Asshole Culture

Asshole Culture has carved out a very clear, unsavory role in American film, literature and life. Entitled, wealthy bros who take what they want, treat everyone around them like shit and then rise to positions of power is a common trope in our mass culture.

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In films and books, these jerks usually get their comeuppance.

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In real life, not so much. They usually just keep working their way up the greasy pole, covering for and enabling one another and rising generations of assholes to come, their paths assured by aging assholes who came before them and now sit atop big institutions.

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Brett Kavanaugh, the GOP leaders in the Senate, and above all Donald Trump embody this subset of the ugliest Americans to such a degree that you can hardly believe they are real. They are cartoonishly smug and convinced that morality is for poor people, notwithstanding the slogans and mottoes found embroidered in Latin on their school blazers, or some of the platitudes they speak when they are either running for office, accepting awards, or presenting themselves to Senate committees confirming them.

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The battle over Kavanaugh centers on our anger not only about what these assholes have done to our country in general, but what in particular their culture has done to women, and how it treats them. Consider how in the past few days, the GOP elite led by their president have opened up an assault on women who have little to gain by revealing some of the most horrifying experiences of their life, discounting all of their claims and going so far as to argue that by coming forward they are the problem, that by making their accusations they are making it less likely that future generations (of assholes) will seek careers in public service.

  The Daily Beast

Sadly, that won't happen.

We also cannot help but reflect on how young assholes-in-training morph into the champions of the patriarchy, the avatars of government by for and of the patriarchy. From Georgetown Prep keggers to Yale clubs where “no means yes and yes means anal” to the Senate to the White House to the Supreme Court, these pigs fight for their ability to behave piggishly not just because it is all they know but because they believe it is their right.

The vileness of it is compounded by the master class-level hypocrisy of those who defend Kavanaugh and Trump as champions of “values”: by the Franklin Grahams and Lindsey Grahams and all those other moralistic but two-faced Graham crackers who provide the smokescreen for the [Asshole Cultur].

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Our revulsion at Kavanaugh is therefore compounded not just by his lying to the Senate or his extremism, not just by his callous abuse of women but by the reflexive response of Asshole Culture to come to his defense to protect themselves and their past and future transgressions.

There will be no fair and decent treatment of women until we break the grip on power of Asshole Culture, the Praetorian guard of the patriarchy.

Agreed. But we're given no suggestions as to how we might do that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.