You do, of course, realize that your rewrite of the joke with France and the U.S. reversed, would probably be considered quite funny in most of France. That's how it works.
Many better and wiser people than myself have battered themselves uselessly to bits against the rock of "what is humor, exactly?" That human beings find things "funny" at all, much less exactly what they find funny, is one of the great mysteries of life. It may have something to do with human beings being the only animals aware of their own inevitable mortality. Which is probably why jokes about otherwise horrible death and destruction have a macabre appeal.
Mark Twain once said "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to." I'm not sure if anyone else has said, "Man is the only animal with a sense of humor, or that needs one," but it's no less true.
(Mark Twain also made his share of French jokes.)
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Funny stuff
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- A moral dilemma - your input requested