How America Became a Country Full of Assholes
The new documentary Assholes: A Theory examines the assholing of America, a nation ruled by the biggest asshole of them all: Donald J. Trump.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-america-became-a-country-full-of-assholes
As U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) famously opined on Justified, You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, youre the asshole. Yet in a 2020 America on the precipice of a monumental presidential election, it seems that assholes are not only everywhere you turnin newspapers, on cable TV, at political rallies and protests, and all over social mediabut that they, and their behavior, has been normalized. Its this rising tide of assholery thats the focus of director John Walkers Assholes: A Theory, which adapts philosophy professor Aaron James 2012 non-fiction book into a documentary aimed at both precisely defining the term asshole, and investigating how those who fit that bill have increasingly come to dominate key spheres of modern public life.
Donald Trump isnt seen or mentioned once by name in Assholes: A Theory. Nonetheless, his specter looms large over Walkers film (in theaters Oct. 30, and on VOD Nov. 6), whether during conversations about corrupt Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconithe forerunner of the media-manipulating populist-criminal-strongman trend thats recently swept through Western nationsor passages discussing Facebook, Twitter and Googles prioritization of profit over their responsibility to safeguard democracy from hate speech and disinformation. Without once bringing him up, Walker makes clear that Trump is the embodiment of this problem, given that his election to the highest officeand subsequent flouting of rules and standards of common decencyhas made it appear acceptable, and in fact rewarding, to act in the worst possible manner as a means of achieving ones selfish ends. He is, the film silently contends, the apex of American assholery.
dweller
(23,558 posts)rfn , please
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underpants
(182,271 posts)Thanks.