Sacha Baron Cohen Is the Last True Democrat

I still remember the first time I saw Borat. It was 2006. I was a teenager and my friends were obsessed with it. On the nights I wasn’t over at someone else’s house watching it on their parents’ TV, I’d pass out on my friend Adam’s guest bed, the sounds of Mr. Baron Cohen merrily making a racist a$$ out of himself their country drifting in through the walls from the next room. At this point in my life, my friends and I had all but shed our peripheral awareness of current events, the dull drone of world news we were forced to watch in Mr. Solomon’s 9th grade world history class the year before not having held our attention for long. We were more concerned with the intricacies of Halo 2 than the intricacies of the Iraq War. But here, neatly wrapped in a comedic bow, was the world. “Throw the jew down the well” I’ll never forget that one. It was my go-to quote for years. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget how good, how pure, it made me feel. “Look at those idiots,” we’d laugh. Maybe back then, their ridiculousness was funny. And maybe it still is, in a dark way. But looking back, in the cold light of adulthood, Borat, Bruno, Ali G - Baron Cohen’s whole canon, really - seems less like a comedy and more like a horror show. We were right to laugh at them. They were idiots. They were refusing to see the world for what it is, refusing to acknowledge the damage they are doing. But we were also *them*. Refusing to wake up, refusing to see, refusing to understand, refusing to know, refusing to do the mental labor necessary to be a functioning human in society. Idiots, just like them. And the reason they’re so funny - the reason the Borat movies are so funny, the reason Trump is so lovable - is that they are the last true democrats. They see no class distinctions. They make no value judgments. They do not discriminate. Everyone is equal. Everyone deserves to suffer. Ha Ha Ha. If you haven’t seen the Borat sequel, it’s basically just Sacha Baron Cohen going around pranking Trump supporters. And if you haven’t seen the Trump Prankster in action, the basic conceit is this: healthy-looking young man with chiseled features, quick wit, and a twinkle in his eye keeps a completely, totally, 100% straight face while saying the most insane, ridiculous things possible in order to see how long it takes the people he’s talking to to realize he’s being a joke. A gag that, if you haven’t seen it, you would think sounds incredibly easy. However, having seen it, I can promise you that it is not. These pranks go on for *minutes*, sometimes *hours*, without the other person in on the joke. It's like To Catch a Predator, but instead of predators, Sacha Baron Cohen is catching people who refuse to see reality. The first gag in the movie isBORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM is a great example of this. Sacha Baron Cohen is at an anti-lockdown protest, playing a Trump supporter. The first man he talks to, an old guy with a BLM-type t-shirt but with “DON’T” on it instead of “BLACK LIVES MATTER”, asks him why he’s wearing a mask. Convinced this is a pure MAGA moment, Mr. Baron Cohen informs the gentleman that he’s going to catch the Covid once and for all by walking around without a mask. The BLM DON’T guy gets pissed and tells him to go home. That’s the joke. BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM came out in October, but Mr. Baron Cohen shot it during the pandemic. It was current events compressed into a neat little hour and a half that you could sit and digest in peace, the world finally neatly wrapped in that comedic bow I mentioned up above. At the time of its release, I was still reeling from what felt like the constant barrage of breaking news that 2020 had been. Every day, it seemed, the world was ending in a different way, the damage from the last world-ending event barely sunk in before the next one blew through to take its place. The sinking in never had any time to happen. The news was a deluge, untamable and endless. And then, October 20th, Borat 2. At the time, I remember being so confused as to how they’d managed to turn it around so fast. The pandemic had only just started in January. But rewatching it now, late in 2023, shits different. I’m not confused that it came out in October 2020. I’m confused that it hasn’t been updated since then. The world seems to be going to shit at an exponentially increasing pace, and the break from the news that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm brought me in October of 2020 has not been followed with Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 2, or Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 3, or Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 4, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 5, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 6, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 7, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 8, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 9, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 10, or Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 11. In fact, the only recent update I can find from the good Mr. Baron Cohen is an interview he gave back in January, in the third year of the pandemic, where he talks about how he still does this little mental math trick where he calculates “how many people he’d saved”, as he is quoted in the article. This is in reference to an anecdote he’d shared in an interview with the Late Show back in November 2020, only a month afterBORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM came out, where he tells the story of how he’d convinced a bunch of anti-lockdown protesters to take the Covid seriously not by arguing with them, but by acting like one of them. He recounts how they’d eventually begun to open up to him, their faces, previously guarded, slowly melting into smiles of recognition, smiles which shone brightest during their confessionals, the two parties joining together in a moment of deep human connection borne from the strongest shared feeling there is - prejudice. And when they’d finally opened up, he struck, delivering the mortal blow that landed him the coveted interview with Tom Hanks. “Wear a mask, it will protect you from Covid-19,” he’d said, his tone warm with friendly coercion, warm with the warmth that only a shared feeling of prejudice can bring, warm with the deep connection he’d forged with these people. The article I’m referencing here was posted on Reddit on August 18th, 2023. But the interview it was based on was from January 2023, which means we’re at two years from Tom Hanks’ conversion, and still no Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 2. The world has gone to shit since then. Do we deserve to be rescued from idiots by Mr. Baron Cohen again? I know I need to be rescued from idiots. I don’t know what happened to the world these past couple years, but something did. The news just isn’t the same. Not long after that, I got Covid. I was lying in bed, barely able to move, and I still couldn’t bring myself to do the mental labor necessary to being a functioning human in society. I tried to crack open a book but it was too much. I tried to crack open a history book but it was too much. The mental labor of being a functioning human in society was too much. So I went for something light and digestible instead. I decided to rewatch Borat. I barely made it fifteen minutes in before I turned it off and pulled the blanket up over my head. I’ll never forget how good, how pure, it made me feel. “Look at those idiots” we’d laugh. Maybe back then, their ridiculousness was funny. And maybe it still is, in a dark way. But looking back, in the cold light of adulthood, Borat is not comedy, it is horror. The nameless, faceless horde of idiots who are actively trying to make the world a worse place, who are refusing to wake up, refusing to see, refusing to understand, refusing to know, refusing to do the mental labor necessary to be a functioning human in society. But also me. Refusing to wake up, refusing to see, refusing to understand, Refusing to do the mental labor necessary to understand how society is shaped by class distinctions and power dynamics, refusing to do the mental labor necessary to understand what class I myself belong to, refusing to do the mental labor necessary to see how I am complicit in these power dynamics, refusing to do the mental labor necessary to see how I am refusing to see these dynamics. Refusing to do the mental labor necessary to be a functioning human in society. Refusing to do the mental labor necessary to understand Refusing to do the mental labor necessary to be a functioning human… Refusing to… Refu- Refu- Refu- I couldn’t bring myself to do the mental labor necessary to be a functioning human in society. But I was still a functioning human in society. And I knew that I was still a functioning human in society because I still had opinions about it, opinions which I held to be self-evidently, obviously, painfully true. I knew I was still a functioning human I *knew* I was right. And I knew refusing to

Sacha Baron Cohen Is the Last True Democrat

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