A Debate between Beavis and Butt-Head: Who Governs America?

In the 1990s, the multi-episode cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head by director Mike Judge was popular in the USA and also in Russia. Its protagonists were two intellectually disabled American teenagers, who constantly swore at each other, spouted one absurd idea after another, were unable to solve any everyday situation, but... despite their complete ineptitude and aimlessness, somehow managed to get by in life. Every time a series of idiotic actions led them to the brink of total disaster, an equally ridiculous coincidence or a logical glitch would save them, giving them another chance. Which they would immediately squander. And the cycle would repeat itself. Failure after failure, eating worms, completely wrong decisions, breaking all possible logical connections, and ending with watching a heavy metal video clip, where horned people with guitars theatrically devoured women or live goats.

What the world saw during the Trump-Biden pre-election debate was just a fresh episode of Beavis and Butt-Head. Moreover, both seemed to be deliberately modeled after the cartoon characters: Trump as a remake of Beavis and Biden as Butt-Head. Trump even has the same hairstyle. And the content of the debate was entirely in the spirit of the series.

Butt-Head: ‘You’re the old fool, I’m only three years older than you. So, you’re older than me. You’re almost a hundred.’

Beavis: ‘You’re the one who’s almost a hundred, you’ve already surpassed it, talking to spirits, touching invisible chairs... You’ve failed everything, and I’ve done everything wonderfully.’

Butt-Head: ‘No, I’ve done everything wonderfully, and you’ve failed everything. Besides, you’re a lecherous alley cat.’

Beavis: ‘I’m not a cat, I don’t even know who Stormy Daniels is, my lawyers will tear her apart.’

Butt-Head: ‘You’ll ruin NATO.’

Beavis: ‘What’s NATO?’

Butt-Head: ‘Why did you even attack the Capitol?’

Beavis: ‘What’s the Capitol? But it doesn’t matter, you’re about to die, and we’ll make America great again.’

Butt-Head: ‘I’ve already made it great, because I’ve let in a lot of different people, and you want to ruin everything. Look how many migrants have climbed over your wall now? They shine in all the colours of the rainbow, I watch them for hours.’

Beavis: ‘And you were scared of a fake rabbit. I’ll build my wall again and entomb all the migrants in it.’

Butt-Head: ‘I won’t let you, I’ll send my friend — superhero Zelensky — after you. He has special tight pants that allow him to fly.’

Beavis: ‘He’s a crook, he comes and robs us. I’ll burn him alive with my superpowers.’

Butt-Head: ‘I’ll burn you now or turn you to ice because you’re a tomcat in heat.’

Beavis: ‘I don’t even know who Stormy Daniels is...’

And so it goes, while all of America watches and bets on who will fall first and who will keep talking nonsense till the end.

Mike Judge’s cartoon itself is a harsh satire on the teenage mentality of America as a superpower, historically immature to rule humanity. The USA is a crazy teenager with a loaded gun. The nation is a school shooter. If there’s a gun, the logic of an idiot says it must be shot. At anyone.

The cartoon’s protagonists are teenagers, the debate’s protagonists are very old men. But this is the peculiarity of American identity: America cannot grow up. It is a fatal kidult, forever stuck between kid and adult, child and grown-up. In psychiatry, there is a diagnosis of ‘hebephrenia’, a mental disorder of adolescence where the sick boy or girl cannot naturally develop further and adapt to adult life, getting stuck in the transitional age. In post-war Japan, copying the manners of the occupiers to the smallest detail, the phenomenon of hikikomori — young people rejecting adulthood, locking themselves in their rooms with computer games, living off their parents, and incapable of working or starting a family — began to spread rapidly. Essentially, this is a literal reproduction of the American cultural pattern. Beavis and Butt-Head cannot become adults. They are complete hebephrenics with a blocked maturation mechanism. Hence the stream of Marvel series, created on an industrial scale from comics. They are aimed at ten to twelve-year-olds, but all of America watches them. Just like the presidential candidate debates.

According to the debate results, the great superpower of dunces acknowledged the victory of Trump. He held himself better, his hairstyle was more aggressive and convincing than that of sleepy Butt-Head, whose batteries ran out by the end, and he started just monotonously groaning.

If such a society and such a culture, such candidates and such voters determine the fate of humanity, then we must admit that we are doomed. It is impossible to think of treating or applying developmental methods to a clinically ill teenager if they have a nuclear button in their hands.

Of Russia, we say that it is governed by God, as otherwise its existence is inexplicable. America also has some mystery. How could it, on such foundations, with such people and such mental problems, have become the world’s leading power? This means someone more serious and invisible governs it. And it doesn’t seem like it’s God. Rather, someone else...

Translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister

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