"So instead of talking about theoretical ways of ending the war and violence, I say that we have to get rid of the individual asholes in each office and situation"
About this Quote
Colin Quinn’s line lands like a barstool manifesto: forget the grand peace plans, start by firing the jerks. It’s funny because it’s aggressively un-philosophical, a deliberate downgrade from “ending war” to “HR problem.” The profanity isn’t just spice; it’s a rhetorical weapon that punctures the self-importance of policy talk and drags the conversation back to the daily reality of power being exercised by specific people, in specific rooms, with specific egos.
The intent is to mock the way public debate loves abstraction. “Theoretical ways” reads like a swipe at panels, think pieces, and the comforting fantasy that violence is a systems issue we can outsmart with the right framework. Quinn flips that: violence persists because some individuals enjoy domination, conflict, or impunity, and institutions routinely reward that temperament. By saying “each office and situation,” he widens the indictment beyond battlefields. War becomes an extension of workplace dynamics: petty tyrants scaled up, aggression given a budget.
The subtext is bleak but oddly practical. If you can’t re-engineer humanity, at least remove the people who reliably escalate everything they touch. It also carries a comedian’s mistrust of “we” language. “We have to get rid of” sounds collective and righteous, but the joke hints at the real obstacle: the assholes are often the ones who decide who gets “gotten rid of.”
Contextually, it fits Quinn’s brand of street-level political skepticism: less utopian reform, more accountability, with the punchline hiding a serious claim that history is driven not only by structures, but by the worst personalities rising inside them.
The intent is to mock the way public debate loves abstraction. “Theoretical ways” reads like a swipe at panels, think pieces, and the comforting fantasy that violence is a systems issue we can outsmart with the right framework. Quinn flips that: violence persists because some individuals enjoy domination, conflict, or impunity, and institutions routinely reward that temperament. By saying “each office and situation,” he widens the indictment beyond battlefields. War becomes an extension of workplace dynamics: petty tyrants scaled up, aggression given a budget.
The subtext is bleak but oddly practical. If you can’t re-engineer humanity, at least remove the people who reliably escalate everything they touch. It also carries a comedian’s mistrust of “we” language. “We have to get rid of” sounds collective and righteous, but the joke hints at the real obstacle: the assholes are often the ones who decide who gets “gotten rid of.”
Contextually, it fits Quinn’s brand of street-level political skepticism: less utopian reform, more accountability, with the punchline hiding a serious claim that history is driven not only by structures, but by the worst personalities rising inside them.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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