The 2019 Project: A Manifesto On Humor
It is one of the many maxims meant to draw a person toward a well-lived and happy life that you should never, ever, under any circumstances explain the joke.
So, naturally, I am here to do just that.
Recently, America’s paper of record published a satirical piece of “history” by yours truly. I have decided to make a series of it, with the next installment set to appear in that undiscovered country we call the future.
The intent is to lampoon the 1619 Project by presenting a version of history from the perspective of one who has somehow done a deep dive into a subject and only managed to retain facts which confirm their prior assumptions, with the rest colored in without regard to logic, history or good taste.
Imagine putting out a movie where you frame the female warrior elite of the Kingdom of Dahomey as anti-slavery, completely ignoring the reality that the kingdom and its warriors were oppressors, brutally attacking, systematically kidnaping and profiting from the sale of human beings they saw as inferior. Nobody would ever think to do that, right?
My goal is to achieve fame, acclaim and wealth like the great mind behind that 1619 Project. Not only will I be published by America’s paper of record, I anticipate that I will be praised by our great nation’s most, respected sources of news and news analysis. I look forward to being recognized with prestigious awards and granted a well-remunerated professorship at a prominent institution of higher learning.
These will all come as a matter of course, I have little doubt.
That said, it is important, I think, to point out that while there are certain aspects of the 1619 Project which I take exception to, there are also elements with which its author and I might find agreement.
It’s important to understand what is and what is not being ridiculed in a joke. In a forthcoming story, Governeur Morris and James Madison are writing the Constitution and they mention BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of color). The people who qualify as BIPOC are not the object of ridicule, but rather the notion that 21st century perspectives can be applied to 18th and 19th century persons and the division of people into categories of good or bad based simply on their heritage.
The honest truth is that there can be no honest or accurate telling of the story of the founding of the United States without an acknowledgement and elucidation of the presence, influence and reality of the brutal, inhumane and dehumanizing institution of slavery. It is a wound that for many has still not knit and scarred over.
While it is true that if one could divine the genealogy of every person on earth, one would find that each and every was descended from a king, a slaveholder and a slave, such is the reality of history that, until the late 18th century, the notion that slavery was not an inherent part of human existence was unquestioned. It took a century and a half or so for this sea change to create the modern understanding of slavery as fundamentally abhorrent.
The stamping out of slavery was a remarkably quick process when observed from the God’s-eye-view of the scope of history. It was abolished across the world, or the better part of it, through moral forces, war, economic coercion and, yes, imperial dictates.
Sadly, there are still pockets where chatel slavery obtains; the fight is not over yet.
There’s something I’ve noticed about the descendants of oppressed peoples, which may be a spurious correlation, but I’d like to think that it’s true as it suggests a hope for humanity and it is this: Many of those folks have a great sense of humor.
Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but it certainly has healing powers.
Furthermore, we are – in America; in the west – a people in great need of healing.
There has been, at least here in the states, either an increase in racism or an increase in the willingness to express racism. Which it is is academic, frankly.
Racism is a failing which does not discriminate. There are racists of every skin color and every creed. Racism is not picky when it comes to demographics or socio-economic status. Bigotry is a cancer that infects the souls of Men and needs to be actively and aggressively opposed, repudiated and excised.
Racism and bigotry – the ideas, not those who have them – must be deracinated, root and branch removed and destroyed like a stand of Japanese knotweed.
How to do this? I return to my favorite medicine – and antidepressant – humor.
We live in a society to some degree dominated by a self-declared elite of woke-scold puritans who not only give a bad name to reasonable folks on the political left but actively attempt to silence people on what used to be called the political right. These folks are united in their humorless worldview. What better way to counter this trend, then, but with humor?
I leave you with a quote – it’s awful, I know – from one of the most cringeworthy moments of late sixties and early seventies pop culture:
Does anybody remember laughter?
The first expression of this project lies here.
