There’s an old story from the early 20th-century Russian empire. It goes something like this: A man on the street yells, “Nikolay is a moron!” A police officer hears this, and thinking that the guy is referring to the Tzar, Nicholas II, the cop arrests the man. The guy protests: “No, officer, I didn’t mean our respected Tzar, but another Nikolay.” And then the cop responds, “Don’t try to trick me. If you say, ‘moron,’ you are obviously referring to our Tzar.”
Who knows whether that story is true or not; it’s on Wikipedia so it’s probably made up. Whatever the case, it does reveal a fundamental truth about thugs and autocrats, which is that the more authoritarian they become, the more amusing they often are, if only unintentionally. They just can’t help themselves. And of course, we’re seeing that today, pretty much everywhere we look. One of the ironies of the death of humor on the Left is that, without realizing it, leftists have suddenly become some of the funniest people on the planet.
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