Only seven months and change into Donald Trump's presidency, many of you may be starting to feel as if you've heard every grim, nihilistic analogy straining to do justice to his patented cocktail of malevolence and incompetence at least a dozen times over. However, while some version of the first illustration that Trevor Noah offered on Seth Meyers' Late Night on Wednesday might have previously crossed your radar, I feel safe in guessing that you will find his second comparison as novel as it is nightmarish.

As the two men discussed the Trump's penchant for choosing his policy positions based largely on the volume of applause that his comments generate, Noah pointed out that President of the United States is not the only profession to make heavy use of this strategy.

He’s a stand-up comedian. You probably see it in him: He goes out, he practices his jokes, he works on his material. You can see him trying it out! “What do you think, Sheriff Arpaio, what do you think, what do you think?” And the crowd cheers, and he’s like, “Oh, I’m working on that bit... And then, you can feel when it’s starting to get old. He’s like, “Who’s going to pay? Mexico!” And the crowd sort of says, “Yeah, yeah, new joke, we get it.”

Perhaps sensing that speaking flippantly and dismissively about Trump threatens to obfuscate the objectively evil, cruel things he's doing from the White House—decisions that pose serious threats to both lives and livelihoods—Noah expounded for a bit on subtle shifts in the ways that comedians provide context to our current state of presidentially-generated tumult and uncertainty.

People come to me and say, “Why would you guys laugh [at Trump]?” Two things: First of all, I’ve had the pleasure and been blessed enough to travel the world and see many countries. And there are many countries I’ve been to where people don’t have free speech, and one of the biggest things that an authoritarian leader tries to remove from you is the ability to make jokes about them. In South Africa, you couldn’t tell jokes about the government during apartheid. That’s something that I cherish. A person is less frightening when you are laughing. It doesn’t diminish what they do, but it’s how we cope with these situations. For me, when I look at Donald Trump, he is a paradox for me, emotionally. On the one hand, I am terrified at the notion that he’s the president of the most powerful nation in the world. On the other hand, I know that I’m going to wake up and he’s going to make me laugh. The two things co-exist.

This is a fair observation, but this palliative brand of "Laugh to take away his power!" logic has limits, and the late-night comedy world might occasionally be drawing closer to them than it thinks. Using humor to subvert Donald Trump can become counterproductive if the hunt for clever, creative, quick-witted responses dulls people's appetites to find ways to take meaningful action in response to whatever the president's latest crime against democracy happens to be. Jokes can play an important role in the Trump era, yes, but only for as long as they don't inadvertently inhibit substantive engagement along the way.

Noah's second analogy fared a bit better at simultaneously mocking the president while also acknowledging the real dangers he poses to this country—even if it was equal parts horrifyingly vivid and giggle-inducingly juvenile.

I like to think of it like this: Donald Trump is an asteroid headed toward the earth. And it’s an asteroid… but it’s shaped like a penis.

Good luck getting that visual out of your head.

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