a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and a good haircut

This morning I discovered that conservatives are massively pissed off at Superman. Which, I confess, sort of surprised me. I haven’t paid any attention to Superman since I was a kid. Why would conservatives be angry at Superman?

Then I discovered that Superman is bisexual. Cool. But that discovery triggered an entire cascade of discoveries. I discovered that bisexual Superman isn’t actually Superman. Well, not the Clark Kent/Superman (CK/S) I knew as a kid. He’s actually Jon Kent/Superman (JK/S). Then I discovered that JK/S is the son of CK/S. That was news. Then I discovered that his momma was Lois Lane, which is sort of sweet, I guess. Then I discovered that CK/S was dead. Dead? Superman? He apparently died back in the 1990s. Not from Kryptonite, which you’d expect, but he got…punched to death? Well, okay. Then I discovered that CK/S had been resurrected. Not a surprise; you don’t just chuck away 70-some years of a franchise, do you. Then I discovered he was dead again. This time from Kryptonite. Then I discovered CK/S was…and yeah, I’m more than a little confused at this point…replaced? By a Superman from…an alternate timeline? I’m guessing the alternate Superman also replaced CK/S too. I’ve no clue whether it was CK/S1 or CK/S2 who fathered JK/S. I suppose Lois Lane knows. Not that it matters.

What matters is that Jon Kent/Superman is bisexual. And that has conservatives shocked and offended and angry. Naturally, on learning this, I decided to check the response from the ‘patriots’ at FreeRepublic.

  • Liberals ruin everything. — by NotSoFreeStater (If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice)
  • Where’s a head chopping Muslim when you need one? — by EEGator
  • and people wonder why I keep posting “fags are gross and sick” every time a faggot thread comes out. — by max americana (FIRED LEFTARD employees at our office every election since 2008 and enjoyed seeing them cry.)
  • Superman decorates and takes it up the butt? Has Metropolis been renamed Gommorah too? — by Scott from the Left Coast (Make Orwell Fiction Again)
  • I am so tired of Hollywood turning our childhood super heroes into fags. There is not a thing wrong with a straight man (or woman) being a superhero or just plain hero! I hate Hollywood these days. Bunch of butt lickers — by JoJo354 (JUST SAY NO to covid vaxx!)

Classic. We have a child born from the union of a woman from Earth and an alien from another planet (wait…are Kryptonites Kryptonians people from Krypton even human? Are they the same species as Earth humans?) who has apparently inherited the powers of their (do we know JK/S’s pronouns?) biological father (so those powers are genetic? They have their mother’s eyes and their father’s x-ray vision?) and somehow conservatives are distressed because this being doesn’t observe the religion-based cultural mores of 1950s United States.

I’d say this outrage at JK/S’s sexuality defies logic, but clearly logic doesn’t fit into it (I’m with Rita Mae Brown on this: If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle — and now I’m imagining the response of conservatives if JK/S is shown riding side saddle). I can’t decide if this performative anger is comical or just sad.

Speaking of sad and comical, when I was researching the history of Superman, I came across an image of post-resurrection CK/S. When he came back to life, the poor bastard had a mullet. A mullet. I’m cool with JK/S being bi…but that mullet on CK/S was an abomination. Props to JK/C for having a good haircut.

hypocrites, quacks, and liars

Comrade Trump returned to Iowa yesterday. I considered attending his rally because I’m still a sociologist at heart. I’m curious about the structure of communities and groups. I’d been to one of his early campaign rallies, and I was interested to see if a post-presidential rally would be different. But it turned out I wasn’t interested enough to actually go.

By all accounts, Trump did what he was expected to do–what he’s always done. He lied, he complained, he bragged, he sneered. For an hour and 43 minutes, he repeated his lies about the 2020 election, he complained about how he’s treated, he bragged about his ‘accomplishments’ and he sneered at his detractors. He accused the news of being ‘fake’, he vilified President Uncle Joe, he praised the people who praised him and denigrated people who didn’t. In front of a crowd of a few thousand people, Trump declared, “We don’t have free speech anymore.” In other words, he was the same Comrade Donald Trump he’s always been.

His audience was also the same audience they’ve always been. White, angry, afraid, resentful, hateful, sanctimonious, ignorant. Not necessarily stupid, but deliberately and willfully ignorant. Jeff Kaufmann, the Iowa Republican Party chairman, described Trump as “the middle finger to doing things the same old way, to the fat cats and the corporate welfare that Democrats now support and Republicans supported in the past. He represents an exasperation.” The only way a person can perceive Trump as a champion of ordinary people and Democrats as promoting ‘fat cats and corporate welfare’ is to be deliberately ignorant.

Nothing I’ve seen or read about the rally was surprising. Disappointing, to be sure, but not unexpected. What is most disappointing is that Iowa’s GOP establishment–notably Governor Kim Reynolds and Senator Chuck Grassley–openly embraced Trump. Even more disappointing, they seemed to acknowledge their support for Trump is based entirely on their desire to remain in power.

Grassley, after getting Trump’s public endorsement, said, “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart.” Compare that to what he said a few months ago, shortly after the election results were certified.

“The reality is, he lost. He brought over 60 lawsuits and lost all but one of them. He was not able to challenge enough votes to overcome President Biden’s significant margins in key states…. He belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way. He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the hollow husk of a former principled conservative.

There was a time when Grassley was a principled conservative–a politician I disagreed with, but who I believed had integrity. I believed he truly cared about governance. Now Grassley is just a hollow husk of a politician. He’s delighted to accept the endorsement of a man who took “extraordinary and unconstitutional actions” if it helps him get re-elected. What does that tell us? It’s evidence that the GOP has evolved into a party of misinformation, of lies and liars, of corruption and chicanery, a party of grifters and con artists.

I can’t tell you how sad that makes me. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in Iowa voters, or how ashamed I am that this state is represented by hypocrites, quacks and liars.

vax revelation

You’ve watched this scene on television and in the movies — the bad guy, confronted with their criminal activities, says, “I never meant for this to happen, nobody was supposed to get hurt, it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, I just wanted to scare people.”

I think that’s what happened with the Republican Party. A few days ago I wrote that the news media was far too generous when they suggest the response of Republican governors to the covid pandemic was due to incompetence. It’s not; it’s part of a deliberate systematic political strategy intended to make every facet of the Biden administration fail. I think they were (are) willing to sacrifice some lives — including the lives of their own supporters — in an effort to undermine any policy success Uncle Joe might achieve.

I don’t think they meant for this (last year in the State of Alabama, for the first time in its recorded history, more people died than were born) to happen. I think they just wanted to scare people so they’d mistrust Uncle Joe and Democrats. But it went too far, and now it’s too late to change course without admitting they’re at fault.

And they’re getting a lucky break. Some Trump/GOP supporters are beginning to realize they’ve been lied to. Some of them are starting to understand that NOT getting vaxxed was a mistake. How is that a lucky break for the GOP? The people promoting this are drawing the wrong conclusion. They’re not blaming the GOP politicians who’ve minimized the threat of Covid; they’re blaming Democrats and progressives for (and I swear, I am NOT making this up) for tricking Trump supporters into not getting vaxxed. How? By suggesting they should get vaxxed. A friend brought this to my attention:

I really thought this had to be a joke. I mean, it’s that stupid. I thought somebody digitally faked an insane Breitbart-looking screenshot to mock conservatives. But no. It turns out Breitbart writer John Nolte really truly actually wrote that (here’s the piece, if you can stomach it).

Not all of Nolte’s readers agree with him. For example, this guy:

If the vax works, then a mandate isnt necessary…If the vax doesnt work, then a mandate isnt necessary….its called science.

That is so far from anything remotely resembling science that there’s no existing term to describe it. We’d have to invent an entirely new word to describe how wrong it is. How could anybody possibly convince the person capable of writing that indescribably stupid sentence to get vaxxed? Nolte apparently thinks the only way to convince him to is by suggesting he’s the victim of a left-wing conspiracy to prevent him from getting vaxxed.

“No one wants to cave to a piece of shit like [Howard Stern], or a scumbag like Fauci, or any of the scumbags at CNNLOL, so we don’t. And what’s the result? They’re all vaccinated, and we’re not! … The push for mandates is another ploy to get us to dig in and not do what’s best for ourselves because no one wants to feel like they’re caving to a mandate.”

This ridiculous ‘revelation’ might be enough to convince some anti-vax Trumpists to get vaxxed just to piss off liberals — and while that’s stupid, I’m okay with it. I’ve stopped feeling sorry for anti-vaxxers who die from Covid (and those who survive but will go bankrupt trying to pay for their enormous medical bills). I don’t feel sorry for them, but I’d be happy to see that happen a lot less often.

“No, no, wait, we were wrong to shun the Vax!”

Speaking of revelations (and we kinda were), let me carom off-topic and bang into the Christian New Testament Book of Revelation. The text was written on the Greek island of Patmos sometime around the year 96. You may be wondering, “Greg, old sock, why are you nattering on about the obscure island on which a Biblical text was written?” I’m glad you asked. I’m nattering on about it because the book was written in Greek. And because the ancient Greek term for revelation — for the experience of discovering, especially in a striking way, something previously unknown or unexpected — is apokálypsis. Apocalypse.

It would be weirdly fitting if a right-wing nutjob writer could inspire a revelation among right-wing nutjob anti-vaxxers to mitigate a medical apocalypse.

it’s not incompetence

There’s an opinion piece in this morning’s Washington Post about Tate Reeves, the Republican governor of Mississippi and that state’s appalling response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s the headline:

Tate Reeves and the high cost of covid incompetence

Similar opinion pieces have been written about almost every Republican governor in the United States, and they all make the same stupid ass claim of incompetence. The first covid death in the US was in February of 2020; this is September 2021. We’ve been dealing with covid for nineteen (19) months now. We’re closing in on 700,000 deaths from covid.

This is NOT a result of incompetence. We’ve developed a vaccine–three vaccines, in fact, all of which are pretty damned effective in reducing the transmission of the virus AND mitigating the symptoms of the disease AND drastically reducing the potential of dying from the disease. We know wearing a mask reduces transmission of the disease. We know social distancing helps. WE KNOW HOW TO FIGHT THE FUCKING COVID VIRUS.

That we still have ICUs full of covid patients is NOT a result of incompetence. It’s an intentional political strategy.

I’m not saying Republican governors and Republican strategists cobbled together a conspiracy to murder their own supporters. I’m not saying the GOP gathered together in a room and worked out a plan designed to spread covid. What I’m saying is the GOP wants President Uncle Joe to fail–to fail in every aspect of his administration. The economy, public health, national infrastructure, international diplomacy, the military, agriculture, the justice system –pick an issue, and the GOP wants Uncle Joe to fail at it. They want him to fail, and work to make him fail, so they can then accuse him of the failure. And they’re willing to quietly sacrifice lives to see that happen.

Gov. Tate Reeves (R) at the top of the stairs.

Remember, all of these GOP governors and senators and congress-folks and political operatives are fully vaxxed. They’re not stupid (okay, some are stupid; some are really stupid, and then you’ve got the Gohmert Scholars who are ohmyfuckinggod stupid). They’ll say, in the quietest voice possible, they believe the vaccines are effective and will save lives. They’ll say they think people should get vaxxed. But they also say–and say it much louder and more often–that patriotic citizens should be free NOT to get vaxxed, NOT to wear masks, NOT to trust the CDC.

That’s not incompetence. Failure to implement and enforce a covid vaccine mandate isn’t incompetence; it’s deliberate. Failure to implement and enforce mask mandates isn’t incompetence; it’s intentional. Promoting and encouraging resistance to basic public health regimens isn’t incompetence; it’s purposeful. At best, it’s willful indifference–a casual disregard for the safety and welfare of others. More likely, it’s a reckless lack of concern about the risk incurred by others.

You know what? If you (and yes, I’m talking about you) were standing at the top of some steep stairs debating with a buddy whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and you tapped your buddy in the chest with a finger to make a point, and your buddy fell down the stairs and died, you’d be guilty of a crime. You didn’t mean to kill your buddy; you were aware of the stairs, but weren’t really thinking about them; you were indifferent about the safety of your buddy. If you were standing by those stairs and gave your buddy a shove to scare them, and your buddy fell and was killed, you’d be guilty of a more serious crime. You didn’t mean for your buddy to get hurt or die, but you knew you were at the top of some stairs and you acted recklessly.

If you’re the Governor of Mississippi and you and all 3,000,000 of your constituents are standing at the top of the stairs debating Die Hard and you poke them in the chest to make a point and 473,000 of them fell down the stairs and 9,000 of them died…well.

No, that’s not incompetence. You know you’re at the top of those stairs, and you know folks could get seriously hurt and maybe die if they fell, and you fucking poked them in the chest to make a point anyway.

i had a thought

So Texas legislators got clever and cute; they found a way to dodge the civil rights protections that allow pregnant folks control over their reproduction. They cobbled together a devious, shifty way to stop abortions–which, after all, is a safe, legal medical practice they disapprove of for their personal religious reasons.

See, the mechanism by which the courts protected civil rights involved is grounded in the 14th Amendment. That amendment is divided into two chunks. The first chunk defines who qualifies as a US citizen. We can skip that for now. It’s the second chunk we need to pay attention to. The second chunk says…well, hell, just read it:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

There it is. No State–like, say, Texas–can make or ENFORCE a law that deprives a citizen of their rights under the Constitution. That ‘enforcement’ business is where Texas got cute. The State of Texas doesn’t enforce any abortion ban. Instead, it relies on ordinary citizens to step up and sue the shit out of anybody who performs or aids or abets an abortion. If the Federal government says, “Yo, Texas, c’mon, you know abortions are legal, you can’t do just ban them,” Texas can say, “Hey, it’s not me, I’m not doing anything, I’m just standing here with my hands in my pockets.”

Cute and clever, right?

I had a thought. It’s just a thought; I haven’t done a lick of research about this. But if this shit stands…and given the Trumpist-dominated SCOTUS, it might…my thought is this: maybe we can turn the idea on its head.

Democratic-run states can pass similar laws. If anybody aids or abets a firearm sale that results in an injury or death, we can sue the shit out of everybody involved. The person who sold the gun, the people who hired the person who sold the gun, the individuals who assembled the gun, the company that manufactured the gun. They all aided and abetted the injury.

Now apply that to catching Covid, or attempting to vote, or polluting the air, or contributing to climate change, or or or. Hell, make it so private citizens can sue clothing manufacturers for failing to put workable pockets in women’s clothes–surely we can come up with an argument that requiring a woman to carry some sort of bag at all times is an infringement on their right to…something. Autonomy? Doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, because the point–as with the Texas abortion law–isn’t necessarily to WIN the lawsuit. It’s to harass and intimidate; it’s to force the people we disagree with to cough up the coin (and the time) necessary to defend themselves in court.

Okay, I admit, that would be a shitty way to behave. It’s a shitty way to even think. But right now, I’m kinda okay with that.

We can be cute and clever too.

i am asshole, hear me roar

At the beginning of August I wrote a post about the response of the patriots at FreeRepublic to all those anti-vax fuckwits who, as they’re about to die a preventable death from Covid, suddenly see the benefits of being vaxxed. I titled the post Asshole Culture.

A few days later somebody asked me, “Greg, old Sock, this ‘Asshole Culture’ of which you speak, qu’est-ce que c’est?” Which is a good question. For those of us who spent too much time hanging out in grad school Sociology coffee shops, ‘culture’ is an overarching term to describe the social behaviors and norms of groups, grounded in the shared knowledge, beliefs, customs of the individual members of those groups. So Asshole Culture is basically the associated social behaviors of assholes.

Back in 2015 I began calling certain members of the Republican Party the Fuckwit Collective. I did that because they were, you know, a collection of fuckwits. Seemed pretty obvious. It was pretty obvious. But it was also naive.

Anti-mask/anti-vax assholes.

See, I thought the Fuckwit Collective was doing cruel stupid shit because they were just too stupid to understand that what they were doing was cruel. Silly rabbit, that was naive. It’s become clear to me now that a LOT of conservatives are doing cruel stupid shit NOT because they’re stupid, but because they’re cruel. Either the Fuckwit Collective has evolved into full blown Asshole Culture, or they were always assholes and I failed to give them credit for it.

Let me simplify it even more. This is the mantra of Asshole Culture:

I do/do not want to do this thing. I don’t care if it helps/hurts other people. You can’t make me do or not do this thing. I will go way the fuck out of my way to create a disturbance sufficient to make others miserable in order to do/not do/stop other people from doing this thing. I am Asshole, hear me roar.

Examples? You want examples? Dude. Obviously, the anti-vax assholes. It’s not just that they don’t want to be vaxxed, they don’t want other folks to be vaxxed. Why? Because it makes them feel bad, it makes them feel weak and vulnerable. So they act like assholes. They disrupt free vaccination sites to prevent other folks who WANT to be vaxxed from getting the vaccinations. They not only refuse to wear masks themselves, they don’t want others to be masked. They will disrupt school board meetings that want to keep kids safe by enforcing mask mandates. They will threaten school board members at their homes.

Open carry assholes.

Another example? Open carry assholes. The assholes who want to be openly armed in line at the Dunkin Donuts. Others (and I’ve done this my ownself) will mock them for being timid, afraid to stand in line at Dunkin Donuts without their guns, but that’s not true. They’re not afraid; they’re just assholes. Their intent isn’t self protection; their intent is to intimidate others, to make other people uncomfortable.

Another example? Aggressively Christian assholes. The assholes who insist on putting Christian religious symbols in public non-religious venues. Like the Christian cross recently placed at the entrance of the Mission Command Complex at Fort Dix. That wasn’t an assertion of religious belief; it was just some asshole trying to provoke a response which will allow them to claim to be persecuted. The intent wasn’t to promote Christianity; the intent was to piss off non-Christians.

Anti-trans assholes.

Still more examples? Defending the 1/6 insurrectionists as ‘tourists’. Calling for Biden to be impeached for withdrawing from Afghanistan. Performing fake audits on the 2020 election results. Claiming there’s a war on Christmas. Protesting at citizenship ceremonies. Insisting on ‘patriotic’ fireworks displays during a drought. Scaring people about trans folks using public toilets. None of these behaviors are sincere expressions of belief; they’re all examples of assholes being assholes.

Asshole Culture is nothing more than performative indignation intended to insult or outrage or intimidate others. It’s now the dominant culture in the modern Republican Party. How did that happen? Why did it happen?

My assumption is it happened because there’s almost zero consequences for being an asshole if you’re white.

policy discussion

GOP: BIDEN GAVE AFGHANISTAN TO THE TALIBAN!!!
DEM: He implemented the deal the Trump administration negotiated.
GOP: HE DIDN’T FOLLOW TRUMP’S PLAN!!!
DEM: Trump didn’t have an actual withdrawal plan. He simply said he wanted to withdraw the troops.
GOP: TRUMP HAD A PLAN!!!
DEM: Okay. What was it?
GOP: WITHDRAW OUR TROOPS SAFELY!!!
DEM: That’s not a plan. That’s just a slogan.
GOP: IT’S A PLAN!!!
DEM: I’m not sure you understand the definition of ‘plan’.
GOP: BIDEN WANTS AFGHAN REFUGEES IN AMERICA TO VOTE FOR DEMS!!!
DEM: What?
GOP: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!!!
DEM: Uh…


GOP: FAKE ELECTION!!! TRUMP WON!!!
DEM: That’s just not true.
GOP: MASK MANDATES ARE OF THE DEVIL!!!
DEM: Maybe you should sit down, have a glass of water, you’ve been under…
GOP: SEND OUR KIDS BACK TO SCHOOL FOR FREEDOM!!!
DEM: …a lot of stress lately. Maybe get some sleep.
GOP: BIDEN IS A BRAINDEAD PEDOPHILE!!! IMPEACH NOW!!!
DEM: Jesus suffering fuck.
GOP: IMMIGRANTS ARE BRINGING COVID TO AMERICA IN GALLON MILK CONTAINERS!!! FOR BIDEN!!!
DEM: Would you please stop shouting?
GOP: YOU’RE CENSORING ME!!! CANCEL CULTURE!!! FREEDOM!!! 5G!!!
DEM: …
GOP: WHERE ARE YOU GOING??? RUN AWAY LITTLE BITCH! PUSSY CUCK LIB!
DEM: …


MEDIA: Democrats refuse to engage in policy discussion; Republicans upset.

asshole culture

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve had the stomach to delve into the feverish miasma of FreeRepublic, so this morning I decided…wait. Damn it. Okay, sorry, first tangent of the day. Can you actually ‘delve’ into a ‘miasma’?

I mean since the 1600s, ‘miasma’ generally referred to effluvia or foul-smelling vapors that rose from the ground and was considered to be infectious or injurious to health (which is applicable to FreeRepublic). But ‘delve’ comes from the Middle English term delfan, which meant “to dig, turn up with a spade or other tool, excavate.” Can you dig a stink? Not so much. However, I see that modern definitions of ‘delve’ include ‘to search for information’ so I’m going to go with yes, you can delve into this particular miasma.

Sorry. Back to business. FreeRepublic, where Asshole Culture masks itself as patriotism. The first post that caught my eye was about an article in the New York Post, a daily tabloid local to NYC.

“An unvaccinated Virginia man who thought he was ‘invincible’ to COVID-19 is rallying anti-vaxxers to get their shots from his hospital bed, where he is laid up with a dire case of the virus.”

Now, I’m fairly certain that none of the Freep folks who responded to the article actually 1) live in NYC or 2) read the NY Post on a regular basis, or 3) give a rat’s ass about what happens in NYC. But this topic is raw meat for FreeRepublic patriots. And they didn’t disappoint.

  • “People should direct their anger to the culprit…Chiiina.” by HighSierra5 (The only way you know a commie is lying is when they open their pieholes.)
  • “has he received the correct Rx, or is he being used? did he take preventative HCQ, or was that politically not allowed?” by Diogenesis (Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum)
  • “Doesn’t look like any kind of hospital room I’ve ever been in.” by Mathews (It’s all gravy, baby!)
  • “Crisis Actor. Clowns giving money away.” by Cletus.D.Yokel
  • “If you’ve decided not to vax, you really must have Ivermectin or HCQ on hand.” by G Larry (Those destroying the Constitution must demonize those who would defend it.)
  • “I would much rather die from Covid than live with the shot.” by Safrguns
  • “An unvaccinated Virginia man should shut up it’s his business not ours or this could be another Fake” by butlerweave
  • “Put this guy beside one of the people killed or maimed by the shot. And what therapies were used? Ivermectin? HCQ? Anything? No…” by DesertRhino (A coup government may not claim the protection of the same constitution it overthrew. )
  • “Another sick fat dude. Maybe COVID isn’t the problem. When you’re obese, there’s a lot of crap that can kill you…” by Magnatron
  • “Who sticks a damn microphone up to a dying man’s mouth so he can make a PSA? This is as phony as a 6 dollar bill. Looks like that hospital needs to finish up it’s drywall.” by dforest (huh)
  • “If the media wanted, they could print about 12,000 human interest stories how someone got the vaccine, then died.” by Flick Lives (We may or may not have reached herd immunity, but we’ve definitely achieved herd stupidity.)
  • “This is the third story I’ve read this week where a supposed average everyday person is “dying” from COVID and giving us a dire warning of the need to get vaxxed. Funny how all three of these poor souls are overweight/obese and were probably already suffering from one or all of diabetes, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, or kidney failure due to their being fat slobs.” by Qui is (Biden spews and Harris swallows)

These folks are why the Tractor Supply Company had to put up signs warning their customers NOT to ingest large animal de-worming chemicals. They’re shining examples of willful stupidity tempered with arrogant unthinking nationalism, completely unfettered by empathy.

Another short tangent. You may have noticed one of the Freep commenters had a tag line that read Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum. That’s the motto of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, which back in the 11th century were more commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller. They were a religious military order–crusaders and all that. The motto translates as “defence of the faith and assistance to the poor”.

Asshole culture may not be immune to Covid-19, but they’re certainly immune to irony.