There’s a greeting card kiosk across from the counter at work that I’ve had to see a lot of, and there’s one card in particular that’s beginning to bother me. (Well, two actually, but I don’t really want to write about a card that prominently features a crudely drawn asshole at the moment.) This card features a grinning picture of President George W. Bush saying something about not wanting to forget your Birthday. Then one opens the card, and discovers that, to the aforementioned end, the President is going to monitor all phone calls and emails. Ha!

Wait.

I have no qualms about making fun of terrible people and situations both. Dark comedy and satire is a good way to deflate those who would try to assert undue privileges, but there’s a saturation point wherein it becomes counterproductive, and maybe even a little dangerous. I’m not talking about satire, which itself I believe to be necessary for a healthy society and government. Satire reflects and criticizes the world in a way which, while amusing, is also deadly serious. What I’m unnerved by is that joking about the current administration has become de rigeur, a thing done by reflex because it’s what must be done to fit in.

If the erosion of civil liberties and privacy is fit for a carelessly produced and bought greeting card, then it follows that society must be comfortable enough with the said issue to not care. Greeting cards are traditionally the blandest of the bland, reflecting the zeitgeist of a boringly bleak suburbia. Satire and comedy are still valuable tools for making sense of the world, for criticizing and understanding and changing it, all. When that comedic criticism has been boiled down to a pithy reference alongside a Garfield card and a belated birthday card with a turtle on it – that is when meaning has been lost, when the outrages legion are just accepted as part of the background cultural static and written off as just the way things are.

We’re inoculating ourselves. People are joking about the President in the same way they would about a mother-in-law, laughing about the situation and shrugging shoulders because hey, what can you do, you know?