Why we don't like him

Say you know a guy who likes to kick his dog.

Every morning you see him out walking his dog and whenever the dog stops to sniff around the guy gives the poor mutt a swift kick in the ribs.

You tell your neighbors about him.  One of the neighbors says, "Boy, you really don't like this guy, do you?"

"No, I don't," you say, "Who likes someone who's mean to his dog?"

Little time later you hear this guy who kicks his dog wants to open a kennel in the neighborhood.  Board pets, groom them.   Where he wants to put the kennel is zoned residential so he's asking the town board for a variance.  You go to the town board meeting and stand up and say you don't think he should get the variance.  It'd ruin the neighborhood, you say.  Besides that, you add, this guy abuses animals.

Your neighbor, the one who observed how much you dislike the guy for kicking his dog, stands up and tells the town board not to pay any attention to what you say.  Because you just dislike the guy.

Woman you know at work is always plotting something behind her colleagues' backs.  Everybody knows this about her.  She steals ideas, undermines people she doesn't like by gossiping about them.  She's head of a department and she routinely raids other departments to steal away their best workers and then drives them out of the company because she's, well, evil.  You are in charge of one of the departments she's screwed that way.  You complain about her to a co-worker.

Co-worker observes, You hate her, don't you?

Inexplicably, though, one of the three brothers who own the company is nuts about her and wants to promote her, put her in charge of a whole new division.  One of the other brothers has a different candidate in mind.  The third brother is open to persuasion.  He comes to you and asks your opinion.

You voice your concerns about this woman's competence and loyalties.

But instead of taking what you say to heart, he dismisses it out of hand.  He says, "I heard you don't like her and this proves it.  We can't discuss this if you're not going to be rational about it."

Ok.  Every time you see the guy kick his dog you are furious.  There are days you get so mad you rush out the door and start screaming at the guy to stop.

The backstabbing department head drives you crazy.   Some nights after having spent the whole dealing with her and the problems she's created you have to stop off at a bar and have a drink.  Two drinks.  You rant and rave about her to the bartender.  You go home and rant and rave some more to your family.  You wake up in the middle of the night, your stomach in a knot, and you sign onto your computer and rant and rave about her on your blog.

Both these people make you crazy with rage sometimes.

But you are not crazy for getting angry at what they do.  And you are not crazy for disliking them for what they do.  It is not irrational for you to think that the guy who kicks dogs should not be allowed to open a business where he gets to kick other people's dogs.  It is not irrational for you to think that a manager who is incompetent and puts her own ambitions ahead of what's good for the company will make a terrible division head.

One more.

You're a contractor.  You get a job.  New housing development.  Twenty-five units.  You start looking for sub-contractors.  There's an electrical contractor wants the job of wiring the houses.  Husband and wife outfit.  You know them.  You can't stand them.  They go to your church.  Smug, hypocritical, mean-spirited people, both of them.  Made for each other.  Their kids are pieces of work.  You won't let your own kids near them.

What's more, they live ostentatious lifestyles, drive his and her matching Hummers, wear ugly clothes, and have painted their house pink and purple with lime green trim.

They both dye their hair too.

You can't stand them and you've let the world know it.

But on top of all this, they do substandard work.  They cut corners, hire non-union workers off the books, they're being sued six ways to Sunday by people whose homes and businesses they've made fire traps with faulty wiring.

No way you're going to let them near your units.

But somehow they get past your secretary one day.  She was out sick and a temp scheduled an appointment for them.  You find yourself taking the meeting out of a mixture of inertia and politeness.  They make their pitch.  Tell you how they're going to do this job for you, quick and reasonable.  But you know them and you know your business and you know right away they're proposing to do their usual substandard work in their usual shady and cheap way.  You can't stand it.  You blow your stack.  You tell them what you think of them, their business, tell them what they can do with their paperwork.  You make the wife cry.

Sunday comes around.  You go to church.  After the service you hang around for coffee and donuts.  The pastor comes up to you, takes you aside, gives you one of those looks, the kind that say, My child, I need to talk to you about the state of your soul.

Pastor tells you he's heard about the meeting, about how you rejected the couple's bid out of hand, how you made the wife cry.  Tells you a secret, just between you and him.  The couple's hurting.  Their business is failing.  The IRS is auditing them.  One of their kids is suffering from terrible depression.  The husband's aging mother needs to go into a nursing home, she's got Alzheimer's.

Pastor asks, Couldn't you see your way to giving them the contract, for charity's sake?

No, you say, because, one.  It'd be a stupid business move for you.  And two, it wouldn't be charitable to the people who are going to move into homes with suspect wiring.

The pastor redoubles that look and says, Are you sure those are the only reasons?

You say, Aren't they enough?

And the pastor says, Are you sure your judgment isn't clouded by your irrational dislike of these people?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Liberals, Bush's proposed "health plan," and the Media's unshakeable belief in our irrational hatred of George W. Bush.

Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post:

If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase -- a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less -- Democrats still howl.

....Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself -- and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.

Kevin Drum explains why there are good, rational reasons to dislike the plan that aren't just based on hating on George W. Bush.

I would just like to point out, as if it hasn't been pointed out a thousand times and won't need to be pointed out a thousand more, that the reason Liberals don't like George W. Bush's plans is that they are bad plans that he makes worse by managing them incompetently and corruptly---in fact, incompetence and corruption are usually built into them as selling points to Republicans.

And the reason we don't like him is that he has a long history of pushing bad plans that he makes worse by managing them incompetently and corruptly.

We don't like people who kick dogs.

We don't like corporate executives who abuse employees and hurt their own companies.

We don't like dishonest electricians who do substandard work.

We don't like incompetence and corruption.

And we don't like Presidents who start unnecessary wars and lose them, who let cities drown, who bankrupt the Treasury and give away the store to their rich pals and cronies, who write legislation specifically designed to undermine existing government services, make things worse for the poor and the middle class, and give away the store to their rich pals and cronies.

Too bad for us.

We're irrational on the subject.

Thanks to Avedon Carol who has some other good links and sharp things to say in her post, Parsing the Speech.

Comments

[merciless]

Exactly.

My 17-year-old daughter asked me what I thought of the SOTU. I said I thought he said a lot of nice things, pretty things, hopeful things. But he has lied so often, failed us so many times, that I could not trust a single word coming out of his mouth.

I told her it shouldn't be this way. We should be able to trust our president. I told her that someday she'll have a president she can trust, but not yet.

It made me want to cry, telling her that.

[Claire]

Good post. I read the first bit of that column and closed the screen. Nice rebuttal.

[Mike Schilling]

Lance, Lance, Lance, Lance. You'd be so much happier if you took the Pledge. Trust me.

[burritoboy]

"We don't like people who kick dogs.

We don't like corporate executives who abuse employees and hurt their own companies.

We don't like dishonest electricians who do substandard work.

We don't like incompetence and corruption."

To the contrary, we love such people: it's built into the very heart of liberal capitalist democracy: a system based upon our self-interest, not our love of the good.

We love corporate executives who abuse employees and hurt others - so long as said executives give us greater profits (if we're investors).

We love dishonesty and substandard work - if we didn't, we wouldn't love capitalism. If our priority was honesty and excellent works, we would be living in the medieval or ancient economy, not under capitalism.

We dislike incompetence only because our political system relies on technocratic bureaucrats who are to reliably enforce our own self-interests (not because governing is a mirror of the good, or an emanation of reason, or a reflection of the gods).

We dislike corruption because it interferes with our technocratic bureaucrats reliably executing on our self-interests, not because we hate the bad.

We don't like people who kick dogs, admittedly, but we love people who kick other people (whether through economic domination, our rigid class structure or sexual perversion).

[Linkmeister]

You've got a fine hand with analogy (do I mean simile?) there.

I don't have what the right-wing calls Bush Derangement Syndrome; I have good powers of observation. He's never been competent or even honest in his life; why should I expect him to change now?

Distrust and vilify.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Mannion, I'm not sure what you're getting at in this post....

Just kidding.

Great work. As ever.

[SAP]

Excellent post, sir.

[stinger]

I never used to dislike Bush. Then I got to know him.

[Paul the Spud]

Dammit Lance, quit making me hate my own writing!

Excellent work.

[Paul or the Giant Rabbit]

There's nothing irrational about being highly skeptical of whatever GWB does, thinks or proposes, the putative merits of such thoughts, proposals or actions notwithstanding.

The guy has spent his whole life to date demonstrating that he's really, really bad at anything requiring intellect, organizational skills, diligence, or personal integrity.

In other words, "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is nothing more than the ability to observe.

[Glen]

SAP,

To paraphrase slightly: I used to dislike Bush. Then I got to know him.

[sfmike]

Amen. That's a beautiful essay.

I hate very few people in this world, but in the cases of those I do hate, it's not irrational. It's the guy I've seen kicking the dog one too many times, and thank you for the analogies.

As for Bush, Cheney and Company, the feelings so many of us have right now isn't irrational hatred so much as sheer horror.

[Elayne Riggs]

Wow. Nicely done, Lance.

[jimi]

There is no Soviet Union anymore, but everybody remember those great victories and defeats. We trusted in idea and we made our history through great losses...
www.backinussr.com

[Wren]

Excellent post. It would make a nice op-ed somewhere...

[Echidne]

A nice post. It fills in that empty space in the living-room where the elephant mutters about the irrational hatred of Bush.

[grendelkhan]

burritoboy, how're those rose-tinted glasses through which you view your ancestors? Wishing you could be dying at thirty of the plague, or having some king repo your family to work in the salt mines? Longing for the days of slavery and no damn habeas corpus? Shouldn't you be off voting Republican?

Quite an insult to your ancestors, that they all failed to create a generation following their own that was better, more humane, wiser than their own. Pretty cold of you.

[jillbryant]

I love when you say things I think but don't express well. I have heard this dismissal of someone - you're just a Bush-hater - a few times and think is that supposed to even make sense? It would be a great op ed. In fact, a lot of your posts would be...have you ever sent them in?

And, burritoboy - I don't quite understand your point. Are you saying capitalism means you can't do a good job, means you can't be honest, etc. I so disagree. I think you can be an honest capitalist and you can be a dishonest capitalist and the same for the rest of your points...Look at Costco, for example. (Or did I miss what you were trying to say?)

[CaliBlogger]

I'm pretty sure Lance's stories in this case might best be called parables.

And good ones at that.

At last, a cogent response to Bush Derangement Syndrome.

[Sizemore]

Ms. Shakes was right about you Mannion: you've hit the nail on the head but rather nice about it. As for some of the comments aimed at BurritoBoy, I think he's putting a creative spin on H.L. Mencken: "The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

I don't know about the rest of you people, but I've discovered the majority of the people who actually kick dogs are also the ones who are quick to claim they don't. They're bald-faced liars and Capitalism has a well-ingrained habit of rewarding such liars whilst punishing the hell out of the honest.

[ggoblin]

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[Kevin Wolf]

Excellent, Mr Mannion. One of your best.

[Bitty]

(Virtual standing ovation)

Those who don't believe as we do persistently, stubbornly view the cause and effect backwards. We don't dislike his policies because we dislike him. We dislike him because we dislike his policies.

Again, bravo.

[Rana]

*joining Bitty in the standing ovation*

[mds]

And, burritoboy - I don't quite understand your point. Are you saying capitalism means you can't do a good job, means you can't be honest, etc.

(Sizemore has already dealt with this somewhat, much more eloquently and tersely than I, but:)

No, but it is entirely optional, and even detrimental to profit. Unrestrained capitalism rewards success in the marketplace, period. The company that dumps mercury in the river beats out the company that takes a revenue cut in order to recycle heavy metals, all else being equal. Costco does indeed do quite well, yet institutional shareholders have been pressuring the company to start crapping on their workers, as God intended, in order to increase "shareholder value." And someday, James Sinegal will no longer be CEO, and what happens to bucking the trend in executive compensation and treatment of employees then? Pure capitalism makes a virtue of selfishness, by design.

Wishing you could be dying at thirty of the plague,

Yes, thank goodness unrestrained capitalism gave us penicillin. Oh, wait...

or having some king repo your family to work in the salt mines?

Yes, thank goodness the free-market economy voluntarily abolished involuntary servitude and child labor. Oh, wait...

See, these accomplishments don't require that we progress in exactly the way we did. In fact, the elevation of laissez faire capitalism to unquestioned godhood often hindered the Enlightenment in delivering on its promises.

So, no, I don't think burritoboy wishes he were living in a wattle-and-daub hut in Gaul when he criticizes our current economic system.

Whoops, sorry, I suffer from Robber-baron Derangement Syndrome.

[darms]

Nicely done, wish I could share it with someone who has frequently accused me of 'BDS'. She won't read it, however...

Anyway, one minor quibble - And we don't like Presidents who start unnecessary wars and lose them:

I don't like 'unnecessary' wars. Period. 'Lose' or 'win' is pretty much beside the point. And I'm coming more to the idea that there are very few 'necessary' wars, either

[burritoboy]

"Are you saying capitalism means you can't do a good job, means you can't be honest, etc. I so disagree."

The question is rather: what is the good or best thing? If doing work well is the best thing, then capitalism explicitly rejects such a formulation. Indeed, one of the core calculations within capitalism is how much you can reduce quality without reducing sales or prices (profit maximazation, in other words). Capitalism rewards maximum profit and rejects quality work for quality work's sake.

If being honest is the best thing, then again, capitalism explicitly rejects that. Honesty is primarily rewarded within capitalism because one can trust honest persons to execute on contracts with you. I.E. one's surveillance costs on one's honest partners is less than surveillance costs on one's dishonest partners. Thus, honesty is valued for it's contribution to maximum profits and NOT for it's own sake.

[burritoboy]

"Wishing you could be dying at thirty of the plague"

Or, under capitalism, your capitalist overlords could force you off your farm, crowd you in extremely unhealthy cities and make certain dangerous factory work was the only way for you to support yourself. Both Polanyi and Michael Perelman show that this political (not economic) process is what created the necessary workforces for capitalism during the early industrialization of England. The peasantry did not want to work for others, live in cities, work for money or work in factories. They were forced to do so. Peasants living on their farms had much longer life expectancies than the urban factory workers they were forced to become.

"or having some king repo your family to work in the salt mines?"

Actually, the kings of 1400-1800 promoted capitalism heavily and much favored the upper end of the merchant class over all other classes of society. There is no opposition between capitalism and political tyranny - as the Chinese "Communist" government proves every day.

"Longing for the days of slavery and no damn habeas corpus?"

Modern slavery was precisely a primary vehicle of early capitalism. Slavery had largely been near-abolished towards the end of the medieval economy. Robert Fogel won a Nobel precisely for proving that modern plantation slavery could only exist within a capitalist context - and was indeed the most profitable investment of the period.

Habeas corpus was a creation of medieval law, and is not some invention of modernity.

[burritoboy]

"As for some of the comments aimed at BurritoBoy, I think he's putting a creative spin on H.L. Mencken: "The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." "

Mencken only reflects Machiavelli's frequent praise of the boldest and most daring liars - since all modernity flows from Machiavelli's thought, it would be wise to pay attention to it.

[burritoboy]

"In fact, the elevation of laissez faire capitalism to unquestioned godhood often hindered the Enlightenment in delivering on its promises."

Read Emma Rothschild's Economic Sentiments for much wisdom proving precisely this point.

[person # 0]

bush was a mistake, our bad. he is not Christian....but sadly enough....none of u really seem to speak english. who are u trying to appeal to?