Well, that certainly got your attention, didn’t it? Of course, it would — especially if you were the one with the diagnosis. But I’m not going to riff off of an oncologist’s crib sheet here, I want to talk about a different kind of disease, equally deadly, that’s been metastasizing for a long time now, seeding subversive forward guard clusters into people’s pre frontal cortexes, rattling their amygdala, and withering their hearts and minds.
And that my friends, is asshole cancer. Just like the body snatcher victims hijacked by alien corn pods, public discourse, social media platforms, dinner table conversations, and ones overheard on the Clapham omnibus have all been infected with ‘asshole’ or to be more accurate ‘assholes’, for they are legion.
Now, to my mind as a Brit, there is a distinctive difference between what we understand as an ‘arsehole’ and its racier stateside cousin, the ‘asshole’. The British variant is both literal and figurative meaning the puckering ring, as well as describing a person of low character and little worth (usually prefixed by the adjective ‘complete’ ie “Phillip is a complete arsehole.”)
By comparison, its Yankee cousin has taken on a life all its own. Sure enough, it can describe the sphincter too, but more often than not, it is a certain type of individual, one who is devoid of a moral compass, knows no shame, and in many senses is proud of his/her/their/its status as an asshole.
It’s the person who cuts you up in traffic and then gives you the finger as you swerve and brake.
It’s the person who produces his smartphone to take a picture at the scene of an accident to share on social media rather than stopping to help out.
And it’s the person who loudly espouses bogus opinions, alternative facts and bigoted views looking to rouse the populist spirit (ie asshole) in his target audience, which unfortunately is everyone (the house always wins in this case since the message resonates with kindred spirits and the outrage from the other camp only energizes their audience’s collective sense of worth).
Is a picture forming in your mind?
It’s no surprise that such individuals have found their way into politics, given the fact that democracy by its very nature, encompasses a plurality of voices. Regrettably, in the absence or near breakdown of civil discourse, it has allowed for a deterioration of public manners and by default, a consequent uptick in the asshole tribe.
The populist rabble rouser and one time adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon is famously connected to the phrase ‘Flood the zone with shit’ to describe a modus operandi whereby satisfying ends justify the moronic means; instead of intelligent self- censorship, which everyone should practice in public forums, every other puckering asshole is encouraged to let it rip — the political equivalent of inviting everyone to a bean feast and then inviting them to stick around to collectively savor both the deep timbre and rich aroma of each other’s farts.
I was drawn to this topic by listening albeit inadvertently, to one of Sam Smith’s ‘Making Sense’ podcasts, which he entitled ‘A Golden Age for Assholes’. Smith as you probably are aware, is a very astute Stanford-educated American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His opinions are generally considered on the more liberal side of things, but the stridency of this particular podcast is practically a call to arms to all right-thinking (no capitalization) people.
The two main culprits of his very measured appraisal of the times we are living in are, unsurprisingly, Donald (orange is the new black) Trump and Andrew Tate, a former kickboxing champ and unreconstructed pimp wannabe. The fact these two get his attention is as he says himself, the fact that they ruthlessly pursue their mean ambitions via social media, actively encourage asshole behavior in others, exhibit no shame and, are pinnacles of asshole-dom.
Smith is careful to point out that we can all be assholes of one stripe or another, but these are generally aberrations brought on by stress or some other complicating factor. By comparison, Trump and Tate positively revel in their status and like cancer, have infected the social contract with their own vile secret sauce.
Trump has carefully constructed an image of himself to his followers as the lovable asshole — the uncle who spoils Christmas by turning up, whether invited or not, and then continues to use the living room armchair or dining table as a private bully pulpit to stink up the room with racist dog whistles, slights, and slurs. Mid- stream, he doesn’t forget to sugarcoat his monologues with a few lame jokes (undoubtedly written by someone else) that play to his base.
Tate on the other makes no claim to being in any sense lovable. Instead. he revels, troll-like in the adulation of his fawning, impressionable male audience by projecting his throbbing masculinity, waggling it like the over-sized cigars he likes to suck on. Having spent time in both the US and the UK ( hailing from the prosaically dull Bedfordshire town of Luton ) he seems to have achieved ass and arsehole primacy in both countries. Result.
I won’t go any further down the character ass-hat-ination of these two erstwhile gentlemen; Harris does a far better, more eloquent job (and don’t get me started on Putin, the true incarnation of rectal cancer in all its malignancy).
My more pressing concern is can we rid ourselves of this modern plague of asshole-dom?
For now, it seems, the courts are the best antidote. Both Trump and Tate are being prosecuted and while the arc of justice is insufferably long, it gets there in the end.
Putting them behind bars may, however, ultimately backfire.
Trump, for example, like some bottom-feeding monster who only gets larger, the more shit you throw at him, has already monetized his Georgia-dreaming mugshot in the form of merch sold at (predictably) shamelessly inflated prices.
That’s the problem of assholes, you see. No shame. The shit has to go somewhere, and they are nothing but puckering, pinching, knotty dispensers of the same, relentlessly flooding their respective zones.
Cut out the asshole, you get a colostomy bag.
They are the human equivalent of climate change — people would rather talk about the weather than discuss the impending apocalypse. I suppose they are simply a feature of a Western society in imminent meltdown. I’m sure that the last great incarnation of civilization, the Roman Empire had its fair share of assholes before it collapsed in on itself. Once the corruption starts, it never ends until the whole system implodes.
So, bring the popcorn, settle down and enjoy the shit show but don’t forget to put on a sou’wester — we’re in for some heavy weather.
