Asmongold and the Death of Right-Wing Humanity (and Standards)

(I swear I can smell him from here. Credit: straight from the horse's mouth, or Instagram as it were)

Asmongold is an interesting guy. He's a streamer, currently the most-watched on the Twitch platform, and he sees no value in personal hygiene. He has expressly stated that he does not take showers simply because he sees no reason to. This has led some users on the Internet to term him "Asswithmold." His Twitch account received a temporary ban in October 2024 for stating that Palestinians deserve to be "genocided," and is also a frequent user of ableist slurs. Such use includes a recent post on Twitter, in which he stated that society would benefit from placing 5-10% of the most, and you best believe I'm quoting here, "retarded kids" in coal mines, adding that "almost all Western cultural problems are derived from adherence to the false god of equality."

In other words, he's in a perfect position to be revered by the American right.

One wonders what could have happened to the right wing of US politics that led them to look up to a profane WoW-playing manchild who likely smells like Mountain Dew and smegma and always seems a sentence away from saying "despite making up a fraction of the population...". Then one realizes that this is the same party that elected Donald Trump, America's favorite pornographer, and it all starts to make sense. Once you elect a president who sees no problem calling his opponent "retarded," then for his supporters, that word is no longer off the table. I hate to think what this would extend to if his supporters believed the multiple credible accusations of rape and pedophilia against him.

The indisputable fact is this: the American right is plagued by a chronic lack of empathy and a genuinely stunning lowering of standards. Their favorite streamer barely thinks of children with mental disabilities as human. Their president barely thinks of women as anything beyond a particular body part to grab. Their president's billionaire playground buddy considers empathy "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization."  These are things that can only be thought by people who no longer consider any degree of kindness to be necessary, people who are so entrapped in the outrage economy that they have lost the way out. And these are the people who are running our government.

I picture America a few years from now. President Asmongold has just shut down the final existing soap company and sent a kid in a wheelchair to a coal mine, before announcing another billion-dollar spending package for the Trump Gaza Golf Resort. I hope that, four years from now, we will reject conservative hatred and pessimism so resoundingly that this sentence reads as complete idiocy. For now, we have to accept that this may as well be where we're heading. As a country, we are what we allow, not even to mention what we admire. And we're getting far too lax in that department.

(P.S. --- To the right-wingers who think my criticism of Asmongold's unkindness is unkind, I encourage you to consider the fact that maybe Asmongold has done more to make me angry than the concept of equality has done to Asmongold.)