Most people are familiar with the old expression that when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I suppose that is why when you elect a former MMA fighter you are libel to see them use their skills in the halls of Congress at some point. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma did just that when he challenged a witness to a brawl in the middle of a hearing. To his credit (or not), the witness seemed willing to go. They have often called politics blood sport, but I don’t think they meant that literally. Of course, in this day and age it becomes increasingly important to define our pronouns. We need to define exactly who “they” is. Mullin seemed to lean into that behavior as he signaled to a time when Andrew Jackson supposedly won nine duels.

Andrew Jackson was born in 1767 (eight years before the first shots of the revolution) and would survive somehow to 1845. My math is a little fuzzy, but I think that is more than 150 years ago. I’m not a huge fan of basing our rules of decorum on maybe the most uncouth guy in presidential history to sit in the White House. Of course, he held that distinction before the last occupant begrudgingly left in January of 2021.

There are two separate conversations to be had here. First, we need to ask why people continually elect these jackasses to the House of Representatives and the Senate. At a certain point it becomes a question of whether they are too stupid to realize they are jackasses or lack the moral compass to care. Eventually, when you elect enough jackasses then we cease to be surprised when the whole institution devolves into jackassery. When you continually elect jackasses then we become convinced that either the people electing them are also jackasses or they don’t seem to mind that they are being represented by people worse than themselves.

The second consideration are the jackasses themselves. Donald Trump’s oldest sister resigned from the federal judiciary in 2019 when she became embroiled in his scandals. There were questions about how an intelligent woman would get caught up in all of that. Yet, there was some level of admiration for her minimal human standard of recognizing that her position on the bench was no longer tenable.

Rage immediately followed. Why are we praising someone for that minimal standard? So many of our politicians can’t even be bothered to meet that bar. We could include people like Clarence Thomas, George Santos, and Bob Menendez. It seems one party has more than the other, but Menendez’s presence is a sign that it is not just a Republican problem. It is a problem of both political parties holding the people that represent them to a higher standard. It is a problem for voters that blindly pull the blue or red lever without caring who is behind that label. It is a problem for our media that focuses on the horse race mentality and not to the horses actually running the race.

More importantly, it is time to start being more specific. Both parties have crooks and jackasses in them, but not every politician is a crook or a jackass. Some are honorable people simply trying to do the public’s business. Others are crooks and jackasses. When you wave a wand and call all of them the same thing you cheapen the threat that those crooks and jackasses pose. If your conservative representative or senator is a jackass then find someone that is conservative and not a jackass. If you can’t then maybe that should tell you something.

Author’s Note: I have to thank those that participate in the comments section for spurring me on to offer an extended commentary.

I remember reading “The Apology” for the first time in one of my political science classes in college. It was there that Socrates used the term “gadfly.” The term stuck with me and was eventually applied to others in history like Martin Luther King Jr. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the term always took on a special significance after that as it got attached to people that unapologetically spoke their mind even when they did not benefit from doing so.

What I found interesting in the comments was the problem of “bothsidesism” because there are voices on the left and right that consider themselves as gadflies. I suppose that’s true and yet all of the assorted vociferous politicians on the right never seem to actually offer anything of substance. Socrates wanted us to be better. Martin Luther King wanted us to be better. I see AOC in the same light. People like that are rarely appreciated in their own time. Their commentaries become annoying to some and inconvenient to others. Yet, they always have substance.

Those other folks remind me of a beautiful song by John Lennon when he was with the Beatles. In “Across the Universe” he offered these lines back to back: “Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind…” and then “nothing’s going to change my world.” Lennon is often credited with brilliant irony when in fact he stumbled on it accidentally. I’m positive he probably never grasped the incredible irony of those lines being back to back.

Like Lennon, many of the “luminaries” on the right likely see themselves as gadflies when they are really just a bunch of jackasses. The fortunate difference in this case is that at least Lennon was a jackass with talent. Naturally, people around here know the difference, so belaboring the point is just indulgent. For any outsider that might stumble in, the difference is subtle. It basically comes down to the purpose behind the annoyance. One wants us to be better while the other just wants to be noticed.

It doesn’t change the fact that both can be irritating in the moment. Any challenging person can be irritating. The question is whether we ever move on from the irritation. If the motive behind the irritation is to provoke thought then we have to. If the motive behind the irritation is attention then we can’t.