It’s a studies thing. Conservatives are unable to grasp irony or sarcasm. It’s one of the reasons Steven Colbert stopped his show. The people he was mocking were holding his character up as someone to aspire to.
What?! I didn’t know that
A lot of quintessentially American things are anti-American
“Born in the USA,” Bruce Springsteen in general, “Rambo,” Mark Twain, “Monopoly,” MTV, et cetera
The arc goes:
- US system is bullshit
- Someone points it out in an artistic work
- People love it and the thing they made gets popular
- System goes “hey we love that you’re buying this please do it more” and promotes it under a guise of it not being directed squarely at them, with some skillful edits
- Thing gets even more popular with more exposure, in its edited (backwards) form, to the point that the original is often semi-forgotten
Being against the bullshit is an American trait. Unfortunately, the bullshit has become more powerful than the against, hence all these problems we have now.
Never underestimate the ability of fascist and conservatives to misread media and to try to appropriate shit critiquing them into somehow something that glorifies them.
Mel Brooks got it right when he mocked nazis in ways that made them look so ridicules that they couldn’t appropriate his stuff for their purposes.
That’s probably because he fought in WW2, so he knows a thing or two about them.
