If 2016 wasn’t a cudgel-like teaching tool that documented the pernicious rise of the unrepentant and unvarnished asshole in American life, then there is no real takeaway from 2016. (I always think of a takeaway as Indian food to go, but in the year of the asshole, business-speak reigns supreme in our land of deal-making and debt.)

The Greatest Generation battled through the Depression and then brought the world safely through the perils of World War II. In the process, that generation voted four times into the Oval Office – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s stewardship of the nation provided hope to a country that was pummeled by financial ruin, suffocated by the Great Dust Bowl, and then challenged by  Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

In contrast, 2016 revealed more about the American character, and perhaps my generation, than anyone wished to know. The past year clearly illustrated, that the deplorable part of our nation, is clearly enamored and vicariously thrilled with asshole behavior via video, printed on hats and t-shirts, delivered in 140-character tweets, and has become  a permanent part of programming on cable news. 2016 was a precursor – a Don Rickles warm-up act – for 2017 and its claim as the year of the asshole. There has never been a greater time to be an American asshole.

The previous sentence is probably a gross exaggeration, because the robber barons of the 19th century were not espousing the tenets of Saint Francis of Assisi, who wrote, “For it is in giving that we receive.”

Not only are assholes popular in America, but they’re also doing big box office abroad. Mein Kampf is a bestseller in Germany. Vladimir Putin is your favorite cuddly KGB uncle, who will slip a Mickey of Polonium 210 into your holiday eggnog. Hell, Syria’s Bashar Assad is a freedom fighter and not a despot who unleashes poison gas on his people.

Vladimir Putin – “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”

On a personal level, I will even confess that I think of myself as sort of an asshole. (I’m sure others vehemently disagree and would delete “sort of.”) I have friends who are assholes. I’ve been involved with women who are assholes. The asshole is a huge part of our American tapestry of personalities that has given us Bob Knight, Richard Nixon, Mariah Carey, Don King and Rush Limbaugh.

And, as an asshole, you can say anything you want. Documentation or the truth isn’t needed. We are encouraged not to take things literally but to examine their figurative meaning. Politeness is an overt symptom of being a chump, and no asshole wants to be a chump. Fuck that. And fuck being polite. You want polite – we’ll bomb the shit out of you.

2017 – The Year of the Asshole

 

Cue the music: Surrender Under Protest by the Drive-by Truckers