Notes From a Die-Hard Marxist
(Not that Marx)
I have a theory about why babies cry when they are born, and this is it:
Because they should.
Because look around.
“It’s because the baby’s cold,” says the doctor, but the doctor’s wrong. The baby is warm, it’s the world that is cold.
“You’re just being a pessimist,” says the optimist, but that’s a bit simplistic (and optimistic).
We’re not pessimists, me and Baby, we’re just empiricists. We don’t decide that life is tragic. We simply look around.
But maybe we don’t look hard enough.
Here’s a list of the news headlines as they appeared on the front page of CNN.com at 8:41PM EST, on Thursday Nov. 16, 2023 (note: all headlines quoted are unaltered, and appear as they did on the CNN website):
- Trump Plans to Wield Executive Power in Unprecedented Ways
- Trump and His Allies are Crafting Policies That Involve Revenge and a Sweeping Transformation of the Federal Government
- ‘Legitimately Scary’: Ex-Prosecutor Reacts to Trump’s Plan
- Special Counsel in Hunter Biden Probe Indicates New Charges May Be in the Works
- Scathing Ethics Report Into Rep. Santos Released
It’s not great. As one scrolls down the page, the clouds in the mind swirl and darken. And let’s face it, they should:
- Body of Israeli Hostage Found Near Al-Shifa Hospital, IDF Says
- IDF Claims it Found a Tunnel Shaft Inside Al-Shifa Hospital Complex
- Not Just Killed, Cruelly Mutilated: Witness Describes Assault of Women on Oct. 7
- Some Young Americans on TikTok Say They Sympathize With Osama bin Laden
- Education Dept. Investigating Six Colleges and One K-12 School Over Alleged Incidents of Antisemitism and Islamophobia
You don’t have to be a pessimist to be heading for the exit right about now. You don’t have to be an engineer to know the house is in bad shape: the windows are shattered, the doors are hanging off their hinges, there’s a hole in the roof and the whole thing seems to be sinking into the ground:
- Hate Groups are Weaponizing AI to Stoke Antisemitism in the Wake of Hamas Attacks
- Beijing Cleaned Up its Toxic Air. Why Can’t New Delhi?
- New Texas Law Sends Ripples of Fear Through State’s Latino Community
- Teen Sentenced for Killing Spanish Teacher
- Man Arrested and Charged in Death of Jewish Protester in California After Confrontation Over Israel-Hamas War
- Ferry Sinks in Bahamas Forcing Passengers Into the Ocean
- Elon Musk Agrees with Antisemitic X Post That Claims Jews Push Hatred Against White people
The house is not just derelict, it’s on fire. It’s ablaze. Whichever number alarms is the highest on “whatever-alarm fire,” it’s that one.
And this is just one page. Of one site. At one brief moment of one brief day. What’s worse, the tragic shit or the inane shit? It’s a close call:
- Zahara Jolie-Pitt Joins AKA Sorority at Spelman. Here’s Why That’s Important
- Travis Kelce Releases New Christmas jingle
- Oprah’s 2023 Gift Guide is Here
- Amazon Just Made One of the Best Affordable Vacuums Even Cheaper
- What to Make of Megan Fox’s Poetry
- Beckinsale Attends DiCaprio’s Birthday in a Party Dress With a Familiar Blue Gemstone
And you wonder why the baby is crying? Christ, it’s a miracle he didn’t hang himself with his umbilical cord.
But here’s what I meant above by not looking hard enough.
Because here’s the thing you discover as you keep looking…
- Trump Holds Lead in NH GOP Primary As Haley Moves Up to Second
- Senator Wants to Make Americans Fight Again
- Former Marine Held NYC Subway Performer in Chokehold Even After Man ‘Ceased All Purposeful Movement,’ Court Filing Says
… and you reach a point…
- Atlantic Hurricane Season Isn’t Over Yet As Trouble Looms in the Caribbean
… where it seems you can’t go on…
- US Ambassador to Hungary: ‘Democracies Are Actually Under Attack’
… but there, at the very end, just past the headline that reminds you that the world is a miserable, hopeless hellhole…
- The Raid on Al-Shifa Hospital
…. there is one final headline.
And this is it, I shit you not:
- Why Are Depression Rates On the Rise?
And that, folks, is fucking hilarious.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m beginning to wonder if pessimism isn’t the result of some determinedly tragic worldview. Perhaps it’s just a lazy worldview. Because, yeah, the house is on fire, but there’s a realtor beside it, with a fake tan and a fake smile, saying, “Yes, but it’s close to churches and synagogues,” and he doesn’t know it but behind him, the house has exploded and taken his fucking BMW with it.
And that’s funny. Even if everything else sucks - the asshole’s car is on fire.
It doesn’t make it even.
But it helps.
What I’m boldly suggesting here is that maybe pessimism isn’t a way of looking at the world, but a way of not looking at the world. It isn’t wrong, it isn’t looking to find the miserable. It just isn’t looking to find the humor - gallows, dark, black or adolescent.
Which brings me to Marxism.
To quote Schopenhauer, “Shit’s fucked.” But this is Schopenhauer:
If you’d never heard of him, or read his books, and you walked into a Starbucks and saw him sitting in the corner, would you want to know his view of the world? Would you want to hear his hot take on mankind? Admittedly going over to anyone in a Starbuck’s these days is a risky proposition, but if I had to choose someone to inquire as to the secret of life, it would likely be this guy, wayyyyy at the opposite end of the coffeeshop, keeping well away from Arthur:
Groucho Marx is a hero of mine – here’s a review of The Letters of Groucho Marx I did for NPR’s All Things Considered some years ago – because Groucho adamantly refused to take life seriously. He had no patience for what you held sacred, less for your veil of tears. There was no subject he wouldn’t mock. There was always something funny to be done. “Nothing to be done,” begins Waiting for Godot. But Groucho (and Beckett) knew there was:
Laugh.
No matter what.
(Godot ends with Estragon taking off the rope that holds his pants up in order to hang himself with it; his pants fall down; the rope breaks; curtain).
I have a tattoo of Groucho Marx on my left arm. Above him is a red angel’s halo; beneath him is the word MARXIST. It’s a reminder to me, when I write, when I go through life, to look harder. To ask myself, when it all seems Schopenhauer, “WWGD?”
Tom Lehrer, asked why he stopped writing satirical songs, said that “it all just stopped being funny.”
Maybe. Or maybe he just got tired of looking for it. Because it’s hard. Misery is easy.
Soren Kierkegaard:
I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. “Will you,” said Mercury, “have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing.” For a moment, I was at a loss. The I addressed myself to the gods as follows: “Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side.”
Soren was right, for the most part. But you don’t get the laugh by wishing. You get it by looking. You need to do the work. To look. To find. To laugh. So you know what, Kid? Cry. Scream your bald-ass little head off. Because you just got here, and I know, it looks pretty bad. Stay away from the news, Buddy.
But we adults - we have to look. We have to dig all the way through to the bottom, through the miseries and tragedies and wars and rapes and injustice, until we find, at the very bottom, right after “Raid on Al-Shifa Hospital,” the joke:
Why Are Depression Rates On The Rise?
Below is a link to the PDF of the exact CNN page from which these headlines were taken, the joke highlighted (p17 of 25). Print it, fold it up, keep it with you. And when you lay back that one day, close your eyes and prepare to take your final breath, hand it to your children as proof.
“That it’s awful?” you ask.
“That it’s hopeless?”
No.
That sometimes, if you look hard enough, it’s funny.
Yours in the Fetal Position,
S.
Karl and Groucho are the opposite ends of the Great Happiness Continuum, with Karl on the far left side (see what I did there?) and Groucho on the comfortable center right side.
Karl’s greatest contribution to humanity was on March 14th,1883, when he died. Due to his infamous personal hygiene during his lifetime, it is said that he smelled better after March 14. His life work resulted in the deaths of more than 160 million people, including two daughters and a son-in-law who committed suicide by taking arsenic, probably to get away from Karl.
Groucho’s greatest contribution to humanity was every time he said something. He smelled like cigar smoke, which many people enjoy. His life work resulted in at least 160 million people almost laughing themselves to death. They were all happy and did not need arsenic.
I prefer the Grouch side of the continuum. Even with all the cigar smoke, it smells better there.
I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
—Groucho Marx