{"id":11035,"date":"2020-10-31T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11035"},"modified":"2020-11-12T20:01:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T03:01:19","slug":"united-states-of-a-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/10\/31\/united-states-of-a-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"United States of A-holes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/how-america-became-a-country-full-of-assholes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from The Daily Beast<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The new documentary \u201cAssholes: A Theory\u201d examines the assholing of America, a nation ruled by the biggest asshole of them all: Donald J. Trump.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/author\/nick-schager\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nick Schager<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T3s5WrfjHkY\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/timothy-olyphant-i-know-what-happens-to-raylan-at-the-end-of-justified\" target=\"_blank\">Timothy Olyphant<\/a>) famously opined on\u00a0<em>Justified<\/em>, \u201cYou run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you\u2019re the asshole.\u201d Yet in a 2020 America on the precipice of a monumental presidential election, it seems that assholes are not only everywhere you turn\u2014in newspapers, on cable TV, at political rallies and protests, and all over social media\u2014but that they, and their behavior, has been normalized. It\u2019s this \u201crising tide of assholery\u201d that\u2019s the focus of director John Walker\u2019s\u00a0<em>Assholes: A Theory<\/em>, which adapts philosophy professor Aaron James\u2019 2012 non-fiction book into a documentary aimed at both precisely defining the term \u201casshole,\u201d and investigating how those who fit that bill have increasingly come to dominate key spheres of modern public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Donald Trump isn\u2019t seen or mentioned once by name in\u00a0<em>Assholes: A Theory<\/em>. Nonetheless, his specter looms large over Walker\u2019s film (in theaters Oct. 30, and on VOD Nov. 6), whether during conversations about corrupt Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi\u2014the forerunner of the media-manipulating populist-criminal-strongman trend that\u2019s recently swept through Western nations\u2014or passages discussing Facebook, Twitter and Google\u2019s prioritization of profit over their responsibility to safeguard democracy\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/the-nazi-hunter-taking-on-mark-zuckerberg-and-facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from hate speech and disinformation<\/a>. Without once bringing him up, Walker makes clear that Trump is the embodiment of this problem, given that his election to the highest office\u2014and subsequent flouting of rules and standards of common decency\u2014has made it appear acceptable, and in fact rewarding, to act in the worst possible manner as a means of achieving one\u2019s selfish ends. He is, the film silently contends, the apex of American assholery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/how-america-became-a-country-full-of-assholes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at TDB<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Daily Beast The new documentary \u201cAssholes: A Theory\u201d examines the assholing of America, a nation ruled by the biggest asshole of them all: Donald J. Trump. by Nick Schager As U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) famously opined on\u00a0Justified, \u201cYou run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-mirth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}