Please, Someone Please Make America Medieval Again 🙏🏽

An Instagram video reminded me of my salad days in Germany. Terrible standup comedy, great beer, and carved into the side of a 15th-century church in Cologne is a monk doing something to himself that would get you banned from most yoga studios. Here’s a link to it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLzyRiEMHaI/?igsh=MXIwdHVkN3B2ODV0dw==

This isn’t some avant-garde art installation called “Capitalism’s Oral Fixation” or a clever new Banksy. This is medieval city planning. Someone got paid to carve a priest blowing himself for eternity, and apparently the city council was like, “Yeah, that looks about right. Put it next to the bishop.”

The medievals understood something we don’t: everyone does dumbass shit, and pretending otherwise is exhausting. They carved their dumbassedness into public walls because they were too honest to hide it. Meanwhile, I can’t even admit I don’t drive non-self-driving cars without feeling like I need to issue a public apology every single day of my life in Wisconsin.

I am, by the way, spectacularly unqualified to discuss medieval flexibility. I pulled a muscle last week reaching to put my socks on. “This is what happens when you work in advertising for 40 years,” my Dr tells her other patients, pointing at my X-rays like a before picture.

The medievals made these things called drolleries—little drawings in the margins of holy books. Picture this: you’re a monk, you’ve spent six months hand-copying the Bible, your back hurts, your hand is cramping, and you think, “You know what this psalm about God’s infinite mercy needs? A drawing of a nun mooning a rabbit.” And then you draw it. And then nobody fires you because you’re pretty much a retired Jamboy. 

They painted knights fighting snails. And the snails were winning half the time. These people understood that life is so absurd that even your victories are embarrassing.

We, on the other hand, cannot handle a disagreement about oat milk without declaring it a hate crime. I once saw someone write a 2,000-word essay about the problematic nature of saying “bless you” when someone sneezes. I have personally witnessed a Twitter thread about the colonialist implications of hummus. We are losing our minds over condiments while medieval people were carving dick jokes into cathedrals.

I am not innocent here. I am part of the problem. I once had a legitimate emotional breakdown because someone said “use bullet points in your deck.” I was totally triggered. “Bullets”, the word makes me whimper uncontrollably. The medievals would have carved me as a gargoyle, but not a scary one. More like a confused one holding a smartphone, mouth open, staring at nothing. “Here kneels a Jamboy,” the inscription would read. “He had strong opinions about Taylor Swift.”

We need to bring this back. We need to Make America Medieval Again. Not the plague (one was enough for my lifetime) or the lack of dental floss and bidets. 

Imagine if we put statues of our leaders doing what they need to do on government buildings. Jeff Bezos carved in stone, eternally trying to cut up giant cardboard boxes. Trump trapped in marble, forever attempting to explain Stormy to Melania. Kamala sculpted mid-whine, “we won Joe, we won. Now I can drape Putin over my knees and spank him pink if he doesn’t call me they.”

We need influencers immortalized in their natural habitat: taking selfies while falling off cliffs. We need tech bros carved in stone, forever mansplaining what blockchain is. We need wellness gurus frozen in granite, trying to sell their own poop preserved in essential oils to a gargoyle. And boy, we need LinkedIn denizens  who are humbled by their Bronze Lion, proud of their teams and grateful for their opportunities. 

And since we’re already living in medieval times anyway…I mean, billionaires are basically feudal lords and the rest of us are serfs with iPhones, let’s embrace it fully. Let’s bring back medieval medicine. Got a headache? Smoke this, I’ll drill a hole in your skull. Back pain? Here’s a bag of leeches and a Gregorian chant. Depression? Have you tried not being sad?

Medieval hygiene would solve so many of our problems. One bath per year? Think of the water savings! The environmental impact! Plus, if everyone smells terrible, no one smells terrible. It’s democracy in action. Sustainability, circularity!

We are getting there. Even though Trump just took us back to the Neanderthal age I can guarantee that AI will quickly advance us back to the medieval future. I am not flexible enough to achieve the artistic feat of that Cologne monk, but I am absolutely willing to be carved into a wall, frozen forever in my natural state: very confused, outraged, and still trying to figure out how to fold a fitted sheet.

Make America Medieval Again. Please

P.S. - I looked up that monk statue online after writing this. Turns out it might be a restoration from the 1950s. Which means someone in post-war Germany was like, “You know what this rebuilding effort needs? More stone dicks.” I respect that commitment to historical accuracy.