Even the name of Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special, Sticks and Stones, evokes a shattering.

It’s inspiring because it’s brave. He stands in front of an Atlanta audience he knows is waiting to get offended, and he tells jokes he knows will offend them.

He doesn’t tell them in spite of offense. He tells them because of it.

He doesn’t just know that they will be offended. He knows precisely how. It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he cares deeply. Deeply enough to risk sacrificing himself.

And in doing so, he becomes a hero. He has intentionally and deliberately broken the United States’s “Overton Window.”

The Overton Window is a word for what our society deems acceptable to say in public. Due to a toxic identity-obsessed media regime, this window has been closing, and closing, and closing, to the point where people are terrified to say things in public.

This is not the country we signed up for.

So Chappelle gets up there and says all the things he’s not allowed to say. Each is carefully rooted in his identity. Cancel culture regulates speech differently based on the speaker’s identity. So as a very intentional “fuck you,” Chappelle takes stances that directly oppose the ways identity obsessives have hijacked the Overton Window:

As a straight man, Chappelle can’t make fun of LGTBQ people. Not only does he do it anyway, he picks apart the letters themselves. As a black man, he’s not allowed to mock the white working-class dying of opium addiction. He does it anyway, going as far as to say he doesn’t care. As a non-survivor, he’s not allowed to challenge victims of sexual abuse. He confronts Michael Jackson’s accusers anyway, and the whole idea of making a documentary about them. As a man, he is not allowed to question #MeToo. So he unequivocally defends Louis C.K., looking the audience straight in the face and saying C.K. did nothing wrong. Finally, as anybody, you aren’t allowed to joke about guns and school shootings. Not only does he joke about them, his final joke puts himself right in a school shooter’s shoes.

Chappelle doesn’t just say these things; he makes us laugh about them. He fearlessly reminds us why comedy is a public service. He lances our most warped, horrible, infuriating societal boils. When they pop, we feel relief. That’s what laughter is.

In the special, Chappelle sets up a joke by saying black people are the only ones with the power to save America. He’s kidding (maybe), but he is also asking the black community to take the first step. The undercurrent is one of unity; of refusing to be pulled apart by the freaks and losers at the far poles. To free ourselves from their insanity.

Sticks and Stones, aside from evoking the breaking of things, refers to the rhyme that Americans teach our children. The lesson of the rhyme is that words aren’t actions. More specifically, it’s that they only become actions if you let them.

We are not a nation of ethnicity, religion, geography, or even of history. All we have are our principles. And the most important one is the freedom to say what we want without grievous consequences. America’s Overton Window should be wider than anywhere else on Earth, and that is an absolute fact.

By getting up in front of people and making us laugh about the things that we can’t, Chappelle becomes the superhero we need. One black guy with the power to save America.