What is an asshole?
So far, I’ve mostly discussed low-scale manipulative and controlling behavior, stuff with low social stakes that’s pretty easy to overlook. I’ve touched on domestic abuse, systemic abuses—like pushy marketing emails and the health insurance industry in general—and catastrophic abuses, specifically the current Shitler dictatorship and his bootlicking shock troops, ICE.
Basically, all I’ve said so far is that some tactics are manipulative or abusive and that those tactics can be direct and obvious, or they can be low-key, indirect, and/or secretive.
I’ve already noted that the people carrying out the manipulation may not be responsible for it.
So just who are the assholes?
Do I have anything better to define them than “you’ll know ’em when you see ’em”?
Or “everyone is a bit of an asshole sometimes”?
I do.
My theory is this:
An asshole is someone who does not natively connect with the past, future, other people, or even their own environment.
They do not extrapolate from their own past actions to their current status. Or from their current actions to a possible future status. They do not see other people as being self-aware; they think of other people, whether individually or in groups, as programmable, exploitable machines: robots, dolls, sheeple. They don’t see any value in preserving or maintaining anything around them: community, rules, principles, environment, even their own living space. They do not even see their own past or future selves as connected to themselves.
In short, an asshole is someone who, without mitigation, will tend to shit where they eat.
“How could they do something so thoughtless?” “Who even does that?” “Are they stupid?” “It’s on fucking national TV, why are they still lying about this?” “What did they think would happen?” “Don’t they realize they’re screwing themselves over?!?”
Shitler is an unmitigated asshole. He lacks the type of consciousness—that is, the conscience—that would be able to anticipate the consequences of his actions.
There’s a reason I’ve been talking so much about awareness.
Conscience isn’t about actions. It’s about awareness.
People with a conscience are aware of danger, manipulation, and equitability. They have to be trained out of it in order for an asshole to take advantage of them.
People like me who have been trained to abandon this awareness from a young age are vulnerable to subsequent assholes. In order to keep from getting suckered again and again, we have to rebuild that awareness and defend it against attack.
Ironically, assholes are vulnerable to the same fucking tactics, almost more than anybody else. Nobody, but nobody, gets suckered like an asshole.
The difference is, they have a narrative about losing that portrays them as secret winners.
Here’s the one that amuses me the most:
“I’m just supporting the winning side. That’s just smart. People who don’t? Fucking losers.”
Go into any comment section where the MAGAts hang out. You’ll see it everywhere.
Because most MAGAts have no conscience, they’re not actually conscious of the fact that they’re licking boots when they say shit like that.
And wow they hate it when you point it out.
Bootlicking stinks. It leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouths.
Unmitigated assholes will punish you if you point out that they’re bootlickers. They will start by feeding you their internal narrative about how they’re really winning and you’re really losing.
They will, in short, attempt to micromanage your opinion.
When an unmitigated asshole is resistant to facts, it’s because facts don’t mean anything to them.
Because they don’t know what facts mean.
All they know is the narrative of winning and losing.
And they can’t afford to lose.
*Please note that antagonizing an asshole by pointing out the truth in a way they can actually process is unsafe.
You can find the Asshole Mitigation Plan series outline here.
