In addition to being incredibly arrogant world-destroying lunatics, the members of this deplorable human race—I am forced to admit—are naturally cunning animals, perhaps the only ones on Earth capable of fabricating their own identities on the fly. And I don’t mean in the sort of way The Ministress of Tasks uses alien phermones to hide her true form from human males before she devours them.

I mean in the sort of way human beings openly acknowledge who is cunning and therefore powerful in many familiar social settings. Fear of this thing to be wielded by the cunning in the face of the insipid masses is one of the many reasons why Plato cast out the poets from his Republic. There is the delivery of the threat by the comedian and then the impact of the threat on the tribe. What is the tribe to do when faced with a superior threat, the exactness of which exceeds the tribe’s cunning? The natural response, if the comedian is sufficiently cunning: laughter.

Oh what it is to laugh, Mister Andrew Rohman, to roil from the guts and contort, to feel the relief of our stupidity! Never have we heard from human lips a more sincere expression of terror and defeat in submission to masters more insidious than us! “Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells!” as Poe would say. 

But laughter is not sincerity in itself, per se. 

Not honesty in action, no.