By Benners-Fox Vail
Satire is without question a misunderstood art. It employs Irony as it’s bulwark and requires a sense of humor. It is often mistaken as Sarcasm, although a close ‘cousin.’
Satire requires Knowledge, Erudition and boldness and is usually dismissed as “yellow” journalism by its targets. And yet without it, we are left with the mundane status quo media, offered for popular consumption and designed as a disingenuous panacea for an already satiated mob.
What the f%$k was that?!
Satire is Truth not denied but elevated to an Art.
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Other than Voltaire, two of my favorite Satirists are Ambrose Bierce and the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
Here are some my favorite quotes from these monsters of Satire:
2009
My Logic
By Tulse Luper
If it weren’t for my logic, if it weren’t for my critical thinking, my emotions would takeover. My emotions would destroy me. These emotions would cause me to be too human… they would cause me to be weak and diluted. So I destroyed my emotions in the interest of survival.
You see, without my critical thinking, without my skepticism, I would love unconditionally…I would except others without knowing; I think they call that faith or perhaps belief. I would except many things on faith had I not relied on reason and I would have become zealous in my pursuit of compassion and empathy. But I just knew that without my logic, my heart would bleed out and I would die. So I did not assent to the faith that required belief without reason. Thus I do not have faith in you.
(I think I laughed when I heard the sacred poem…and then I broke the poem… and I broke the poet. And the reason I laughed when I did this, is because the poem broke me…(I always laugh when I am in pain)). -Enceladus under the Earth.
My memoir is now at last complete. My thoughts are scrubbed clean of the mire I’ve created with my beliefs…with the help of my others. My recollections are pure and free of dis-ease and blame. It took a long bit of time and clever action; the magician’s slight of hand known as reason… that I may at last claim as my own, my part in the game of destruction and survival we call life.
And I know I cannot survive without my killing something that is not me or does not profess allegiance to me.
Without my logic, I would easily cling to others and ask of them that they help me. But I’ve learned in the hardest ways, that they cannot help: their faith and reason is designed by them, to navigate their own course. And most times, what they plot as their course, will run counter to my own.
So it will be my logic and reason, my cold assent to the things I know to be true, justified by my reason, that gave me the will and power I need to survive, that will that informs me. It is my map writ larger than the earth, that usurps all others’ maps in that Borgesian way, thus I will decide what is best…what will last. And I will not accept your fate as anything other than an obstacle to mine.
It is at last very clear: all things are reduced to this: You believe, I suspect!
Hail Reason!
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