The failure of conservative humor

As if more evidence was needed?

I don't actually read that many books of hard-core conservative persuasion. It's kind of amusing, since many of my personal principles and philosophies do seem conservative on their face, but today's so-called conservatives lie too much. Today's uninteresting example is Don't Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards by P.J. O'Rourke. He's supposed to be a humorist of sorts, though a more apt description is "libertarian propagandist of little skill".

I've actually read 6 of his earlier books, so I have to count this book as being fooled for the 6th time and shame on me, but I keep hoping to learn something worth the time. After all, the whole point of REAL humor is to learn (in accord with my General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff), but O'Rourke never fails to disappoint. There are some traces of interesting ideas buried in his stuff, but mostly he's just wasting my time with cheap sophistry. Almost done with this book and so far only detected one interesting thought: The distinction between negative and positive rights. The rest of it was fluff and piffle.

What finally provoked me enough to write this quasi-review was Chapter 8 in Part II. Just too perfect as an example of the intellectual dishonesty of the Libertarians. The premise is supposed to be that Part II is about solutions on an issue-by-issue basis. The ostensible issue of Chapter 8 is gun safety, but O'Rourke actually changes the subject to attack voting rights. It's supposed to be a parody, but it comes off as too sincere, almost a harbinger of the Bolshevik Republican policies of voter disenfranchisement. Actually I'm pretty sure those policies had started before the publication of this book, but either O'Rourke hadn't noticed or it's another example of his highly selective focus. Also a vicious focus in his unfunny personal attacks.

I'll go ahead and run through my earlier tags, though I was planning to discard the book without memory. On a page-based basis:

On page 11 (which is early in Chapter 2, dismissing Chapter 1 as an intro), I was struck by several items, such as the delusional attack against Richard Dawkins that only showed (1) O'Rourke hates Dawkins, and (2) O'Rourke hasn't read the book he's attacking. This page had a number of poorly written, false, and dumb things, but I keep reminding myself that O'Rourke will claim the "It's only a joke" defense, and only more so for his worst writing.

On page 13 I was offended by his joke about the Japanese word "jiyu" for one of the senses of freedom. The only things it showed are (1) racist viciousness, (2) ignorance of the Japanese language and indifference to the truth, and (3) ignorance of what "freedom" actually means--but that's only typical of Libertarian "thinking". The reality is that the Japanese word is about the sense of freedom where the cause of your actions is yourself. Also, I strongly suspect it's a word coined in China, not Japan.

Page 15 had some strikingly offensive personal attacks on the Clintons, but "It's just a joke" of some twisted flavor. A more substantive annoyance was the discussion of "intolerance" without any apparent knowledge of the Paradox of Tolerance. Add Popper's philosophy to the LONG list of important topics O'Rourke is ignorant of or chooses to ignore.

At this point I was already getting fed up and wanted to stop paying such close attention, but... On pages 42 and 43 he dragged Donald Trump into the picture. Really laughable dismissal considering how things have panned out. Most amusing quote must be "Every property he touches seems to go to hell" as he dismisses Trump's self-claimed wealth as a trick of "former Enron accountants". Words worth eating, if not well worth anything, eh?

On page 49 he brings the birthers into the discussion, though Trump doesn't get an explicit mention. The offensive aspect here is the link between birtherism and O'Rourke's own frequent and vicious and unjustified attacks on Barack Obama. Maybe there's some racism there, too, since on the next page (50) he also takes a cheap shot of some sort at Tiger Woods. At least I think it was supposed to be "Just a joke" of some sort. Maybe it was just broken by time? The joke seems to be implying that Woods could not keep a secret, so I'm guessing it had to do with his exposure as a philanderer and subsequent career collapse? Perhaps these things just seem less funny post-Trump-as-politician?

Speaking of narcissistic personality disorder, he actually cites the diagnostic criteria on page 70, but without reference to Trump. If he had mentioned Trump, then it would have looked as wise and prophetic as Harlan Ellison's prediction of the Reagan presidency in The Glass Teat.

Page 95 is the apex of his attacks on science. The only thing O'Rourke actually proves is that he has no idea of what science is about. Even less idea of how it works.

If there's any thoughtful or educational stuff in this book, then it's been shredded far above my poor power to unshred. Sometimes "It's just a joke" is no excuse.