This article in Politico about the so-called “Barstool Republicans” (named for the pro-Trump Barstool Sports digital media empire) traces the evolution of the GOP over the past couple of decades to the “I’m an asshole and proud of it” ethos it currently celebrates. I’m not sure this fellow is as central as the article makes him out to be — these threads have always been present, particularly among a certain group of young (and immature-but-old) males, and the women who love them. But it’s interesting to see it embodied so thoroughly in a particular person who is, of course, making big bucks selling it as his brand. Is this a great country or what?
One of Trump’s early adopters articulated the mindset perfectly in August 2015, back when Jeb! was still his closest primary threat: “I am voting for Donald Trump. I don’t care if he’s a joke. I don’t care if he’s racist. I don’t care if he’s sexist. I don’t care about any of it. I hope he stays in the race and I hope he wins. Why? Because I love the fact that he is making other politicians squirm. I love the fact he says shit nobody else will say, regardless of how ridiculous it is.”
No points for guessing the author: Dave Portnoy, birthing the Barstool Republican with a single 200-word blog post. Trump transformed the political landscape by tapping into a powerful desire for freedom from criticism or censure — a desire that Portnoy shared, and which has only grown more intense and widespread as the panopticon of social media becomes the primary stage for not just national politics, but civic life at every level.
In a column this February for The Week, the Catholic social conservative writer Matthew Walther referred to “Barstool conservatives” as primarily sharing a “disdain for the language of liberal improvement, the hectoring, schoolmarmish attitude of Democratic politicians and their allies in the media, and, above all, the elevation of risk-aversion to the level of a first-order principle by our professional classes.” In other words: culture-war issues.
Oddly enough, despite the inherent thirst for conflict that it brings, the ascent of Barstool-ism within the Republican Party can be chalked up to ideological diversity within the GOP. What could unite free-market libertarians, revanchist Catholics, Southern evangelicals, and working-class Reagan Democrats but their shared hatred of… actual Democrats?
With that as the party’s guiding principle, and no clear policy agenda to speak of — the 2020 RNC literally did not have a new policy platform — those willing to trash the Democratic cultural regime most loudly and consistently are firmly in command, with more staid Republicans forced to at least provide cover, if not actively follow their cues.
I truly believe that this loathing of liberals, immigrants and racial minorities, especially their aggressive earnestness (and, yes, sanctimony) is what is driving the right to go down the fascist rabbit hole. Aside from the essential bigotry, which is the framework on which all of this ignorance is built, they simply don’t like being challenged and they can’t stand anyone caring about things that require them to behave in a responsible, thoughtful way. It is arrested development. They are stuck in a middle school, early adolescent mindset — even in their 60’s!
I like irreverence and mocking of sacred cows. As I have often said, one of my main influences in life was MAD Magazine. But this stuff is just shallow, stupid, puerile, bully-boy, bullshit. It’s always been with us, but now it’s exalted as a higher calling. It’s not funny and I hate to say it, but it’s present on the left as well as the right although it isn’t dominant.
It’s as if half the country is suffering from a massive case of arrested development and I don’t know what caused it. Participation trophies? Spoiled affluence? Lead in the water?
And the little prince Donald Trump is their perfect avatar:
Donald Trump’s temper-tantrum tactics have been explained by the man himself. The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination admitted to his biographer that, “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Michael D’Antonio, whose book, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, comes out in late September, nabbed the quotable gem during his six hours of interviews with the real estate king, The New York Times reports. However, as all good reporters should, D’Antonio also corroborated Trump’s statement with evidence — from Trump’s ex-wives.
“The little boy that still wants attention,” explained Marla Maples, Trump’s second wife. She wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“He wants to be noticed,” said Ivana Trump, wife No. 1, who recalled sending [Trump] into a fit of rage by skiing past him on a hill in Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Trump stopped, took off his skis and walked off the trail.
“He could not take it, that I could do something better than he did,” she recalled.
This is what his followers relate to.