we all need to understand that satire is dead. any stupid opinion you can come up with in an attempt to paint a person or political tendency as irrational or malicious or ignorant or otherwise ‘un-good’, is a genuine article of true faith for millions of people on the planet who will kill and die for that belief. the stupidest thing you could think to say is some political party or PAC’s official platform. ‘ironic’ anti-union propaganda reads IDENTICALLY to ‘unironic’ anti-union propaganda, because anti-union propaganda really is that stupid.

Yep, unfortunately we can’t have nice things. I don’t think satire has ever really been as politically effective as its proponents would pretend, and even if so, we’re well beyond the point where the benefits outweigh the costs. Is it that fun to feel superior for “getting the bit” at this point? After all, at this point, if you did “A Modest Proposal” about Gazans, there’d be sicko fucks who would probably cheer it on. In the face of the reactionary world we’re living in, I just don’t see the point of extended ironic bits. Emphasizing the cruelty of the other side in plain language (the Felix/Matt bits about how liberals would love to just throw the homeless into a meat grinder to forget about them, for instance) or Adam Johnson’s plain “how many Gazan children need to die” feels so much more effective than the layers of irony that most comedy is wrapped in. Irony still remains a tool in the arsenal, but building a whole comm around ironically posting the worst takes (and takes that are probably also most damaging to the leftist cause, since unions are a pipeline to class consciousness and praxis) just feels gross.

Maybe this is too earnestposting, but whatever. I broke up with satire around 2012 after loving it for decades (I was a Jonathan Swiftie in undergrad). The fact is, it’s not really radical. Even The Onion’s “continues to happen,” while cathartic, hasn’t changed anything in decades of posting the headline.