Does Office Chair Ergonomics Explain The Claremont Strain of Trumpism?
Photo by Beadillon, CC BY-SA 3.0
Look, who doesn’t have an occasional run in with OSHA regs from time to time, but to base a political philosophy explainer around it? Joel Mathis kind of makes it work, writing on his SubStack:
The Trump 2020 lawyer went on to reference the Declaration of Independence, saying that “our founders lay this case out.”
“There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable,” he said. “At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”
And what, pray tell, are these intolerable abuses?
But it’s the threat that Eastman sees the left as posing which runs through the interview. He at one point describes it broadly as an attempt to “completely repudiate every one of our founding principles,” and in more detail as an attack on everything from sexual and gender norms to gas stoves. He warns of “OSHA telling me what kind of chair I can have in my home office.”
What a schmuck.
For what it’s worth, here is what I found about OSHA’s office chair requirements.
Chairs should be well-designed and appropriately adjusted. You chair should provide support to the back, legs, buttocks, and arms, and it should reduce exposure to awkward postures. Desks should provide enough leg-room and allow for the proper placement of computer components
Not that it matters, really. The chair thing is a throwaway line that I shouldn’t be inordinately distracted by, and yet … it sure seems telling tome.
I spent a few years hanging out (virtually) in the proximity of some Claremont alums, and developed pretty close relationships with a couple — or, at least I thought so. I was insecure about my own intellectual abilities, they seemed really smart and well-read — more than me, certainly — if a little bit odd, but always chattering on about their fealty to the Founders and the Constitution. Seemed even noble to me, even if I didn’t share their general ideological outlook. So I thought it was odd when so many of them signed on with Trump in 2016, a guy who clearly didn’t care about A) reading or B) the Constitution.
Clearly I was wrong.
This Eastman quote suggests that Claremont’s brightest minds are (with some exceptions, I’m sure) a perfect fit for Trump: Pouty man-babies who shout “You’re not the boss of me!” and threaten to burn the house down if somebody suggests they use a slightly more comfortable chair.
Read the entirety of the piece here:
For the Trumpists, men with guns forcibly taking adolescents away from their loving family is a responsible use of government power, but mandating a chair have 5 legs instead of 4 is tyranny.
But this isn’t hypocrisy or even a contradiction.
The key terms are “taking an adolescent away from OTHER PEOPLE’S family” versus “limiting MY choice of chairs.”
There is a bit of talk around the interwebs about David Brooks’ latest column, wherein he resurrects the old lie about Trumpists as the displaced alienated proetariat.
It is pointed out that in fact Trumpists are the petit bourgeoisie, the local aristocracy of auto dealers and one truck contractors who yelp for the freedom they would deny everyone under them.Report
I forget you coined it or I would give credit, but someone pointed out that a key Tennant of true Trumpism and MAGA is having just enough disposable income to be dangerous…Report
You can pry my used Aeron chair out of my cold dead hands.Report
I don’t even know if they’re that principled. Most of this is grifting. I mean … does anyone other than a crazy person believe regulations on office chairs are a causus belli?Report
It’s a bit histrionic either way—though no more than what we see from the left—given that OSHA does not in fact regulate home office chairs (see example 5 here), but supposing for the sake of argument that it were true, it makes more sense if you think of it as an illustration of the extent of the reach of government regulation, as opposed to a specific thing that all on its own is intolerable.
The federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate most purely intrastate issues, and the blatant disregard of jurisdictional limits by both parties really is a very serious abuse of power.Report
Only a crazy person would think any of this has to do with chair regulations, or regulations at all.
They have made it very clear what the existential crisis is. There are plenty of grifters, but the underlying grievance is very real. The grievance is so deep and so real to these people that the Trumpists could marshal a large enough mob to come within minutes of overthrowing a national election they lost.Report
One of the first depositions I ever defended as an associate was for a former railroad worker suing his employer for toxic exposure that lead to cancer. There is a very unique law that allows railroad employees to sue their employers outside of workers’ compensation called FELA. The dude was on oxygen and still smoking cigarettes. At some point during his deposition, he was asked about cigarettes, cancer, the surgeon’s general warning. All of these were fair questions. After these questions, I heard him mutter under his breath about how no expert or something or other was going to tell him what to do.
I’m not a fan of the phrase toxic masculinity. I think it is over used and abused and like most over used or abused phrase can be reduced to “behavior that I do not like.” However, there is a chip on their shoulder attitude I see a lot in right-wingers especially American right-wingers which feels like a permanent manifestation of oppositional defiant disorder and can be real examples of toxic masculinity.
The old joke was that the Democrats were the mommy party and the Republicans were the daddy party. The joke used to refer to the fact that Democrats allegedly wanted to coddle people and provide a safety net but dad’s “actions have consequences” hardness would allegedly teach self-reliance. Now I think the MAGA guys see the Democrats as mommy still but more in the “Mom makes us eat our vegetables and go to bed at a reasonable hour” kind of way. Republicans are the kind of semi-negligent dad that teaches you about sex by letting you watch internet porn and will let you eat ice cream and soda for dinner.Report
As someone who is starting to experience issues with middle age and minor right-glute sciatica (no lower back pain), let me tell you how much I appreciate a well designed chair. Also I can now only drive for about two or so hours before I need a stretching break.
Seriously, this seems to be the product of very different world views and psychologies. So much so that when I hear various rants about safety regulations, I feel like I am looking into people who might as well have been born and raised on different planets/universes. This has been a feature of right-wing discourse in the United States for decades though. I can remember guys on usenet ranting about mandatory seat belt laws and helmet laws from 25-26 years ago and even though it was text on the internet, I could tell that safety regulations of any kind made the blood of these guys boil. I have also heard plenty of stories from the pre-seat belt era of people going flying through their windshields because because of a lack of seat belts. Regulations are written in blood.
There seems to be a real chip on your shoulder/no pointy headed nerd expert (or even worse mom) is going to tell me what to do aspect of American right-wing thought and I just don’t get it.Report
I see no reason why the gov’t should mandate certain safety things. Seat belts? Well, don’t use them and die, not our problem.
Also, remember airbags…they DO kill people. Remember the Takata airbag recall? It’s a federal offense to disable an airbag. So, even when I had those in my car, and there was a documented case to be made that disabling them was SAFER, it was and still is, illegal to do so. So, in this case, the gov’t safety laws actually endangered people and still is doing so.Report
I’m well past middle age now. Years ago I gave up desk chairs entirely and use an exercise ball inflated to the proper size. Doubles as a play toy when the granddaughters are here.Report
Its simple really – business interests want to make obscene amounts of money, and regulation cuts into that. Plus there’s the Elon Musk “I’m smarter then anyone else” strain of business ownership in America these days. SO when government old business it had to treat black men fairly, or pay women equally or prevent injury from factory machinery rich conservative white men balked. They have been at war ever since to dismantle the regulatory state that is keeping gobs more money form them.
And to fight that war they have made the case – fact free though it is – that regulation of any kind is an assault on personal liberty of other white men. The economy pays dearly for individuals who ride motorcycles without helmets, but YOU good man are the ONLY ONE who should decide to ride with one, and if you don’t the economic burden you inflict on a hospital or your family or your business is the price of FREEDOM BABY! Or some such stupidity.Report
I see no reason
A lot of other people do see.Report
I watched the Eastman interview. Chairs, chairs, chairs. An hour and a half without mentioning legal theories or giving his account of 2020. Mathis wrote a really good substack article here, and if anything, the piece should have emphasized furniture more.
Given that all of the above is nonsense, here’s my problem. If I criticize Mathis’s piece, anyone can counter with: yes, he said that the thing about chairs was a throwaway line. But that doesn’t address the fact that Mathis felt it was worth writing about. It doesn’t address the magnitude of Eastman’s other concerns. It doesn’t address the contradiction that if chairs are so trivial, then why is the government involved in everything from the great to the trivial?
The article is a “Old Painty Can Ned” exercise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsTu6W_DEZoReport