Book summary “Assholes”: summary

Introduction

You encounter difficult individuals daily who systematically violate shared social norms while expecting everyone else to accommodate them. Modern public life increasingly rewards figures who leverage crude behavior and unearned entitlement to extract status and power at your expense.

Aaron James defines the asshole as someone who allows themselves special advantages in social life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement. In this book, you will examine how everyday jerks share a deep psychological structure with political demagogues and disruptive public figures.

The following chapters explore why society tolerates these disruptive personalities and how you can respond. You will discover how political figures manipulate norms, why economic inequality fuels this behavior, and how you can preserve democratic life.

• What motivates a person to systematically ignore the interests of others?
• How do economic conditions and status anxiety empower political strongmen?
• What practical steps can you take to repair degraded civic and personal relationships?

1. The Bullshitter and the Ass-Clown

Modern political life features public figures who systematically bypass traditional standards of truth. You watch leaders speak without regard for factual accuracy, substituting performance for debate.

Political figures use unrefined speech and tactical unpredictability to bypass truth and maintain voter fascination.

The Bullshitter

Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's definition, a bullshitter produces messy speech. You see that this speaker does not deliberately attempt to deceive you. Instead, the bullshitter speaks primarily to convey a certain impression or to entertain.

This person does not care whether specific statements are true or false. You can observe this style when a public figure asserts false homicide statistics regarding Black Americans. When challenged by Bill O'Reilly, the speaker defends himself by asking if he was going to check every statistic.

The Ass-Clown and Inflamed Amour-Propre

A political figure like Donald Trump uses tactics akin to pickup artists to maintain voter interest. By keeping you guessing, shocking you, and remaining unpolished yet amusing, the politician avoids being easily categorized. This destabilizes observers and keeps you constantly engaged without a firm sense of the politician's true person.

Trump keeps the electorate guessing and amused while chasing the affirmation of being seen as a powerful winner.

A relentless need to be seen as superior in the eyes of others drives these figures. Borrowing from Rousseau's concept of inflamed amour-propre, the author explains how a desperate need for public stature motivates extreme political ambition. A reaction against being mocked often fuels this drive.

Trump's presidential bid was reportedly sparked after President Obama lampooned him at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April 2011.

2. A Force for Good?

Society frequently grants special license and excuses bad social behavior if an individual produces revolutionary products or helps advance a favored political cause. You rely on the moral latitude of forgiveness when exceptional talents seem to justify interpersonal cruelty.

People readily forgive prominent assholes when they perceive them as forces for good or disruptive change.

Apple colleague Jony Ive noted that Steve Jobs felt normal rules did not apply to him and achieved catharsis by hurting people, yet consumers forgave him for the sake of his gadgets. These strains of commitment allow you to overlook routine degradation in exchange for innovation.

Forgiving Achievers

Voters sometimes turn to a dominant political asshole as a last-ditch strategy to restore order and combat a corrupt establishment. You might view an aggressive outsider as the only available remedy against entrenched corruption.

Voters sometimes turn to a dominant political asshole as a last-ditch strategy to restore order and combat a corrupt establishment.

Rooted in Thomas Hobbesian political philosophy, asshole management relies on employing an intimidating figure who can overawe unruly elements and impose order when cooperative systems break down. You face a war of all against all when normal political channels fail to deliver stability.

Supporters back Trump not for his detailed policies, but as a strategic maneuver to tame a broken political system. You gamble that brute force will correct institutional decay even if it tramples democratic norms.

Hobbesian Asshole Management

Relying on an asshole to accidentally produce good outcomes is a high-stakes gamble with uncertain odds. You engage in republic roulette when you assume that a disruptive leader will somehow advance the public interest by accident.

Because an asshole does not act out of a commitment to rightness, any positive outcome is merely fortuitous coincidence rather than reliable governance.

Trump's disruption exposed implicit racism and ended dog-whistle politics, acting as an inadvertent wake-up call to the Republic. You are left confronting a naked lunch of raw power politics when the disruptive gamble fails to yield constructive governance.

3. The Strongman and Inequality

Free trade increases aggregate national wealth through comparative advantage. The losers are repeatedly the same lower-skilled workers who face chronic job insecurity and stagnant wages. Three decades of stagnant wages and eroding middle-class security destroyed the implicit social contract of shared prosperity.

Economic disruption and status contests fuel populist resentment, empowering demagogues who substitute force for democratic norms.

Economists and politicians ignored the necessity of compensating these displaced workers with retraining or wage insurance. The social fabric frayed and opened the door to populist resentment.

Trade Disruption and Status Contests

Political figures engage in public status contests driven by a deep-seated human desire to extract respect and dominate rivals. Thomas Hobbes observed that humans constantly seek relative status and are prone to aggressive conflict over perceived slights to their reputation. When a dominant figure publicly subdues a rival, it triggers this ancient dynamic where the defeated party immediately becomes submissive and civil out of a need for security.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie called Trump incompetent one week, only to endorse him and stand subordinated at a press conference the next week. This performance demonstrates the dominance of the alpha asshole over the beta asshole through vaine-glory.

Historical demagogues used moral outrage against inequality to justify bypassing democratic norms and laws. Huey Long accurately diagnosed the economic corruption and bloated wealth of his era during his 1930s Louisiana governorship and Senate career. He felt fully entitled to use any means necessary, including bypassing legal conventions and institutions, to achieve his political ends.

Huey Long described the political establishment by saying the legislative grub is prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen regardless of party. He defined a demagogue merely as someone who breaks promises rather than someone who corrupts democratic processes, normalizing rule by force over argument.

Demagoguery and Political Violence

Trump's rhetoric encourages political violence by framing civility as a weakness and offering to cover the legal fees of supporters who attack protesters. He dismisses democratic norms of civility as mere political correctness. This rhetoric invokes an erotic aesthetics of fascism rooted in the hatred of outsiders and the approval of physical retaliation.

At various rallies between February and March 2016, Trump encouraged supporters to knock the hell out of protesters and promised to pay their legal fees. These statements occurred at events on February 1, February 22, February 26, March 4, March 9, and March 11. Such actions shift political engagement away from reason and argument toward intimidation and authoritarian force.

Thomas Hobbes argued that humans are naturally unruly and require an absolute despot for peace. Jean-Jacques Rousseau demonstrated that cooperative order is possible through a social contract where citizens obey laws they prescribe to themselves. Popular sovereignty elevates human faculties and transforms individuals from driven animals into moral, autonomous citizens.

True political freedom requires a community of equals who collectively govern themselves through common reason rather than submitting to an absolute sovereign. You must choose between the rule of law through the general will and the arbitrary dictates of a strongman exploiting amour-propre.

4. Saving the Marriage

Repairing a degraded political union requires abandoning contempt, enforcing republican commandments, and adopting everyday coping strategies.

Contempt is the primary destroyer of both marriages and political cultures. Rebuilding trust requires abandoning contempt, practicing mutual respect in daily actions, and reforming political structures such as ending partisan gerrymandering, reforming campaign finance, and adopting ranked-choice voting. Just as a failing marriage cannot be fixed by a single action, repairing a degraded political union requires microchanges in everyday behavior and institutional incentives.

You can follow specific steps to change your civic conduct:

• Stop yelling and find more creative ways of being heard in the larger conversation.
• Decide to think and speak differently, with no whiff of righteous presumption, and offer clear arguments for good faith consideration.
• Learn to take the views of others seriously, giving them an earnest hearing.
• Make concessions and argue respectfully, seeking reasonable consensus.

Civic Repair and Republican Commandments

Stable republics depend on foundational principles that forbid political leaders from weaponizing division or expressing contempt for citizens. A genuine republican order requires that state power is held in trust, officials are accountable to common reason, and public speech appeals to shared understanding rather than base passions. Violating these norms for partisan advantage is an unconstitutional display of contempt for the republic itself.

You must uphold the Two Republican Commandments to maintain liberty as non-domination:

• THOU SHALL NOT divide the populace, but seek unity on terms acceptable to each and every citizen.
• THOU SHALL NOT express contempt for any person or group, but publicly display respect and privately consider, in earnest, its views and their elements of truth.
• THOU SHALL NOT break these two commandments, for personal power or profit, or for party advantage in partisan contests.

Coping with Everyday Assholes

While interpersonal strategies exist for dealing with everyday jerks, they fail to curb aggregate asshole proliferation in society. Individuals can attempt various personal methods to handle rude behavior, but systemic mitigation requires broad cultural and educational foundations beyond single-person control.

One woman dealt with a boss who ate food off her plate by putting out a box of chocolates filled with laxatives.

You can apply personal coping practices when encountering difficult people:

• Avoid the asshole if you can
• Accept that he probably won't listen or change
• Affirm your worth by calling a wrong a wrong
• Hope for his best
• Laugh as much as possible
• Go easy on yourself
• Cooperate on your own terms
• Make small improvements, in order to increase your sense of efficacy
• Politely request to be treated as you prefer
• Mildly retaliate
• Take a public stand to uphold your or other people's rights
• Be understanding of different coping styles

Conclusion

You now see how individual arrogance and macro-political pathologies spring from the same root structure. The everyday jerk and the populist strongman both claim a systematic advantage while refusing the basic burdens of fairness. You defeat this pervasive toxicity only by combining personal resolve with structural civic defense.

1. Recognize entitlement immediately without granting the benefit of the doubt.
2. Refuse to absorb systemic costs that powerful jerks pass on to you.
3. Call out bad behavior publicly when social norms start to erode.
4. Protect democratic institutions from leaders who treat rules as disposable.
5. Practice basic reciprocity and mutual respect in all your daily interactions.

10 Key Ideas

1. Aaron James defines the asshole as someone who allows themselves special advantages in social life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement.
2. A bullshitter produces messy speech without regard for factual accuracy primarily to convey a certain impression or to entertain.
3. A relentless need to be seen as superior in the eyes of others, known as inflamed amour-propre, drives extreme political ambition.
4. People readily forgive prominent assholes when they perceive them as forces for good or disruptive change.
5. Relying on an asshole to accidentally produce good outcomes is a high-stakes gamble with uncertain odds known as republic roulette.
6. Economic disruption and status contests fuel populist resentment, empowering demagogues who substitute force for democratic norms.
7. Huey Long used moral outrage against inequality to justify bypassing democratic norms and laws during his 1930s political career.
8. Repairing a degraded political union requires abandoning contempt, enforcing republican commandments, and adopting everyday coping strategies.
9. A genuine republican order requires that state power is held in trust, officials are accountable to common reason, and public speech appeals to shared understanding rather than base passions.
10. Individuals can apply personal coping practices when encountering difficult people, though systemic mitigation requires broad cultural foundations.