So I'm a Libtard Elitist and I'm Supposed to Know About the Costo Guys to Escape My Libtard Bubble

This is why Donald Trump won the election.

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In a better world, we’d all probably still work a decent amount, albeit that work would have more meaning—or at least better pay. We definitely wouldn’t work quite as much and most certainly not under conditions that operate in a thousand different ways to demean and diminish every human involved at every level, while somehow serving to only enrich sociopathic billionaires. But in that better world, it’s likely that the Costco Guys would still work the same job they do in this one, which is to be a relatable American slob who makes weekly pilgrimages to big box stores to get what should be a month’s worth of food. Since the election, the broader political discourse has reverted to its most servile and useless reflexes, and even as the prophecies of Q nearly came to fruition, Donald Trump’s reelection kicked off a bunch of predictable and depressing responses. None of this is surprising, exactly, but they served as fresh reminders of how things work, and how they don’t. The most common one is the left needs its own Joe Rogan (although they had that in 2020), or the left needs to get out of its bubble and relate to the concerns of the slavering orc demographic who voted for Trump despite or because he routinely appears on television with toilet paper stuck to both his shoes.

Other takes have been flooding my newsfeed, like Democrats blaming trans people for their electoral dickfire in a way that should confirm their cynical performative allyship was always as cynical and performative as it appeared to be. These kinds of takes are pretty bleak if considered in full. No one in the Professional Opinion Haver class seems to ever learn anything, and this is a stark reminder of overarching structural rottenness as The Usual Dumb Things That Pundits Say to avoid pinning this election on the Democratic establishment pimping themselves out to Wall Street and fraudulently leveraging identity politics to conceal this. There’s a uniquely paranoiac brand of suck that defines contemporary left-liberalism, but of all the explanations that have emerged from this cacophonous idiocy, I took the clickbait and read a disturbing Vox piece called “It’s probably time you learned about the Costco Guys.” Apparently, understanding their virality is to understand the suburban lifestyle, which in turn, is to understand Trump’s appeal. This is a more brain-rot version of libs reading Hillbilly Elegy to prove how not-elitist they are.

I’m either too jaded to get it or American society is essentially slop. These buffoons appeared on Fallon and even the guy who popularized celebrity lipsync battles seemed to hate them. The only acceptable place to watch Fallon is involuntarily in the back of an NYC taxicab through a backseat screen that is mostly noise, so I’m a bit ashamed of myself for not instantly closing the tab or stabbing my ears out. Anyways, there is something off about the dad, like he’s a demonic genie; in due time, I’m sure he’ll be exposed for something reprehensible. Sure, this clip probably beats an interview in which Jimmy Fallon looks perpetually hungover and he’s talking to John Legend about his home kitchen renovation, but I’m trying to imagine the show’s booker going to him and saying, “You’re going to interview this dumb guido family who’s famous for eating cookies.”

Are they going to fuck the guy in the middle with that food?

I am unfortunately familiar with this kind of loud, glutinous, ignorant Tri-State family, mostly through waiting impatiently in line at a local Italian deli. Peevish and self-assured, the dad will begin every sentence with “Listen” and aggressively accost you about how the Jets are cursed by the football gods and spends six hours a day in heated confrontations saying “Oh wow, here’s a tough guy” to people after they call him a jag-awff. Instead, this Costco dad says “BOOM” and there’s a kid who hangs out with them for some reason and he calls himself “The Rizzler,” which I assume is in reference to a new Batman villain. They remind me of those movies where the family somehow gets lost in the woods but have no knowledge of the outdoors so they make a fool of themselves. The fact that they live in Florida is also damning.

In glum servitude to this bold new era of nontent, I must admit the way they say “DOUBLE CHUNK CHOCOLATE COOKIE” in a thick guido accent is amusing enough. You can whip it out in inappropriate contexts, like responding to a disgruntled customer or in an argument with your girlfriend. It’s like an American version of a Japanese koan—it just wipes your mind clean. Maybe this piece sparks a spirited comment section debate on whether the Costco Guys are preposterous cornballs or lazy masterminds, but I suppose their longevity is attributable to Costco being one of those brands that people build their identities around. There is a certain breed of American normie who treats shopping at large box stores like it’s a unique ritual instead of something all of us do because we have to eat. Different chains attract different iterations of this person: Costco is for the dad version, Target is for the mom version, Trader Joe’s is for 20-somethings who don’t have kids. This kind of hobbyhorse is popular in generic suburbs, and every one of their inhabitants yearns as surely as any other human to express themselves within the structures dictated by their mundanity and milieu.

At least their fame is only slightly less troubling than the Hawk Tuah girl, who apparently doesn’t know who Kim Jong Un is, and her co-host confused him for Bobby Lee and it definitely wasn’t a bit. To the extent that their D-rate celebrity is indicative of some broader political trends, it is only because most Americans have been conditioned to take a consumer-based approach to government, to center whatever will make their consumer experience as a citizen most pleasant. They view issues through the lens of whatever they have a direct intersection with, like gas prices, because this is how they are pandered to. Anything more abstract, like a greater good or self-sacrifice, doesn’t scan at all. This is inherently a reactionary framework because there is a post-1970s neoliberal assumption that the government exists to serve you as an individual, to facilitate the most frictionless transactions possible.

These are not people who politics work for, but the presentation of politics is for their benefit. They are the mythical suburban moderates, the imagined audience for political operatives to fashion their messages to. But they have a fundamentally different understanding of what words and concepts mean than the D.C. whisperers who are paid millions of dollars to perform for these people, so it’s like trying to communicate to the aliens from Arrival. It’s conventional wisdom that appearing “moderate” is the key to their support, but moderation has never been attained by anyone in power; it can only be achieved in hindsight, like George W. Bush. The president more or less becomes a representative of whatever is happening in our lives, and the only language these voters have to make sense of any of this is Good Moderation vs. Bad Partisanship. None of this is tied to messaging or policies—Republicans will say anything a Democrat does is socialist and Democrats will say anything a Republican does is fascist—so the idea of moderation is a feeling, or to borrow the term of the era, a vibe. It is a phantom vibe that we will chase off a fucking cliff into oblivion.

Ironically, if you talked to these people, most of the time, their general assessment of American life isn’t necessarily wrong. But what links up in their heads is an incoherent mishegoss that is completely divorced from some clear ideological roadmap that professional political strategists assume is present in your average voter. In a strange sense, people like the Costco Guys are more attuned to reality than the people who pander to them because they aren’t feeding all events through the lens of a contrived political narrative. They just notice the secular trend of shittiness, ponder whether it’s BOOM or DOOM, and answer the latter in the affirmative.

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