Thursday, August 24, 2017

Morning Reading - "Blank Sucking Nullity"


We've been seeing quotes from this piece by David Roth here and there, so we went to take a look. The whole essay, "The President of Blank Sucking Nullity," is a sharply written analysis, not only of Donald "Rump" Trump, but of the boot- lickers around him and the army of nitwits supporting him. While this paragraph about Rump supporters struck us as particularly on point, do yourself a favor and look at the whole read:
To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him—the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted—is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment—abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite.
We saw those thoughtless, howling yahoos reacting to Rump's unhinged babbling in Phoenix this week. It once again reminded us that of all the things that motivate these nihilist slugs, high on their list is their desire to let you know they don't give a damn about you or anyone else not like them. We saw it all during the primaries and the election, in the abstract and in the literal:



Well, guess what? We're just as tired of seeing, reading and hearing about these Rump- kissing morons. As Roth says, they're simply "aspirational Trumps" who share the same "howling and unreflective void" at their core that he does. Every society in the world has them in roughly the same proportion as we do, the unfortunate part for us being that they elected their avatar "president." If they ever had a sense of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship (which we doubt), it's long since been forgotten.

BONUS: Charles Pierce has also run out of f*cks to give about Rump supporters.

BONUS II: Not surprisingly and in fitting with their character, Rump's people think they're the oppressed ones.

(Photo: two of the worst people in the United States)

5 comments:

Grung_e_Gene said...

The reason Trump supporters love the Donald is because unlike most Republicans who give mealy mouth support to conservative bigotry and hatred, Trump says these things full-throated. Sure conservatives will project their vicious evil onto a Mitt Romney, but Mitt had trouble accurately reflecting it back at them. Mitt was a poor mirror for bog standard Conservative evil and conservatives know when a REpublican is being a RINO. Trump is not a RINO, he is the Pure Distillation of Right-Wing ID and Conservative Ego.

W. Hackwhacker said...

Or, in the original German, "Ein volk, ein reich, ein Fuhrer!"

Silver Spring Bureau Chief said...

Even though it was before my time, everything I have read about Nixon and how he and his administration perfected "resentment politics" aligns perfectly with that excerpt. As Gene says, Trump is just the pure distillation of what has been the Rethug M.O. since Nixon and Reagan.

Silver Spring Bureau Chief said...

Resentment politics and victimhood, that is

W. Hackwhacker said...

Right. It taps into an urge to blame others for their own misfortune, irresponsibility, etc., and the best targets for that are always those who are "different" and thus to be feared and treated commensurately.