Selfish Jerk Attack: I Want To Dish It Right Back To Them; Serves Them Right

A new Me Decade? I'm writing off the jerks. 

Matt Walsh is the repugnant, smug sort of fellow who says things like the gun ownership is a more important right than voting and that it should be easier to buy a gun than to vote. 

He's an idiot who I don't normally pay much attention to. I mean, why even bother?

But this fairly recent tweet from Walsh for some reason stopped me in my tracks:

"Got on an elevator without a mask. Guy with his wife demands I put one on. I say I don't have it, but you'll be fine, calm down. He stops the elevator and storms off, calling me 'disrespectful.' It's true. I am. I am not going to respect your paranoia. Get a grip."

This tweet crystallizes for me the ethos of all the entitled jerks out there, the ones that have been given "permission" by the Former Guy Trump to ignore the civility, intelligence, reasonableness and we're all in this together attitude that most of us are more or less into.

They're the ones who abuse service workers on viral videos with tirades about mass wearing regulations. They are the Karens of the world, demanding absolute obedience to me, me, ME! And they are the least deserving of any kind of consideration. 

In other words, the many Matt Walshes of the world are three year olds having temper tantrums. And proud of it. More proud than ever, it seems. 

There's even worse examples than Walsh of course. At least he can put two sentences together and doesn't always live in a fantasy world.   You know the ones with the  smug "knowledge" that Covid is a hoax, Trump is still president, 5G is Bill Gates' attempt to control our minds and Hillary Clinton is drinking the blood of children in the basement of a pizza parlor.

Or something like that. 

The centerpiece of this attitude - whole lifestyle, really -  is, "I don't care." This gang does care about one thing: Themselves and nothing more.  When Melania Trump wore that coat with the message, "I don't really care, do you," on a 2018 visit to a migrant children's camp that her husband was making worse just to be cruel. 

Melania insisted at the time the message was a slap at the "left-wing media," but I'm convinced it was much broader than that. It was part of the "permission" her loathsome husband continually gave and still does give to all the jerks and wannabe jerks out there.  

Trump pulled the jerks out of the closet, so to speak.

They are the enemies of civility and of getting along. Trump kept talking about America First. It wasn't really about America, though.  These legions of people are all about Me first.  The tell comes in two words they always use: Virtue signaling.

 When one person is kind or polite to another, or shows empathy, or tries to help or simply doesn't make a bad situation worse, we say they are polite or civil.  This person does things not only for their own good, but for the well-being of others.  

The huge, unmerry band of Trumpsters can't get their heads around that concept. To them, an act of politeness is "virtue signaling," a false facade to pretend they're above everyone else.

The irony is the more polite among us are better than the jerks.  

I say, give the jerks what they want. They don't want us virtue signaling? Then we won't, at least to them. Of course we want to continue to be kind and considerate to most of the people around us. It's the right thing to do. 

But to the Trump fans and other trash who believe they are entitled to appalling behavior toward everyone, we should hand it right back. 

See them abusing a retail worker? Dish it right back at them.  A Karen demanding a refund and stomping her feet.  Demand compensation from her for wasting your time.  Are they discriminating against BIPOC, which they love to do?  Refuse to give them any consideration. Are they yelling obscenities at us? Yell it right back.  Go ahead, hate the jerks, because they probably hate you. 

I realize that is stooping to their level.  I have to wonder, though, if that's the only thing they understand. Others have marginally more hope for them than I do. Maybe I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, who knows?

In a video from a MeidasTouch podcast, Howard Dean was a little more empathetic than I can force myself to be, by saying this about all these Trumpsters: 

 "The greatest tragedy of Trump was not his corruption......the greatest tragedy was all the people who surrendered their agency as human beings to Donald Trump. That is a sign that something is very wrong in our society where huge swaths of people, maybe as many as one-third of the people decided that their lives weren't worthy enough and they would surrender their agency to basically a crook, to a conman."

Dean continued:

"That's a pathetic construct, though because it means there are an awful lot of Americans who have given up on themselves. And we have to figure out how to motivate them not to do that."

Maybe I'm a lesser man than Howard Dean, and he does raise some good points. But right now, I'm too tired and too disgusted with the "Jerk Corps."

Like Dean, I'm not sure it's possible to redeem or rehabilitate this jerk class. I really just want to write them off, though.