As Mark Twain put it, against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand—not even a man who stands as though he’s trying to keep his trousers from falling down while protecting what appears to be a small, endangered bird nesting atop his head.
*”The human race has only one truly effective weapon—and that is laughter.”* — Mark Twain
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but a well-aimed joke can be mightier than both. As Mark Twain put it, against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand—not even a man who stands as though he’s trying to keep his trousers from falling down while protecting what appears to be a small, endangered bird nesting atop his head.
Nowhere is the power of the joke clearer than in Donald J. Trump—a man so terrified of mockery he’s essentially declared satire a form of terrorism. It’s like watching someone try to arrest the wind for messing up their hair, which, given the architectural marvel we’re dealing with, might actually be his next executive order.
I’m no politician—just an observer equipped with the standard Australian issue: a nonsense detector. We’ve always had a knack for spotting humbug. It comes from generations of watching powerful people take themselves too seriously while the rest of us wonder if they’ve checked a mirror lately.
Charlie Chaplin knew this. He didn’t need an army to take down Hitler; he just slapped on a toothbrush moustache and waddled like a demented duck. Sometimes truth is best delivered with a pie in the face—or in Trump’s case, with the dawning realization that your nemesis acts like he’s auditioning for Best Trump Impersonation.
Is it 4D chess? Please. Trump has become his own best satirist. You can’t parody a man who speaks like a mistranslated instruction manual written by someone mid-breakdown. Listen to him for five minutes: sentences start strong, stumble, forget where they’re headed, detour through his uncle’s academic résumé, and come to rest on “you know what I mean.” No—we don’t.
As George Carlin might have said: listening to him is like watching somebody try to parallel park a school bus while having a stroke. Everything is “tremendous.” TREMENDOUS! The Pacific Ocean is tremendous. Your BLT is not. Your BLT is adequate at best.
The superlatives are endless. Everything’s “the greatest, the best, the most incredible thing anyone’s ever seen.” Really? Was your infrastructure plan better than fire? “This is the most beautiful executive order, maybe ever.” Maybe? Either it is or it isn’t—you supposedly signed it.
And always, the rambling refrain: “Believe me.” As though belief alone could patch the holes in the thought. That’s not persuasion—it’s a superstition.
This is why tyrants fear comedians. Not because we’re dangerous revolutionaries, but because we reveal the obvious: the emperor’s new clothes look like they were designed by someone who’s never actually seen a human body. Trump’s great fear isn’t that he holds power—it’s that he’s laughable while doing it. He’s a fake tan wearing a man, a fragile buffoon convinced everyone else is the problem.
In Australia, we’ve always believed that if you can’t laugh at the people in charge, they probably shouldn’t be in charge. It’s our built-in democratic safety valve. Chaplin showed us tyrants are, at heart, ridiculous. Nothing terrifies them more than being seen not as giants but as Walter Mittys with delusions propped up by puppet masters.
So here’s my modest proposal: if you don’t want to be mocked, don’t behave like a cartoon villain who’s just discovered his pants are on backwards.
Laugh. Meme. Tweet. Joke. Mockery is the one weapon tyrants can’t confiscate, and the harder they try, the more people laugh—usually at them. In the age of the internet, everyone’s a court jester with a smartphone, and a single clever crack can pierce a dictator’s armor more effectively than an army.
So laugh loud, laugh hard. Because tyrants don’t collapse under cannon fire—they collapse under the punchline. A bullet might martyr them, but a joke turns them into clowns. And nobody follows a clown into battle unless it’s the circus and the tickets are free.
That isn’t terrorism. That’s democracy with a sense of humor. And like Twain said of all true things, it begins with a laugh. In the end, nothing topples a fraud faster than being forced to endure the sound of his own joke—told better by everyone else.
Urban Wronski Writes 
David provides a critical response in order to simulate discussion and debate:
David argues that sustained mockery could laugh Trump off the political stage, channelling Charlie Chaplin’s anti-Hitler satire as a model for democratic resistance. It’s a seductive idea—that ridicule might succeed where conventional politics has failed. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Trump isn’t Hitler, 2025 isn’t 1940, and the joke, increasingly, is on us.
Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension this week proves the point. When Disney yanked “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the host linked a recent killing to MAGA rhetoric, Trump didn’t just celebrate—he openly mused about pulling broadcast licenses from networks that oppose him. The message was crystal clear: make fun of me, lose your platform.
This isn’t about declaring “comedy terrorism” (the original piece’s hyperbolic interpretation). It’s something more insidious: weaponising corporate cowardice and regulatory threats to create a chilling effect. Why ban comedy when you can simply make it too expensive and risky to produce?
The Chaplin comparison, while emotionally satisfying, misses crucial context. Chaplin made “The Great Dictator” when Hitler was a distant foreign threat to American audiences. Trump is the sitting president with actual power over broadcast licenses, tax codes, and regulatory enforcement. Disney’s capitulation to Trump shows how quickly corporate comedy dies when faced with potential billion-dollar consequences.
More problematically, the “laugh them off stage” strategy fundamentally misunderstands Trump’s relationship with mockery. He doesn’t fear ridicule—he feeds on it. Every late-night roasting, every viral meme, every #Resistance tweet generates the outrage that keeps him at the centre of every conversation. As South Park creators have learned, satirising Trump often just amplifies his cultural dominance.
The harsh reality is that comedy’s power as democratic resistance has always been overstated. Comedians didn’t stop Nixon, Reagan, or Bush. They didn’t prevent Trump’s first victory, and four years of SNL sketches didn’t keep him out of office in 2024. What comedy does brilliantly is make the comfortable feel clever about their powerlessness.
This isn’t to dismiss satire’s value entirely. Jon Stewart’s work on “The Daily Show,” for instance, has been genuinely important in educating audiences about political processes. But there’s a crucial difference between comedy that informs civic engagement and comedy that substitutes for it.
Right now, while comedians trade Trump impressions, his administration is systematically dismantling press freedoms. Corporate media is preemptively self-censoring. Independent journalists face legal threats. The infrastructure of democratic accountability is being quietly demolished while we debate whether his tan is real.
The most dangerous aspect of the “comedy as resistance” narrative is how it absolves us of harder work. Sharing memes feels like activism. Watching Trevor Noah feels like fighting fascism. But democracy isn’t saved by punchlines—it’s preserved through voting, organising, court challenges, and the exhausting work of civic participation.
Trump understands this perfectly. While his critics craft clever tweets, he reshapes the judiciary, captures regulatory agencies, and intimidates corporate media into compliance. He’s not threatened by being made fun of—he’s threatened by being made irrelevant through actual political organising.
If we’re serious about resistance, we need less Chaplin and more Cronkite. Less mocking his speech patterns and more documenting policy impacts. Less viral content and more voter registration. Less time crafting the perfect satirical takedown and more time doing the unglamorous work of democracy.
The uncomfortable truth is that fascism rarely arrives with jackboots and dramatic speeches—it seeps in through corporate boardrooms making “business decisions” to avoid regulatory headaches. It arrives when comedy becomes more profitable than courage, when laughing at power becomes a substitute for challenging it.
Kimmel’s suspension should be a wake-up call. The joke isn’t that Trump fears comedy—it’s that comedy fears Trump. And while we’re still laughing, he’s winning.
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Good one, David. As for 4D chess, he’s engaged in that game with the lives of American citizens. Only problem with that is a large percentage of the population don’t realise it.
The biggest American problem is their failure to realise that one size does not fit all.
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Trump’s administration (and the movement around him) operates in a way that is largely unaccountable, shielded by dark money, and hugely corrosive to democratic institutions.
Trump’s political machine is heavily bankrolled by opaque networks of PACs and 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups that can funnel unlimited funds without disclosing donors. Groups like Project 2025’s backers (Heritage Foundation, Leonard Leo’s network, Koch-adjacent funds) operate as ideological laundromats — turning billionaire money into policy agendas.
This funding mechanism shields the true power players from scrutiny, while giving Trump plausible deniability.
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