The Real Culprit for Trump and Kavanaugh: Asshole Culture

[DonViejo]

They’re rich and smug and obnoxious, and they think morality is for poor people. And they’ve done more to wreck this country than any other group. Enough.

David Rothkopf
09.27.18 5:18 AM ET

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. And, if you have been following the news recently, you know that it exists at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

In films and books, these jerks usually get their comeuppance. From the downfall of the indulgent rich of Fitzgerald to Philip Roth’s tweaking of the entitled, from the sleazy elites of Bonfire of the Vanities to the snotty villains of every private school movie ever made to greed-driven bros of The Wolf of Wall Street, wealth and privilege set them up and karma ultimately knocks them down.

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.

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.

Despite their sense they are the heirs to America, raised to take the reins of power, it is of course their moral and ethical emptiness and their greed and ambition that has corroded what’s best about the country and led to institutionalized inequality and corruption that threaten democracy in America today.

Trump, of course, is the ur-Asshole, though he is not, despite what he may think, the Alpha Asshole. Those are the ones behind the scenes, Wall Streeters and heirs to old money fortunes, who not-so-secretly despise him as a wannabe who will never be truly in their world. But they, like he, are all spoiled, shallow, self-absorbed, and contemptuous of those with less.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-culprit-for-trump-and-kavanaugh-asshole-culture?ref=home

[lapfog_1]

1. the entire "bros before hos" culture

along with other white privileged asshole culture, this needs to be gone from our nation.

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R