‘Lessons in Virtue and Geopolitics from a Puerto Rico Joke’

 

Leftists who normally couldn’t care less about personal morality are behaving as if Tony Hinchliffe’s joke at a Trump rally in NYC (about Puerto Rico being a ‘floating island of garbage’) was a grave sin.  Moon Griffon is right about these folks:  They have no sense of humor.  And they have no sense of humor because they have no humility.

Humble people don’t mind laughing at themselves, nor do they mind when others laugh at them.  In fact, they often invite others to have a laugh at their own expense.  Most Southerners are humble people.  It is one of our main character traits that have helped bring forth a continual line of great Southern comedians – from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet to Jerry Clower to Jeff Foxworthy.  We don’t mind making fun of ourselves, and the more folks we can entertain with those jokes, the more laughter we can evoke by tellin’ on ourselves, the more fun the whole experience is for us.

But pride leads in a starkly different direction.  The soaring sense of self-importance of these people completely obliterates any inclination toward humor in their souls.  They receive little joy from telling jokes, and they are badly offended if you poke fun at them in any way.  These are the kinds of people you typically run across in New England and in the rest of Yankeedom (Hillary Clinton is a good representative of them).

We recommend caution when it comes to CIA-connected National Review, but one of that magazine’s former writers, Jonah Goldberg, did once give a good piece of advice regarding humorless politicians – Beware of them; they are often dictators/tyrants in-waiting.

One joke about Puerto Rico thus sheds revealing light on the important dyad of humility and pride.  And upon those two opposites the future of Puerto Rico herself depends.

The island is one of a handful of far-flung island territories of the US that remain in a subordinate status to full-fledged States.  The others are American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands (‘Territories of the United States’, wikipedia.org).  Promises of Puerto Rican Statehood surface from time-to-time during federal elections, typically from Left-leaning politicians, as a way to increase their share of Spanish votes.  This is unfortunately her main value for the States:  a political football to throw around to drive up voter turnout.

Puerto Ricans deserve better.  They should be able to look ahead to a future which is not clouded by a vague, uncertain status in a union that rarely ever acknowledges their existence.

This is where pride and humility come into play.  It is pride that keeps the States from turning loose of territories like Puerto Rico, Samoa, etc.  ‘We have become the hegemon of the world, and we must remain in that position at all costs,’ say the expansionist hawks.  To grant independence to US territories would be a betrayal of American greatness for these folks because it would mean a diminution of American influence in the world.

But such global influence and control come at a high cost, a cost that more and more people in the States are unwilling to pay:

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The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/11/garlington-lessons-in-virtue-and-geopolitics-from-a-puerto-rico-joke/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!