When our family gets together these days, carefully keeping our distance, we spend more time laughing than we have in past years, and it feels very good. We seem to be letting each other know how grateful and privileged we feel to be together in this angry, fearful time. Maybe we’re also telling each other we’re really not afraid. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this kind of laughter is common now for friends and families not torn by grief and able to get together.
Comedians and cartoonists are finding endless grist for their mills too. Their late-night jokes and cartoons invite us to laugh at our president and the people around him. But some of their humor seems to suggest anyone who supports President Donald Trump deserves our contempt. And maybe our laughter sometimes risks whistling in a darkening storm when we need to get serious about it. Laughter seems to say we’re not afraid — angry maybe, but definitely not afraid.
The truth is, many of us are afraid. We’re just not sharing it. Republican leaders often support Trump in public while privately admitting his intemperate and frequently dishonest tweets worry them a lot. And those of us who oppose Trump often express our anger but keep our fear close to the vest. It’s as though we are controlled by the Facebook options for responding to posts. We have emojis for Like, Love, Care, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry, but there’s no Facebook shorthand for Fear.
Maybe, instead of covering up our fear with laughter, we should talk with each other about how to change the reality that causes it.
Columnist Thomas B. Edsall got me thinking about why it might be important to acknowledge our fear. His New York Times piece of May 13, “Trump Is Staking Out His Own Universe of ‘Alternative Facts’ ” makes use of the work of political scientist Steven Webster, who says the difference between anger and anxiety explains why Trump’s supporters tend to disregard his many documented lies and distortions.
“When people are angry,” Webster says, “they tend to mentally retreat and dig in on things that they know and believe to be true.” But anxiety, Webster claims, has a very different effect: “When people are anxious they tend to seek out new information. Anxiety rouses people from a sort of ‘autopilot’ mode and causes them to re-evaluate their beliefs.”
Laughing and whistling in the dark are ways of resisting fear, and they work differently. If you walk into a room where someone sits alone laughing aloud for no apparent reason — no smartphone or TV to account for their amusement — you’re likely to think they’re unhinged. Normal laughter is a social act. But a lonesome whistler makes good sense. Whistling to pass the time when you’re alone, whether or not you’re in the dark, is an act that was probably pretty common before we had smartphones to fight the boredom most of us fear.
A seemingly genuine laugh, or a well-timed witticism, can provide convincing evidence that you’re not afraid. A famous example in Shakespeare occurs in the first act of Othello, when Iago tries to get Othello to fight Brabantio and his men, who are approaching the African general with swords drawn. But Othello says: “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,” and his amused control turns out to be disarming.
Still, whistling or laughing in the face of danger can be risky if there are good reasons to be afraid and you convince yourself there aren’t. Our president has handled the threat of COVID-19 like a ship’s commander approaching a darkening storm, laughing or whistling and then ignoring important advice he needs to prepare for the battering his ship is about to take.
As we move into months of political campaigns, from local to national, anger could turn out to be the dominant emotion. We can be sure the Trump campaign will try to tap into the anger already boiling in parts of the electorate, and Trump himself will do his best to stir up more with his tweets. For those of us in the opposition, it will be tempting to respond in kind, sometimes with contemptuous laughter.
If Donald Trump stomps around the platform in a debate with Joe Biden, as he did with Hillary Clinton, it could make sense for Biden to flash his fine grin, maybe even chuckle aloud, and tell the moderator his opponent might require an early bathroom break. But as the rest of us explain to Republican friends why it will be especially difficult to support candidates in their party this year, we should set laughter aside and focus on our fear.
We should probably say openly that what Trump and his party are doing to our democracy makes us afraid and confess that we need to understand why they’re not frightened too.
Best to say this without even the hint of a chuckle.
Bill Nichols lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at Nichols@Denison.edu.