On assholes
My friends, we have a grave crisis in this country.
No, it's not climate change.
No, it's not anti-vaccine idiocy.
No, it's not MAGA.
It's assholes. And this underpins all those other crises.
In this country's mythology, the straight-shooting, tell-it-like-it-is truthteller is one of its greatest heroes. "I'm just being honest" is their mantra. They are lauded for being plain-spoken, telling the truths we sheep don't want to hear.
Bullshit.
For example:
Jessica Maiolo, a paintball player for Team USA, has been kicked off the team after posting a viral TikTok over the weekend seemingly shaming a child who was hospitalized for COVID-19.
The TikTok, which has since been deleted, shows Maiolo standing in front of an ABC segment about the number of children hospitalized for COVID-19 surging across the U.S. The segment includes a photo of an apparent teenager lying in a hospital bed.
"Ma'am, your kid does not need a COVID shot. Your kid needs a f***ing treadmill," Maiolo then says. "That's what he needs.
Ms. Maiolo was probably told her entire life that she was special, that her skills, such as they are, set her above everyone else, and that if someone failed or fell short they needed to be told the hard truth, unsparingly. She is an example of one of America's favorite sports: not football, but putting your nose in where it doesn't belong.
Assholes are what drive all our crises. Selfishness, a lack of a sense of community, a paucity of decorum. Too many people believe that if they have a thought, it smells of rosewater and must be shared with the world. And of course, they're never wrong. They can never put themselves in someone else's shoes; they never pause to think how their words or actions might harm others. Heaven forbid if they're inconvenienced in any way—even to, you know, save human life as we know it.
America's long tradition of anti-intellectualism finds its apotheosis in Homo assholicus. These are people who think themselves the acme of existence, the pinnacle of us hairless apes. They spend their entire lives in pursuit of their own pleasure, unaware and uncaring of anyone else's needs.
Lest you think this is a uniquely American phenomenon, don't you worry. This is a general problem in the West. It's merely more advanced, more perfected here in God's Own Country.
Racists? Assholes. Climate change deniers? Assholes. Trump supporters? The zenith of assholishness. Almost no problem facing humanity could not be ameliorated with a sharp decline of assholes.
Most of these assholes also claim to believe in God. And, surprise, the God they worship often comes off as being as big of an asshole as they are, almost as if they created their God in their own image. Assholes need to believe in God, so that their religions cloak their destructive beliefs in untouchable sanctity. "How dare you question my beliefs? You're the real bigot! I'll pray for you, though."
Now, here's the good news: They're the minority. It simply takes too much work to be an asshole, to be vituperative and vile, and most of us would rather expend that energy on other, more pleasant pursuits. It's a numbers game: We outnumber them, and we must make that numerical advantage clear. We must outvote them at every election. We must outshout them every chance we get. We mustn't allow humanity's future to be determined by the worst of us. Assholes who shame complete strangers for being sick, up to and including children, should be given no oxygen in our societal life.
It's not easy to do this. They're so loud, and so self-deluding. But there's nothing for it. It's them, or us. And I'm not going to allow my fate to be determined by some asshole.