Thread by @AlexandraErin

Fascinating thread with interesting details about a dramatic moment in history, possibly undercut by the preachy justification given in the last sentence of the first tweet.

Here's the thing: it's okay to laugh at the absurdity of death. It's human. It's helpful. It's necessary.

https://twitter.com/ProfTonyPollard/status/1478657153024114693

I have said -- and am proud of saying -- that it's only gallows humor if your own neck is on the line, otherwise you're just another heckler in the crowd, and such humiliation is part of a public execution.

But death, so far, that we have been able to tell, comes for us all.

Nobody reading this has to charge up a muddy hill into a munitions-based meatgrinder, but we are all living in an era of mass death and many of us are living under leaders who have made it clear they do expect us to walk into the line of fire for the glory and goals of others.

So we see something profound -- a moment of death, one death among ten thousands, recorded as a perfect three-dimensional snapshot -- coupled with a ludicrous caption describing the subject as "wounded", and something bubbles up, breaks the surface tension, and we laugh. Joke.

It's not an insult to M. Antoine Fauveau, lately a dairyman, the one among tens of thousands. It's not disrespectful to the dead of Waterloo. We aren't questioning his bravery. If we're laughing at somebody, it's the author of a Twitter caption.

I write this thread not to dunk on the professor or direct ire towards him and his thread, which I'm genuinely glad to have read.

My goal is to reassure anyone who read the thread and, feeling something for M. Fauveau, feels bad about having laughed or joked.

If his death brought even a single person in the 21st century even a single moment of relief, that bestows upon it a greater purpose than having been thrown against a cannon in pursuit of another man's doomed dream of empire, once upon a war.

The professor mentioned Monty Python, so I'll close with a quote from one of their songs:

"For life is quite absurd, and death's the final word. You must always face the curtain with a bow."

Or shorter and sweeter, from Ruggero Leoncavallo:

"Ridi, pagliaccio."

(LAUGH, clown!)