At one time, I was selling parts of my comic book collection on eBay. I was doing rather well, and leaving in my wake nothing but very happy customers, who all praised my quality merchandise, low prices, and attention to careful packaging. And then… I received a notice from eBay that there was a negative review. I opened it up, and one fellow was bitching about the issue of Wonder Woman he’d purchased from me, saying, “DO NOT BUY FROM THIS SELLER! Item is damaged, dropping value. Packaging haphazard at best.” And for good measure, he added “Photos for proof” — which of course he never supplied.

Despite his impudence, I contacted him and offered to refund his money if he was unhappy with the transaction. He never responded. And that one negative review damaged my rating to a sufficient extent that buyers were leery of doing business with me in the future. Which, it seems, was the whole objective — a little digging revealed that he was a comics dealer himself, and perhaps he just didn’t want the competition. I wish I could say this kind of behavior was a rarity. Unfortunately, it’s anything but.

Welcome to Twenty-First Century America, where a top priority, and often the prime directive, is just being an asshole. It’s a very popular pastime these days, and even an all-consuming one, thanks to asshole blogs and podcasts, and asshole media, including, above all, Fox “News”, the ultimate asshole network. There are Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks and Matt Walshes and Candace Owenses and Ben Shapiros all over the place, raking in huge bucks by being assholes, and egging their fans on to be bigger assholes than they already are.

Charlie Kirk was canonized for being an asshole even while he was alive. After his death his wife, rather than devoting her time to comforting their young children, stepped into his asshole shoes without missing a beat. Meanwhile, anyone who pointed out what an asshole Charlie was — often by merely quoting his own words — was harassed, threatened, and sometimes fired by assholes. In Tennessee, the assholes arrested a man who simply reminded everyone on social media that the asshole president had said in response to school shootings that “we have to get over it”.

Assholes are not merely jerks. Jerks are reactive; they do immature and harmful things when they are confronted with certain situations. Assholes, however, are proactive. Extremely proactive. They actively seek out opportunities to be assholes. They lie awake at night dreaming up asshole schemes.

During the time I spent traveling around the U.S. in an RV, I constantly crossed paths with assholes who thought that encountering someone in an RV was an imperative to remind the world how superior they were. Once I was parked for the night at a truck stop (as RV’s often do) when I was awakened at about three in the morning by the enormously amplified sound coming from the speakers in the car parked next to me. The driver was playing a recording by a “comedian” who was saying, “And now a high school Spanish teacher being beaten senseless.” Followed by him imitating a female with a Hispanic accent reacting to sound effects of a violent attack. Apparently the asshole driver thought this was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard — so hilarious that he just had to share it with the whole world at maximum volume, no matter the hour of day or night. When his passenger, who seemed like much less of an asshole, pointed out that he might be disturbing someone’s slumber, he replied, “Too bad! They should get a motel.”

One day I was sitting in my RV in a shopping center parking lot, having just shopped there, and a young asshole woman walked by and yelled, “This is not a campground, losers!”

The present blog often deals with current events — topics often considered “controversial”. So as you might expect, the assholes, including holocaust deniers, flock to it like flies to an overturned garbage truck. It often doesn’t seem to matter to them what they say; as long as it’s contrarianism, as long as it’s an insult, a personal attack, a snappy “comeback”, they feel like they’ve earned their medals.

One reader who was quite supportive and contributed constructive comments for a couple of years ultimately decided that he too would have more fun with assholery, so he suddenly joined the fray. Another reader, who was never very supportive, constantly tried to provoke me with the most asinine commentary imaginable. He repeated the questionable allegation that Matthew Shepard — remember Matthew Shepard, the gay kid in Wyoming who was tied to a fence and savagely beaten to death? — was actually murdered because he was a drug trafficker. That in itself is not so much assholery as just repeating unsubstantiated rumors. But he also stated that he called Shepard’s parents and accosted them with this claim. It was at this point that I pulled the plug and banned this asshole from posting on my blog anymore.

Gay people like Shepard are often the targets of assholes. As are Muslims, immigrants, and all kinds of minorities. Harassing, intimidating, and even physically attacking them is a national asshole sport. An entire army of assholes has been mobilized and paid handsomely to round up, imprison and torture immigrants — and sometimes citizens — while masked to conceal their identities, and granted absolute immunity from the consequences of their asshole actions.

That’s because, not too surprisingly, the Electoral College in 2016 selected as president the biggest asshole on the planet, and perhaps the biggest asshole in the history of the planet. As one observer noted, he’s the kind of asshole that other assholes look at and say, “boy, he’s really an asshole.” And during his first term, and for the four years afterward, he was such an asshole that in 2024 he was returned to the Oval Office, thanks not only to the asshole Electoral College, but this time also to the voters, most of whom were assholes who were sickandtired of refugees, transgenders and pregnant teens being treated like human beings.

So he was all set to establish a government of the assholes, by the assholes, and for the assholes. Such as one particular woman who, during the pandemic when toilet paper was in scarce supply, pulled her pickup truck up to a dollar store and bought out the entire stock. (Other assholes insisted they had a right to go without a mask on the premises of privately owned businesses that had mandated them.) As of this writing, it appears that the assholes who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol (for which they’ve already been pardoned), will receive a lavish reward for being assholes, no doubt also as an incentive to be assholes again in the future.

And to an even greater extent than before, the asshole president set up an asshole administration, with many members directly siphoned off the asshole TV network, an administration that has included the likes of Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and Karoline Leavitt. All of whom have responded to questions in the same asshole textbook manner exemplified by their boss– lying, evasion, insulting the questioner, and attacking President Biden.

The asshole president also has a whole family of assholes, who have become pigs at the public trough. Perhaps the most assholish of all is Asshole Junior, who “wrote” a book called Triggered, which purports to show how “liberals” are so easily… well, triggered. Which is a claim often made by MAGA Cultists while yelling and screaming and throwing tantrums and making puerile threats because they don’t like the Barbie movie or the M&M animated characters or the casting of The Odyssey or the Cracker Barrel logo. In promoting his masterpiece, Asshole Junior made a post on social media just before Thanksgiving challenging his fans to send photos or videos of liberal relatives getting “triggered” at a family holiday gathering. Imagine being so proud of being such an asshole.

Trying to “own the libs” (a label applied to anyone who isn’t part of the MAGA Cult) is an obsession with the asshole culture. They’d sacrifice everything for it. And they’re convinced, much to their jubilation, that they succeed in sending the “libs” into a tizzy frequently. What they don’t realize is that “libs” are seldom “triggered” at all. Instead, they usually just shake their heads in pity and disbelief.

The political asshole culture these days is closely allied with the religious asshole culture, the self-anointed asshole sect of Christianity whose adherents believe there is only one correct religion (which, conveniently, just happens to be their own) and anyone who doesn’t conform to it is evil and will be tormented for eternity by their loving asshole God. And that any day now they will be whisked up to asshole paradise where they can spend their eternity rubbing elbows with other smug assholes.

Even if that never happens (spoiler alert: it won’t), if things continue the way they’ve been going, all the assholes will eventually disappear anyway. Because if things continue the way they are going, assholes will become so normalized that they won’t be perceived as assholes anymore; they will just be ordinary folks. And those of us who are not assholes will be perceived as weird and weak. Come to think of it, we’re just about there already.