is letting him do – and what it is doing to his supporters.”

No individual on earth has recently endured more mockery than Trump.Picture: GB News

It’s making them laugh. This used to be a tactic of the left. Here’s rule six from commie Saul Alinsky’s 1971 leftist strategy guide Rules for Radicals: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

People tend to enjoy being amused and entertained, which upsets the likes of Kruse and his fellow anti-Trumpers – including New York University professor Leif Weatherby, who gave Politico a perfectly sour leftist complaint about the Donald’s comedy campaign.

“He’s doing something really serious,” Weatherby whined, “with humour.”

How absolutely appalling.

Then followed an inventive few paragraphs in which Kruse and like-minded sources presented their case that jokes are a central component of fascism. Because, as we all know, fascism is always hilarious.

“Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini,” Kruse generously allows. “But they share a rhetorical style, experts say.”

One of those experts is Maya Vinokour, billed as a “scholar of Stalinism”, who could reasonably be accused of overthinking this whole laughter thing.

“It’s a feature of demagoguery,” Vinokour told our man Kruse.

“Laughter is going to be a weapon, because you laugh at something to diminish it and as preparation for casting it down or destroying it.”

Or because it’s funny. Just throwing that out there.

“So I don’t think that Trump could get away with just fearmongering,” Vinokour added.

“I think he has to punctuate it with moments of levity.”

Imagine being stuck next to Maya at a dinner party. Punctuate it with a little levity and she’d be screaming at you all night for using a destructive weapon in a fearmongering manner.

But she’s right about using laughter as a diminishing force. It’s just that Trump isn’t always required. Leftist academics, journalists and politicians bring mockery upon themselves.

Those poor mirthless souls ought to re-read Alinsky’s tactical manual.

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon,” rule five declares. “There is no defence. It is almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule.

“Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

When earnest anti-Trumpers come up with weird theories about the Donald’s comedy fascism, they’re inviting ridicule.

If he hasn’t already, Trump will likely use this Politico piece as joke material at future appearances.

Meanwhile, consider this. No individual on earth has recently endured more mockery than Trump.

The problem for leftists is not much has landed, and now the left is crying about mockery in return. Sweet.