Swamp Rabbit and I were debating the usefulness of satire in a country whose democratic traditions are being subverted by authoritarian forces. Will poking fun at those forces help? Can satirists wake sane Americans to the fact that the norms they took for granted – rule of law, free speech, free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power, etc. – are being flushed away by a deranged president and his fanatically loyal underlings?

Swamp Rabbit rolled his bloodshot eyes. “What you mean by waking and poking fun? Fascists got no sense of humor. They don’t take kindly to being poked.”

“I’m talking about waking the public, not the fascists,” I said. “Satire only works if it’s caustic and ridiculous enough to spark a backlash against the powers that be. It has to be absurd but fundamentally true. It doesn’t just poke, it punctures. I’m working on a good satire right now.”

I told him I was writing a skit that opens with a secretary of defense – secretary of war, he calls himself – telling hundreds of generals and admirals at a military base that they’d better get with the program. No more “beardos” or queers. No “fat generals or admirals.” No more foreign wars, just wars against American cities. The secretary tries to talk tough like George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove — a great satire — but he seems to be nothing more than a pompous blowhard in a sharp suit. Then the draft-dodging president appears – his nickname is Bone Spurs – and promises to bring back battleships and use American cities as “training grounds” for the military. Afterwards the generals and admirals file out and one of them says, “I can’t believe I had to travel six thousand miles to hear that bullshit.”

At first Swamp Rabbit didn’t critique my skit idea. “I know it sounds farfetched,” I said, “but do you think it might get people fired up enough to start a backlash?”

He frowned and opened a cold beer. “The peeps will think it sounds like that skit about Pete Hegseth on Saturday Night Live last week. It didn’t fire them up. They laughed a little and then they went to sleep.”

I must have looked disappointed. He said, “Face it, Odd Man. Satire ain’t worth shit these days. Reality will upstage it every time.”