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Welcome to the Era of the A-hole.
This is America 2025 — a time when a large segment of the population seems to enjoy being absolutely awful to other Americans.
Not just enjoy it. But take great pleasure in, gleefully, exuberantly, passionately – just be awful. Or petty. Or vindictive.
In other words, be a gigantic a-hole.
There was a moment recently that drove this point home for me. It came in the minutes following Donald Trump’s inauguration. As Trump sat at a desk inside an arena, in front of his screaming maga cult members, who were for some unknown reason thrilled to watch him sign executive orders.
One of those orders required federal workers to stop all remote work and return to working out of an office.
The people cheered wildly when Trump announced it.
Why?
No, seriously. Why? Why would anyone cheer such a thing? How is it possible that any normal human could be so moved by the fact that other people are being told to work out of an office instead of remotely that they’d cheer?
The answer: It’s the Era of the A-hole. And in the Era of the A-hole, it is no longer about what the government, or the people in charge of it, can do to help you, but what it can do to others.
And so, watching these nameless, faceless federal workers be ordered back to the office was a huge personal win for these … people. Because it was screwing with their lives.
Forget, of course, that 99 percent of the people doing remote work were doing perfectly fine jobs, and that most of those jobs were boring, nondescript functions of government that no one thinks much about. And also forget that there’s absolutely no reason for those jobs to be performed inside an office building, and in fact, study after study had found that most of the jobs were performed much more efficiently remotely.
All of that doesn’t even mention that this arbitrary change for no reason whatsoever also upends the lives of the federal workers, forcing them to replan their lives – who’s going to pick up the kids, who can cover practice or dance class, do we need to buy a second car, we now have to budget for gas, and on and on.
They cheered for this.
And it hasn’t stopped.
The same magas have been cheering as an unelected billionaire with huge conflicts of interest has been given unprecedented access to government systems and data collections, as he illegally interrupts the funding of Congressional approved programs and agencies.
They’re not cheering because they have a deep understanding of government functions and have specific issues with the manner in which funding is being handled, but simply because someone is screwing up “government,” as the co-president did last week when he stopped funding all grants and programs. They thought it was fantastic … until their payments stopped or their access stopped or the program they relied on could no longer function.
As awful as all of that ignorance is, though, it pales in comparison to the anti-DEI nonsense that has gripped the magas.
They’ve blamed literally everything – from fires to plane crashes to the New Orleans terror attack – on diversity, equity and inclusion. And they’ve done it with this knowing smirk, because they think we don’t know that “DEI” is a catch-all phrase for the racial and misogynistic epithets they’d like to use.
Trump really ramped up the DEI rhetoric in the wake of the D.C. plane crash. Without a shred of evidence – as if there could be some – he blamed the crash on DEI.
And now, just for a moment, imagine being the parents and family of the female crew member aboard that helicopter. Or the family of any non-white, non-male flying either aircraft.
In a moment of absolute devastation, when all you want is comfort and decency and compassion, there’s the president – the one person who throughout our country’s entire history has provided such comfort in times of tragedy – but instead of soothing words, he’s babbling on and on about DEI and blaming your loved one for the crash. Saying that “common sense” tells him the crash was caused because they let non-white, non-males fly.
At any other time in this country’s history, the president insulting dead soldiers and turning a tragedy with dozens of deaths into a political stunt would be deemed incomprehensible. He would never recover from it. He would be totally ineffective from that point on, a pariah within his own party.
But not now. Now, that was just a Thursday. And by later that day, the same people who should have rebuked his words were back to making excuses for his pardons letting violent cop beaters out of prison.
Because now, the awfulness is normal – celebrated even.
This is life in the Era of the A-hole.
