To many readers the title of this blog appeared at first to be a contradiction, a non sequitur. True enough, and I always try to stay on the light side of things. I often feel that Camus was right, however: the world is absurd but with a little bit of luck we will inch yet a bit closer to the truth.
So when I hear a person spout off about making America great again I find that humorous because it seems so nonsensical. I always feel that I already live in the greatest country on earth. Pardon my immigrant’s patriotic zeal. But then I stop: o-oh, I have heard this before. I gew up in Nazi Germany. Nothing to laugh there.
But you see, absurdity takes hold of the situation when a week or two later we find out how that regeneration is to be brought about. Yes Sir, in America we shall abolish the arts and the humanities and the associated endowments. Now if that is not funny! The English, too, will abolish Shakespeare, I assume, the French will do away with Moliere, the Germans with Goethe, the Italians with Dante, the Spanish with Cervantes, and the Russians with Dostoyevsky. America, the newly cleansed Leader of the Free World, will bring about Utopia. It is too late for 1984, but 2084 will do. If that does not make you laugh I don’t know what will.
If you need to feel better I recommend Lord Ross whom Shakespeare makes say: “I dare not speak much further… things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before.”
No. You better just laugh.
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credits: miamifineartsacademy.com