When Ridicule Isn't Enough

Over twenty years ago a friend did me a huge favor. In response to some random comment of mine, he said, "Good God, you certainly do have a keen sense of the absurd!"

Well, sure. After all, I'd been a research mathematician. Research mathematicians do not generally do their research using beakers, bunsen burners, oscilloscopes, or tweezers. They do it using proofs, half the time by the kind called Reduction To Absurdity, and it's really an advantage when trying to reduce a thing to absurdity to be gifted at knowing when you've done it.

[Above right: Euclid at the moment he discovers a contradiction to "equals to equals are equals." Minutes later he invented the first shredder.]

Still, it was quite a help to me to know that my friend could see the gift even in ordinary conversation. No wonder people leave when I enter rooms! That and my galling habitual resort to irony. And the garlic breath. And the intermittent rants, sulks, and giggles.

Knowing of a serious failing, such as oversensitivity to the absurd, you can deal with it. You can seek professional help. Also, drugs such as Paxil, Zyprexa, and Ethanol, are known to blunt the sensitivity. Studies have shown that drunks without partners suffer 50% less sharp awareness of the absurd, on average, compared to sober people in long-term relationships.

Sometimes the cures are worse than the disease. For example, Paxil undid 95% of my puberty, leaving only the beard. An alternative is to exploit your failing creatively. You may make mock, for instance.

[Left: Ferdinand Von Lindemann proved Pi is worse than irrational, it's even transcendental. Is that absurd or what?]

It turns out that there is a never ending stream of the absurd that I can use to make mock. I shall illustrate with one sweet example.

It is HR 1955/ S 1959, also known as the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007." This passed in the US House in October, after a suspension of the rules prevented debate, by a 405-6 vote, with 23 abstentions. It is likely to be considered by the Senate any day now, as soon as it gets out of committee. The law would create a commission of 10 paid Executive and Congressional appointees, each of which would have, for 18 months, independent power of subpoena to gather evidence in separate hearings throughout the country and compel testimonies under oath, in order to define "homegrown terrorism." The law itself doesn't define terrorism but says it includes planning or threatening to use "force" (not violence!) and what it calls "violent radicalization," consisting of the promotion of any "extremist belief system." (Promotions aren't violence!)

After subjecting the country to as many as ten simultaneous legal processes designed to root out all evidence of Americans promoting beliefs that any bozo on these fake courts deems extremist, such as Scientology, abortion rights, the belief that only Allah is God and Muhammed is His Prophet, or that fluoridation is a Communist plot, then the law would establish a "Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States" which would be a kind of government-run think-tank for coming up with cool new ways to battle all these evil promoters and forcifiers.

Force without violence is another name for political pressure. Force without violence includes the ballot box, initiatives and referenda, rallies, demonstrations, and boycotts. The law invites a commission to find out who, outside the government, is pushing political agendas by nonviolent means and class them as terrorists. The law as passed by the House explicitly mentions the use of the internet by political groups as a "weapon" for domestic radicalization.

The internet, of course, is purely a tool of communication. So, if the internet can be classed as a weapon, so can writing, talking, and the use of sign language. Gestures can be weapons of domestic radicalization. Planning to use a gesture as a weapon of domestic radicalization, as I am doing right now, in my head, would be subject to investigation by the commission.

Sometime in the next 18 months I may be compelled to admit under oath that I thought to raise a finger against my government.

[Below: Dangerous domestic radicals have been among us for too long.]