We humans seethe with internal conflict. It’s how we operate. Contradictions characterize our everyday mental life. Consider just a few of the conflicts you might struggle with at any particular moment:
You hate your mother-in-law, but you show up at family dinner every month with a (fake) smile on your face.
You love your romantic partner, yet you (secretly) lust after women (men) at the gym.
You enjoy Pickle Ball while (silently) annoyed because your best friend plays better than you.
You diligently pay your income taxes but wince because of how much of the US budget goes towards building bombs.
You function well as an Amazon factory worker even though you despise Jeff Bezos for exploiting you.
How might these typical day-to-day conflicts relate to Disney/ABC putting Jimmy Kimmel on an indefinite leave of absence last week and then reinstating him a few days ago?
Because our internal worlds ARE political.
Since the time of Plato (375 BCE), political scientists have considered these two realms —the individual and the political — as running parallel to one another. In The Republic, he writes:
The state is the soul writ large.
Plato believed effective governance of a person or a society occurs when rationality* leads the way while spirit motivates and the appetites are managed. These ensure a harmonious balance between individual and societal desires. Along these same lines, tension between opposing forces in politics are necessary for effective governance.
In case you are among those understandably avoiding the news, ABC, owned by Disney, suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show last Wednesday night because he made these comments about the Charlie Kirk killing:
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
When Kimmel made the remarks, nothing had yet emerged about the assassin’s possible romantic involvement with a man transitioning into being a woman. Nothing was known about his motivation or his political affiliation. Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer, grew up in a Republican household in Utah.
In any event, we’re talking about remarks made by a comedian.
Just a few years earlier, Trump, himself a media personality, publicly ridiculed Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s then-82-year-old husband, after he was brutally attacked by a man wielding a hammer. At a state party convention of California Republicans, Trump promised to “stand up” to Nancy Pelosi “who ruined San Francisco.” With an unmistakably sarcastic tone, he added:
How’s her husband doing, anybody know?
How can Trump make such a brazen public remark, without a comic context, while Kimmel gets punished for making tamer remarks on an actual comedy show?
In the immediate wake of the Kimmel cancellation, Trump proposed that TV networks airing any critical commentary of him lose their Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licenses. On Air Force One last Thursday, Trump said:
All they do is hit Trump. They're licensed. They're not allowed to do that.
But of course they are. Dissension is always a part of mature political discussions.
Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC, also reacted negatively to Kimmel’s remarks. Talking about the situation on Fox News last Wednesday, Carr said broadcasters with FCC licenses have:
A unique obligation to operate in the public interest.
He believed that the FCC had:
walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation.
The obligation to which he refers surrounds problems like ensuring that hardcore pornography or Russian propaganda does not appear on prime-time television shows. It has no obligation to regulate comedy. Carr threatened to “take action” against Disney and ABC because of Kimmel’s comments. In a sign of how media corporations already bow to Trump, ABC executives quickly cancelled Kimmel’s show—before even hearing from Carr.
They apparently changed their mind, just two days ago, partially due to pushback by members of the Republican party. US Senator Rand Paul said threats by the FCC were “absolutely inappropriate.” Ted Cruz compared Carr’s threats to mobster behavior, adding:
That’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.'
The cancellation, despite ABC reversing it, represents another serious blow to free speech in America. Public discussion has already been stultified. Last year, Trump sued ABC and its host George Stephanopoulos for using the word “rape” instead of “sexual abuse” when referring to E. Jean Carroll’s successful lawsuit against Trump. (She was awarded nearly $100 million in damages). ABC settled for $15 million. CBS agreed to pay Trump $16 million for allegedly editing an interview with Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes. These actions, similar to the subjugating behavior of major universities and law firms threatened by Trump, show a pathetic pattern of submission.
From now on, it appears, opinion piece writers, comedians, television commentators, or other media personalities must present only approval of Trump. Autocrats typically demand such adoration. They strive to dampen, if not extinguish, criticism of any type—even if done through humor.
These political inhibitions psychologically harm citizens. For example, they become wary of using humor. Anna Freud (1936) famously identified humor as one of the five “adaptive” defense mechanisms. The other ones are suppression, anticipation, rationalization, and sublimation. If annoyed at a friend, for example, you might joke about it, suppress it, anticipate how you might discuss it, rationalize the feeling away, or channel the emotion into a productive activity.
Denying a populace the capacity to laugh limits their capacity to cope. Making fun of political figures, laughing at others, or laughing at yourself is an excellent way to diffuse tension. Suppressing humor oppresses the people. Who would have dared to laugh at Hitler? Should you laugh at Putin,** Kim Jong Un, or Viktor Orbán, you’ll end up in jail. You might get tortured; you might even get executed.
Not funny at all.
Side point:
The popular Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (2008) notes that, during the Stalinist era in Russia, not only was it prohibited to criticize Stalin, but it was also prohibited to announce the prohibition. If someone shouted at a critic of Stalin:
Are you crazy? Don’t you know you’re not allowed to do this?
They’d end up in the Gulag even faster than the open critic of Stalin.
Funny. Uh oh, watch out. Are you even daring to laugh?
Closely related to limiting our capacity for laughter, repressing humor creates paranoia. Because the personal overlaps with the political, as Plato noted, citizens begin to fear having even private, negative thoughts about a dictatorial leader—whether satirical or serious. Stultifying public discussion instills fear.
Surprisingly, government repression of humor can have positive effects. Suppressing any negative emotion builds up internal tension. The resultant subterranean agitation might erupt in a politically positive way. Perhaps it could make a difference, say, in the midterms next year. On the other hand, it might create more of the depression rising to pandemic proportions these days.
Meanwhile, Trump’s attacks against the media continue apace. He operates the government like it’s a real estate empire or, better, an organized crime enterprise (as Cruz also observed). No one pokes fun at the “boss.” Though it has already been dropped, Trump recently sued the New York Times for what he considers biased coverage.*** He has sued the Wall Street Journal for (accurately) reporting Trump’s birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein. The mere possibility of Trump abusing personal defamation law—coupled with Trump’s other powers of retribution—already chills media criticism of him.
On a psychological basis, then, we are witnessing the loss of the American public’s capacity to cope through humor. Many will begin to feel paranoid about what they say or write publicly; they might feel fearful of even what they think. And, finally, even if the repression brings the possibility of positive change, the window for any action is rather quickly closing.
To make matters worse, Trump hardly holds back when threatening his perceived enemies. At Kirk’s memorial in Arizona, he spoke of Charlie Kirk’s tendency to hold no ill will towards his opponents. Trump proudly proclaimed his disagreement, stating:
I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.
Where is mature leadership in America? In an opinion piece in The Guardian, former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich (2025) laments the absence of reactions to Trump’s behavior, particularly among politicians. He writes:
The disappearance of America’s leadership class at a time like this means that the rest of us have to be leaders. You must be a leader.
Indeed, we Americans who care about democracy must take whatever political action we can before Trump succeeds in taking complete control of the media and becomes still more of an autocrat. A healthy society needs dissent as does the healthy psyche. If Trump succeeds in crushing political disagreements, then dissent of any type will be brutally crushed—just like occurs in the countries run by the dictators he admires.
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*We need plenty of space for the “irrational,” for intuition and spirit, but Plato, and Kant (1788) after him, certainly made sound points regarding the import of reason.
**Shortly after the height-anxious, 5’6” Putin became Russia’s dictator in 2000, the independent Russian television station NTV aired an episode of the political satire show Kukly (puppets) that mocked him. One episode depicted Putin as "Little Zaches," a wicked, malevolent gnome. Shortly thereafter, the state-owned energy company Gazprom took over NTV and it ended the show. Such action taken by Putin ended public criticism of him, even of a humorous nature. The parallels with Trump’s behavior are obvious.
***Speaking of humor, a federal judge in Florida dismissed Trump's $15 billion defamation lawsuit because the 85-page complaint was "improper and impermissible." Such litigation requires a “short and plain statement” of the claim. The Court described the 85-page filing as "tedious and burdensome."
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References
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. London: Routledge.
Kant, I. (1788). The Critique of Practical Reason [Kritik der Praktischen Vernuft]. Trans. M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plato (375 BCE/2007). The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. New York: Penguin.
Reich, R. (2025). America’s leadership class is failing us. It’s up to you and me to defend democracy. The Guardian. Published September 22, 2025.
Zizek, S. (2008). In Defense of Lost Causes. New York: Verso.