Laughing at the Tyrant
Satire, Survival, and the Sacred Rebellion of Joy
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” — Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve come to believe that laughter is one of the holiest sounds we can make. Not the sarcastic chuckle, not the sneer that hides insecurity, but the real thing—the laugh that shakes you loose, the laugh that bubbles up even when it feels like everything around you is coming apart.
These days, it feels almost scandalous to laugh. There’s too much weight pressing down, too much cruelty and absurdity jammed into the headlines. We’ve got leaders puffed up like cartoon strongmen, strutting around as though they’ve bent the laws of the universe to their will. We’ve got neighbors suspicious of one another, communities split in two, friends who no longer talk because of politics. Against all that, laughter might seem disrespectful—like we’re not taking the threat seriously enough.
But I’ve learned the opposite is true. Tyrants fear laughter more than they fear speeches.
Because here’s the secret: the machinery of fear runs on silence. It runs on everyone nodding along, pretending the show is impressive. Laughter is the one sound that breaks the spell.
Why Tyrants Hate Jokes
Think about it. Every strongman, from Mussolini to Putin, tries to project invulnerability. They dress in uniforms, ride horses shirtless, wave their fists from balconies. They want you to believe they’re untouchable, destined, chosen by history itself.
But what happens the moment someone cracks a joke? What happens when people stop gasping in awe and start giggling? The whole illusion wobbles.
The Soviets understood this. They locked up poets and playwrights before they bothered with professors. Because a clever rhyme whispered in a breadline could cut deeper than a thousand manifestos. People traded jokes about Brezhnev’s eyebrows, about the endless parade of broken tractors. They laughed quietly, and in that laughter they remembered they were still human.
Even Hitler—arguably the most humorless tyrant in modern memory—had to deal with underground jokes that mocked his stiff salute and ridiculous mustache. He knew mockery could kill mystique, and mystique was half his power.
And here at home? Donald Trump may love to dish out nicknames and insults, but he hates to be laughed at. He can handle rage. He can handle fear. But ridicule? It cuts straight through the balloon of ego.
Vonnegut and the Gospel of Absurdity
Kurt Vonnegut understood this better than almost anyone. He saw humanity at its ugliest, locked underground while Dresden burned above him, and he came out alive with the strangest weapon: laughter.
When I first read Slaughterhouse-Five, I didn’t get it. The aliens, the time travel, the refrain “so it goes”—it all felt too weird. But then it clicked: Vonnegut wasn’t trying to explain war rationally. He was showing us that war is so absurd, the only sane response is to laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because laughing means we’re still here to feel the absurdity at all.
He once wrote, “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” That line has carried me through more dark nights than I can count.
In the Air Force, when the heat was brutal and the mission made no sense, someone would crack a joke so ridiculous it didn’t belong in that moment. And suddenly the air felt lighter. It didn’t erase the misery, but it reminded us we weren’t alone in it. That’s what Vonnegut knew: laughter is survival, especially when the world makes no damn sense.
Arundhati Roy and the Razor’s Edge
Vonnegut gave us absurdity, but Arundhati Roy gave us razor-sharp wit. She’s one of those writers who can dismantle an empire with a single sentence. When she writes about corruption or inequality, she doesn’t just argue—she exposes the ridiculousness of power pretending to be noble.
Roy once said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” That line isn’t funny, but it carries the same subversive spirit. It suggests the pomp of power isn’t eternal. The world they’ve built is temporary, fragile, and sometimes the best way to remind ourselves of that is to laugh at its theatrics.
Wit is dangerous because it reframes the story. Tyrants demand to be seen as history’s protagonists. A sharp joke flips the script, turning them into clowns in their own carnival. Roy does that every time she picks up her pen.
Personal Confession: When Laughter Saved Me
I’ll admit something. There were days in service when I wondered if I’d make it. Days when the mission blurred into futility, when the weight of loss sat heavy on my chest. In those moments, laughter seemed impossible. But then someone would tell a joke—often a bad one—and the whole squadron would erupt.
It wasn’t about comedy. It was about defiance. It was our way of saying, “You don’t own our spirit.”
Later, working in government, I saw the same thing. Bureaucracy can grind the soul into dust. Endless meetings, policy drafts that nobody reads, bosses who think they’re generals. But there’s always that one colleague who cracks a joke in the middle of the nonsense. Everyone laughs, and for a moment we remember we’re human beings, not just cogs.
That’s when I realized humor isn’t an escape. It’s resistance.
The Double-Edged Sword of Meme Warfare
Now we live in the age of memes. I see kids online making fun of authoritarianism with Photoshop faster than I can finish my morning coffee. In one sense, it’s brilliant. A good meme spreads faster than a news article, and it punctures the balloon of ego in a single image.
But I worry, too. If everything becomes a joke, we risk losing seriousness altogether. Laughter has to be paired with clarity. It can’t replace action. It has to fortify it.
A meme can make us laugh at the absurdity of a dictator’s hair, but it doesn’t register voters or protect institutions. Still, it can keep people sane enough to keep fighting, and maybe that’s its quiet victory.
The Dangerous Pleasure of Mockery
I think often about how laughter feels in my own body. There’s that sudden release, that moment when the tight knot of fear unwinds just enough to let in air.
That’s what tyrants fear most. Because when you laugh at them, you’re not afraid of them. And when fear collapses, their whole machine begins to sputter.
But we should be careful. Mockery without love can curdle into cynicism. And cynicism is a tyrant’s best friend. The point isn’t to laugh because we think everything is hopeless. The point is to laugh because we know the tyrant’s story isn’t the only one.
A Walk Through History’s Punchlines
History is full of examples of humor outlasting oppression.
In Nazi Germany, underground joke books circulated with satirical takes on Hitler. People risked prison for those laughs, but they traded them anyway.
In the Soviet Union, the “anekdot” tradition—little joke-stories—kept spirits alive even during famine and purges.
In apartheid South Africa, protestors used song and dance infused with humor to show that joy itself was resistance.
In Shakespeare’s plays, the fool was never just comic relief. He was the truth-teller, the one character who could mock the king without losing his head—because his wisdom came wrapped in laughter. Shakespeare knew what every tyrant fears: that the joke, once told, is impossible to take back.
More recently, late-night hosts and comedians have paid steep costs for speaking truth with laughter—Jimmy Kimmel being one. After his monologue about the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely. His punishment was proof: if satire wasn’t dangerous, they wouldn’t have silenced him. Tyrants may tolerate outrage, but they cannot abide being laughed at.
It’s a reminder: the tyrant may write laws, but he can’t script the human spirit.
My Morning Test
These days, I’ve developed a test. When I wake up and read the headlines, I ask myself: did I laugh today? If the answer is no, I know I need to find something funny before the day is done.
Not because I want to avoid reality, but because laughter is the proof I haven’t surrendered to it.
Sometimes it’s a late-night comic skewering the latest absurdity in Washington. Sometimes it’s a joke traded among friends. Sometimes it’s me muttering to myself about the sheer incompetence of those who claim to be in charge.
Every laugh is a refusal. Every laugh is a tiny victory.
Closing: Sacred Rebellion
Vonnegut gave me the gospel of absurdity. Roy handed me the scalpel of wit. Shakespeare gave me the fool who could mock the king and live another day. Between the three, I’ve learned that humor is not a distraction from resistance—it is resistance.
We laugh not to trivialize, but to survive. We laugh to stay human when they try to turn us into shadows. We laugh because cruelty can’t stand being mocked.
So I say this: when the tyrant demands silence, answer with laughter. Loud, unapologetic, contagious laughter. The kind that rolls across a crowd, the kind that spreads like wildfire, the kind that tells the world: we are still alive, and you can’t take that from us.
Hold on to your laughter, my friends. Guard it as fiercely as you guard your hope. Because in the end, the tyrant’s power is temporary. But the sound of human beings laughing together? That’s eternal. ;-)
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Dino
