Laughter for Everyone

(This essay was written in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh assault scandal)

The writer Michael Oakeshott wrote that to be a conservative is “to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” I love that last part: "to prefer... present laughter to utopian bliss."

In many ways, I’m really taken by this temperament. I didn’t like when my local 7-Eleven shut down this month. I feel most comfortable with folks from my hometown and folks who remind me of my hometown. I can’t stand political music, because I want the music I listen to to be about those good things in life that last beyond the latest, passing cause. I like having an orderly routine and living in a quiet neighborhood. I want to speak freely when I’m at work or at home or out for drinks. Deep down, present laughter with my friends fills me up way, way more than prospective projects with my comrades. (In fact, the only way projects are bearable to me is if there’s a whole lot of laughter surrounding them.)

I share this all to say that, in many ways, I get it. I get why someone might look at the TV and wonder why the football game’s being interrupted by politics. I get why you might see a student on some campus wearing some obscene t-shirt and think “is that really necessary?” I get why you might see two folks yelling at a senator in an elevator and think “this is very unpleasant.” To be honest, I even get why hearing a public opinion about what you talk about or take part in with your friends or coworkers or classmates in the intimacy of your locker rooms or cubicles or house parties might feel like an invasion of privacy.

Can’t football be football? Can’t politics be orderly? Can’t boys be boys? I’ve muttered questions like these to myself, too: Can’t we give a pass to Louis CK, for my sake? Can’t we hold my next event in the perfect venue I just found, rather than the less-than-perfect wheelchair-accessible venue? Can’t my friends and I keep having that sick inside joke that we love?

Inside the moments when I ask these questions to myself, I really, really want the answer to be yes. I want the familiar routine. I want the convenient option. I want the nearby camaraderie. I want the present laughter.

But the thing I have to keep reminding myself in these moments is that there are other people in the world besides myself and my friends. And those other people in the world are not that different from me — they want all those same conservative joys that Oakeshott talks about. They eventually want to be able to watch their favorite games on TV, undisturbed, too. They eventually want to have politics be a reasoned dialogue, rather than a chaotic mess, too. They eventually want to do what they want to do at work, be who they want to be at home, and say what they want to say while out drinking, too. They too eventually want to be able to laugh again with their friends at the next house party.

And so when one of those other people in the world is interrupting something leisurely with politics or shocking some orderly political process into listening or invading the intimacy of the locker room or the cubicle or the house party to yell "stop!", I have to remind myself that they might be doing so because whatever is happening there is standing in the way of them and their friends receiving the same everyday delights and conveniences and serenities that I and my friends are privileged to have received already.

I have to remind myself that they are joining a heritage of interruptions and invasions that built much of the peace we have today. When Benjamin Lay showed up to Quaker meetings in the 1700s and spilled blood on the floor to protest slavery, many saw it as an unnecessary infusion of politics into a sacred space. When the Suffragettes fought to vote, many wrote that it would upset the home by eroding men's role as head of household. When the Little Rock Nine integrated their high school, many experienced it as a foreign invasion of their local community. When Catherine MacKinnon made the case that workplace sexual harassment was an act of discrimination, many thought she didn't understand the "normal antics" of their intimate office cultures.

The Benjamin Lays and the Suffragettes and the Little Rock Nines and the Catherine MacKinnons and the Anita Hills and the Christine Fords and the countless folks I've seen in person calling out mansplaining or slutshaming or exoticizing or "no homo" aren't the radical utopians. They're just other people in the world demanding to have their practical experience be taken into account when the next person like me chooses what to pay attention to, what to vote for, and what to say or do in the locker room or the cubicle or the next house party.

The only impractical utopians in situations like these are the people who think that they and their friends can do whatever they want, all the time, without all the people who they hurt along the way getting upset.

There's nothing more conservative than virtuous limits: acknowledging that, alas, though we may really want to answer "Can't football be football? Can't politics be orderly? Can't boys be boys?" with an easy yes, we have to sometimes answer with a responsible no; acknowledging that, alas, we may have to adhere to some cultural norms so that everyone can feel comfortable; acknowledging that, alas, we can't have our basic impulses of lust and anger and fear govern the way we act in the world.

Put another way, we all want to get back to present laughter. Perhaps that's the whole goal of politics. But not just laughter for the guys who ping-pong down the stairs giggling after severely hurting someone at a house party. Not just laughter for the Senate good old boys yucking it up in the cloakroom after the hearing. Not just laughter for me and my friends. But laughter for everyone.