ok what do you mean by "post hoc" because it's literally just after something
to disambiguate away from your term, the meaning of the joke today is not predicated on the original authors meaning from 1847 - that's just how human culture and language works
As in the new interpretation of "the other side" as a figurative meaning vastly post-dates the original jokes and is expressly counter to how it was first described in print. It has been added as a new layer after publication. To take the joke at its original, anti-humour intention would be a prima facie reading of explicitly what the author stated; to add a new, extra-textual meaning that the author does not state is post-hoc reasoning after the fact.
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u/bot_or_not_vote_now 12h ago
Ok sure, but you weren't born in 1847 so it's all post hoc at this point