When Did Being A Jerk Become A Positive Character Trait?

I’d never heard of Alex Stein before June when I read reports he chased Rep. Dan Crenshaw around, calling him “Eyepatch McCain,” a reference to the injury Crenshaw suffered in Afghanistan, where he lost his right eye and the late Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Some outlets have referred to him as a comedian, but that’s a title plenty of unfunny people bestow upon themselves. A 2014 Insider story wrote of how he’d lost $70,000 on fantasy football. The story says :

His work in reality TV (behind and in front of the camera), as well as his work as a bail bondsman and car salesman allows him a comfortable lifestyle, to say the least.

What’s left out is that his father owns the bail bond business, and at least until this year, he lived in the upper half of a duplex owned by Daddy. The D Magazine story says he told Dad he was moving to New York, but since Stein now apparently works for The Blaze, it seems he hasn’t left the great state of Texas.

Having read as much as I can about Alex Stein and watching a bunch of his videos, I can say that Stein is not all that bright, but he understands the appetite many people have for a “Bum Fights” version of politics. It’s all sizzle and no steak. Still, it works. It landed Alex Stein a gig at The Blaze. He has nearly a quarter million YouTube subscribers, Twitter followers, and 184,000 Instagram subscribers. For someone who is 35 years old (I am estimating based on the Insider piece from 2014 that said he was 27) and has no discernable skills other than buffoonery, it’s a terrific gig.

That said, Alex Stein’s methods are part and parcel of a stench in the political discourse and the use of politics as a platform for notoriety and fame rather than exchanging ideas and having policy debates. Yes, the rough and tumble of partisan electoral politics often takes on an ugly tone and has since the nation’s founding. That will never go away, and it’s not all that big of a deal.

It’s within movements that the debates happen. It is where policy gets formed. It is where people are supposed to persuade others and get them to the point of agreement.

In what possible universe does a charlatan like Alex Stein bring any value to that? Going to Capitol Hill, filming and shouting, “There’s my favorite big booty Latina, AOC,” at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does nothing but make the social media star Congresswoman look like a sympathetic figure.

In the video with Crenshaw, Alex Stein immediately refers to him as “eyepatch McCain” before calling him a “globalist,” “a liar,” and “a traitor.” He also refers to him as “dude.”

In another instance of such behavior, a Twitter guy named Dave Reaboi, who also happens to be a Claremont Institute Fellow, tweeted a photo and comment from the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon).

Here’s the slumped-shouldered, “goblinesque” @jonathanchait at #NatCon3. Was fun to tell him what I thought of him before the panel with @libbyemmons @amber_athey @emilyjashinsky and @ChristinaPushaw kicked off. He looks exactly like you’d expect him to look, doesn’t he? pic.twitter.com/QObw6efljE

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) September 13, 2022

Now, in fairness to Reaboi, Chait is an easy target. He’s a dishonest hack with one particular skill: writing in bad faith. It’s his forte, and he does it well. I have no respect for his work, and more often than not, it doesn’t take much effort to peel back the layers to get to his dishonest efforts. Still, what good comes from Reaboi doing this? I get the impulse. That’s understandable. Still, mocking his appearance and throwing it up on social media for people to pile on? Where is the value in that, other than social media engagement? A few days later, Reaboi tweeted the following:

You can draw a straight (…) line from the fey, juvenile tastes and hobbies of previously well-regarded pundits of the Establishment Right to their weakness in the political arena. pic.twitter.com/RnsbEd8Clb

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) September 17, 2022

David French likes a television show, and somehow that reveals a sort of “weakness” in the political arena? Reaboi gives the game away in reply to his tweet:

I realize that it’s getting harder and harder to come up with David French reaction tweets that aren’t just FFS YOU FUCKING WEAK, EFFEMINATE SISSY.

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) September 17, 2022

There it is! That’s what Dave wanted to say all along. That David French is an “effeminate sissy.” It’s rather funny as the word “sissy” is something I used to hear on the playground in the late 70s and early 80s.

I am not sure Dave gets the irony of behaving like a juvenile while at the same time whining about French’s supposed “juvenile” tastes in particular areas of pop culture.

What makes me laugh somewhat is the idea that these people (the NatCons) believe they are not only the political superiors to mainstream, free market conservatives but their intellectual superiors as well. That isn’t to say some in the movement are not intelligent. Many of them are. That said, many more only pretend they have a level of intelligence that matches David French. If it was so easy to debate the man, why not do it instead of using schoolyard taunts? I mean, does calling French a “sissy” do anything to persuade others?

That’s another thing. The NatCons claim they’re a rising force in American politics. First, if you have to announce it, it’s likely not happening. Second, the politics of the NatCons is not new, though they behave like it is a shiny new toy in the political world. Anyone who has ever read about the late Senator Robert Taft of Ohio knows that. The politics of the NatCons closely aligns with Pat Buchanan. Nothing they’ve added is anything we haven’t heard before, except for their propensity to get deep into the culture wars. But it’s nothing new and they don’t have any new ideas. And the ideas they do have sound like they were cobbled together spending too much time at a bar following the NatCon conference.

Josh Hammer wrote a “primer” for the people who don’t know what it means to be a nationalist conservative. Here is what he wrote about immigration:

Yes, we should build a border wall, mandate universal E-Verify, and treat the cartels operating in northern Mexico as the enemy combatants they are, but we must also drastically reduce legal immigration from its current levels. A temporary full immigration moratorium would help to reconsolidate a deeply divided nation.

What the hell does that mean? How on earth does putting a hold on all immigration “reconsolidate a deeply divided nation?” It’s nonsensical.

Social media unleashed a monster. It brought the “comments section” to the forefront and gave license for people to behave like jerks. Hitting below the belt on social media is not frowned upon. On the contrary, it is rewarded, and it was only a matter of time before people began to realize, “Why not do it all the time?” Alex Stein is the real-life version of a Twitter troll. As for people like Dave Reaboi and his ilk, if they think being masculine means calling people “effeminate sissies” or mocking their pop culture choices then…I don’t know, find a different book about masculinity. One that wasn’t written by a high schooler.

A long time ago, Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal appeared on television in 1968 during the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Vidal, a blue-blood leftist was no doubt an intelligent man. He was not, however, a very good thinker. Bill Buckley was. When Buckley agreed to the debates, he thought it would encompass discussions about the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Instead, Vidal, who was a genuinely loathsome person, used the time as much as he could to attack Buckley personally. He antagonized him at every turn, and Buckley only managed to make Vidal look the fool.

However, during one debate, Vidal hit a button that Buckley could not sit back and take. Vidal called him a “crypto Nazi” and Buckley responded, “Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face, and you’ll stay plastered.” That was it. Vidal got him. If you ever see the exchange you can see the smug grin on Vidal’s face. He got him. That’s the kind of reaction Vidal wanted from Buckley from the start.

Now, to look at Buckley’s reaction, people like Alex Stein and Reaboi would think that was Buckley’s finest moment. But Buckley didn’t think so. Contrary to some accounts of people who say he did not regret it, he did. He said he became “equal of Vidal in intemperance…Obviously my response was the wrong one if it is always wrong to lose one’s temper, as I was disposed (‘the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God’) to believe that it was.” One can quibble with whether or not Buckley meant what he said. I would say he did, but you know how the saying goes: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt.”

While Buckley proved the more intelligent and knowledgable person in those debates, all anyone remembers is one outburst. People like Alex Stein and Reaboi see acting the way Buckley did as a positive. They look at it like a badge of honor. The likelihood their influence (what little they have) lasts long is doubtful.

Being a jerk is easy. And there are plenty of those in the world.