Just For Fun

When leaders joke about bombs, humanity stands on the brink

Years ago, millions of people watched the Canadian hidden-camera show Just for Laughs. In my region, it was translated as “Just for Fun.” The premise was simple: actors staged absurd situations in public places; unsuspecting passers-by reacted with confusion or shock; and finally, the prank was revealed. Everyone laughed. No one was harmed. The humor depended precisely on the absence of real damage. Occasionally, however, the target of the joke felt humiliated rather than amused.

What happens when the logic of “just for fun” migrates from television comedy into the language of global war — something that can no longer be called politics by other means? In a prank show, the audience eventually learns that the chaos was staged. In international affairs, there is no such reassurance. The consequences are real and irreversible.

The metaphor may seem exaggerated until one listens to the language used by some of today’s most powerful political leaders.

Donald Trump is certainly not the only head of state we have watched with disbelief or ridicule — as a buffoon, someone who speaks absurdities, often for reasons that are politically calculated. Yet in his case, two additional claims are frequently made. First, he relishes being at the center of global attention, especially domestic attention. Second, what appears as exaggeration or performance may in fact be a genuine disposition — the behavior of a psychologically unstable man.

What we tend to forget, even in the most dramatic moments for humanity, is that in the hands of this seemingly comic figure lies the question of life and death on a vast scale. We continue to wonder whether his statements are merely “just for fun,” idiocy, theatrical provocation, or signals of actions with grave consequences. To make matters worse, this is not the first clownish leader to have driven the world toward catastrophe. We often recall the one with a funny mustache…

I write this after reading Trump’s remark in the media that he could bomb the Iranian island of Kharg “just for fun.” His entertainments are costly. Sometimes the price is paid even by his own supporters (as with the lavish celebrations surrounding his second inauguration; yet that’s a part of the transactionalism of oligarchy). It’s unbelievable that the Americans still don’t see that they finance a crazy man’s jokes - and become complicit in mass killings. Yes, the far greater price is paid in human lives and in the destruction of entire regions, if not humanity.

Documentary footage — and today, ordinary videos recorded on mobile phones — reveal a disturbing dimension of warfare. Scenes of humiliation, destruction, and killing carried out with apparent indifference — sometimes even pride. During the commemorations marking eighty years since the defeat of fascism and militarism, we were reminded of historical atrocities committed in Japan’s wartime laboratories and camps. More recent images from Gaza and elsewhere show children killed by snipers, homes destroyed, civilians mocked, and prisoners sexually abused - not out of any war necessity but “just for fun”. My memory returns to the images from 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison, where humiliation itself became spectacle.

The banality of evil has reached a new stage. The result is not only exposure, but psychological overload — and eventually, withdrawal. People close their eyes to survive the spectacle.

It is often said that every war is a racket — a brutal enterprise driven by interests, profit, and power. But in recent years, something even darker has become visible. We have witnessed cruelty, humiliation, and destruction carried out with such a degree of sadism that it is difficult to comprehend. Violence is no longer only instrumental. It is filmed, displayed, and sometimes performed with chilling indifference — even joy. The line between calculated brutality and sheer evil seems increasingly thin.

In this case, a superpower leader casually threatens military action against a distant territory, seemingly observing global reaction as though security were a reality show. But bombs are not punchlines, and nuclear brinkmanship is not entertainment.

The comparison with a prank program is revealing. In Just for Laughs, actors ultimately step forward and say: relax, it was only a joke. In the real world of military power, there is no such moment. The ethical principle of the comedy show was simple: no real harm. International politics increasingly insists on deep harm, the elimination of entire generations and their culture. Playing with fear — including threats touching the nuclear taboo — becomes a performance in itself.

When leaders of nuclear-armed states speak lightly about bombing other countries, they trivialize violence and undermine international law. It’s even meaningless to say that this directly weakens the authority of the United Nations and its Charter - if there is any left.

Is it not paradoxical that, for decades, veto politics in the UN Security Council shielded accountability, while today it is diluted through procedural maneuvers and strategic abstentions? The result is a world turned upside down — where victims are denounced as perpetrators.

What would it take for international accountability to emerge? The Nuremberg Trials come to mind. That process was imperfect — justice of the victors — yet it was grounded in evidence and a commitment to legal norms. Today, there are no victors, even less moral clarity and conscience. Meanwhile, authoritarian tendencies and normalized cruelty flourish in the “democratic world” of the West.

I would not be surprised if one morning we awaken to news of a breach of the nuclear taboo — the first-use threshold crossed. The irony is that even Japan — the only country to have experienced atomic devastation — now aligns itself with leaders who treat lethal force as rhetoric, while accusing others of defending themselves.

I deliberately avoid rehearsing the familiar geopolitical explanations for current wars. Those arguments have been repeated endlessly — without altering the course of events. The tragedy goes deeper: in an age of shattered norms and normalized violence, the world risks losing its moral sensitivity to sadism and cruelty. If international society accepts brutality disguised as rhetoric “just for fun,” instead of recognizing it as a violation of the UN Charter, it has already crossed a threshold beyond which barbarity becomes routine. How do we return to normalcy and decency after so much horror?