Friday Homestead Dispatch

Asshole Issue Issue

Warning: If talk of assholes offends you, please look away. There will be more cat picture posts soon, I promise. And, there are plenty of asshole-free posts to read going back 3 months! Check out Con’s Photo Work, Part 1 from April 5.

1.
I’m finding it strange and weirdly American that it’s a point of pride for any man, let alone a Congressman, to display images of women on his phone, talk about having sex with them, and to create a ‘game’ to score their female sexual conquests, granting ‘points’ for various targets such as interns, staffers or other female colleagues.

But maybe it’s not an American problem. Maybe it’s partly a testosterone problem. But mostly it’s an asshole problem.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Justified and Fire In the Hole as created by Elmore Leonard) said, “You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” BTW, Justified is the only Teevee show the wife and I watched twice.

There’s a documentary film called Assholes: A Theory by John Walker (loosely based on the book of the same name by Aaron James) that hopefully will be more readily available in the United States soon. James states in his book, “The asshole, as I define it, is the guy who allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.” And any documentary that features John Cleese has to be…interesting; he refers sweetly to the hedge-fund trade as an “arsehole factory”— echoing law professor Saule Omarova’s tart appraisal of financial services as “a quintessential asshole industry.”

According to the documentary website, the film Ventures into a predominantly male domain, moves from the frat clubs of elite colleges to the bratty princedoms of Silicon Valley and bear pits of international finance. It asks, “Why do entitled assholes thrive in certain environments? What explains their perverse appeal and success? And how do they keep getting elected!”

Now enjoy these public service announcements!

2.
Speaking of assholes, Republicans are still believing and promoting THE BIG LIE. This has led to a new right-wing “election integrity” project led by Cleta Mitchell (OK, there are women assholes). She’s the asshole who took part in the notorious call on which former President Donald Trump threatened and badgered Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse the election results in that state.

As Lee Papa, the Rude Pundit, recently wrote, “To this day, the majority of Republicans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or corrupted in some way, a lie so extravagant and fake that it could decorate a Trump property. Nearly 2/3 of GOP voters still gobble up Trump's election lies like it's kibble from Jesus's ass. Not only are many congressional Republicans still unable to admit that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, but we have states passing laws that make voting harder under the banner of the fake voter fraud. That's like Bigfoot-proofing your house. It won't do jack shit to make you safer, but the Bigfoot supply people are fuckin' happy they put one over on you.”

Back to Cleta Mitchell…just the fact that she has represented Trumpism strategist Steve Bannon (an asshole) and the right-wing True the Vote, an organization that has a track record of opposing mail-in ballots, challenging voter registrations, and advocating for voter ID laws, qualifies her for true assholiassery status. The Election Integrity Project is just another scam to part rubes with their money. The first page of their website, which is a clunky old-school affair at best, is all about donating money, which might be a clue that these are assholes. They state, “Thank you for your love of the American Republic! We are grateful for your support as we work hard to defend you and the American Republic.”

Assholes.

3.

Asshole.

4.
A poll in Utah reveals that 88% of people in that state support universal background checks for all gun purchases. Background checks – pretty benign, no? The extreme position these days is folks actually opposing them. Utah Sen. Mike Lee said last month that “aggressive” gun control policies, including universal background checks and increased waiting periods to buy a firearm, disproportionately harm minority and LGBTQ communities.

Huh?

On his website he states, “The first defense against criminal threats to our persons and property is ourselves. That's why we have a right — a right granted by God and protected by the Constitution — to arm and protect ourselves.”

Asshole.

5.
A few days ago Mitch McConnell said that big business should stay out of politics. He went on to accuse companies of behaving like a "woke alternative government," warning they could become "a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order."

You cannot make this shit up.

Being one of the most outspoken opponents of campaign finance reform makes this beyond laughable. He followed up later saying that he wasn't talking about "political contributions" from corporations, of which he remains a proponent. "I'm talking about taking a position on a highly incendiary issue like this (response to the Georgia voting restriction law) and punishing a community or a state.”

Well, duh. Asshole.

6.
And then there’s bigly asshole who-will-not-be-named and who-will-not-go-away who let assholism become normalized. There were assholes before but, like racism, it seems to me folks kept their assholery down to manageable levels. The orange man opened the gates of grab-em-by-the-pussy for all the potential and waiting-in-the-wings assholes to shake their pinheads in agreement and say, “It’s OK to be an asshole…look at the president!”

Asshole.

And don’t get me started on Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Ken Weyler, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Dick Cheney, Doug Ducey, Kelli Ward, Derek Chauvin, Ted Nugent…on and on and on.

OK, I feel better.

So, this. These men are not assholes.

And a glimpse of Topeka, Kansas from 1985.

And a moment of ne’er the Twain will meet…