[High Praise! to Stilton’s Place]

The shooter hadn’t bothered to hide his political anger from others because he didn’t have to. So pervasive is anti-Trump (and Republican and conservative) rhetoric and calls for violence on social media that his many posts and re-posts on the subject didn’t strike anyone as out of the ordinary. He was just a needle in a hate stack.

Let that appalling thought sink in for a moment.

Political satire often makes people dumber. That’s because the main thing behind bad political views is certainty. When you’re really certain about what you believe, then you don’t think twice about using the government to force all your beliefs on others. But a lot of what goes for political satire on things like The Daily Show and imitators isn’t made to challenge certainty but to make their audience even more comfortable in the view they already have, i.e., it makes people dumber.

So all this is to say I’ve done a lot of bad satire. Whatever. Let’s move on.

Good satire should be aimed at your own beliefs as much as any other. It’s trickier to do, isn’t going to be as immediately popular with your audience, but someone might actually learn something. I think a good example, incidentally, was from SNL (which usually does lazy satire) with it’s Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks sketch. It doesn’t play out as most would expect.

So the question is, is there any useful political satire that can be done about Trump? I would say no.

Now, there’s a lot about Trump to mock. I mean a lot. But the problem is, everyone sees that. And at this point, absolutely everyone either sees Trump as horrible or will never see Trump as horrible, so no one is being moved on this subject. Plus, satire against him is like making fun of a comedy. The guy is entertaining enough without any embellishments — I mean, yesterday he was back to tweeting how good his poll numbers are. I just chuckle, say “That’s out Trump!”, and don’t feel the need to add anything to it.

Now, there is plenty of good satire to do around the subject of Trump. For the left, they tend to use attacks on how horrible Trump is to try and cover up how horrible they are, and that’s ripe from their side. On the right — well the right is just a big mess right now that doesn’t really stand for anything. Honestly, I don’t really have a good take on that yet, but maybe someone else has something. I’m in a different situation, really; I’m this bemused guy on the sidelines who thinks he smarter than all those arguing ninnies — that’s what I need to make fun of.

But Trump — no reason to make fun of Trump. Just let him be him.