How the crazies get away with more

My paternal grandfather, who died just before I started this blog almost nine years ago, had a vast store of proverbs. Two I remember and have tried to live by: “Never underestimate the value of being the only sober person in the room” and “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” (I may have even dropped the latter in a department meeting this week.)

A strange coincidental parallel from this week that brought those to mind:

First, on Substack, cartoonist Owen Cyclops, whose work has inspired ramblings here before, published a short essay on the 1970s Illuminatus! trilogy. I am mostly familiar with these books for first presenting a kind of grand theory-of-everything conspiracy narrative, a major node the present-day conspiracist worldview has grown out of, but Owen notes three interesting but overlooked “freak concepts.”

The first—and I’m not sure how it fits into Illuminatus! since I haven’t read it—concerns one of my favorite historical weirdos, Emperor Norton I. Emperor Norton was a failed businessman turned eccentric who declared himself Emperor of the United States (and later Protector of Mexico) and benevolently “ruled” San Francisco for a few decades. He published imperial proclamations through a local black newspaper (once banning the use of “Frisco” as a nickname for the city) and issued his own currency. He was so odd and beloved that the locals played along and his money was honored in a lot of establishments.

Owen compares Norton and his Norton bucks to a group of contemporary anarchists in Boston who tried the same thing. They were, after the manner of so many 19th-century radicals, utterly serious people, and were arrested the moment they started trying to use their own currency. Owen:

The point of this dichotomy is that Emperor Norton actually did the exact plan that anarchists on the other side of the country also attempted and failed—but he got away with it, specifically because no one took him seriously.

The anarchists presented themselves as serious, and thus were treated seriously. Emperor Norton was viewed as non-serious, and therefore was able to accomplish far more than his serious counterparts.

Second, YouTuber Feral Historian, in the second part of a new series on Planet of the Apes—Pierre Boulle’s novel and various adaptations—notes the tension in the first movie between the apes’ consensus dogma and the challenge Charlton Heston’s Taylor poses to it: a challenge that provokes suppression by the authorities. In a wry aside, referring to the charges brought against ape scientists Zira and Cornelius, he says they are

nonsensical, but state accusations against dissidents often are. . . . All that is required is a story that lets it be wrapped up and disposed of. At least when it comes to polite company. The crazies can say whatever they want, that’s why they’re positioned as crazies. Sometimes it’s why we self-position as crazies. You can get away with more that way.

Lear’s fool comes to mind. Perhaps there is still a place for such—or, better, as long as there is a place, there is hope. A comfort to those of us who have always used humor as a shield, and encouragement to those of us not taken seriously. Never underestimate the value of being the only person in the room with a sense of humor.

And to conclude with another proverb: “The truth is often spoken in jest.”