Thursday, January 12, 2012

The Politics of Envy

Envy.

Mitt Romney, the man who has finally gotten to the head of the line, thinks we envy him and those of his stratospheric ilk.

Let's not lie to him or ourselves. We do envy him. But it's not for the reason he thinks.

Since it's rude for me to speak for you, I'll stick to why I am envious. My envy of Mitt Romney is specifically because he's never known what it's like to be financially insecure and it has nothing to do with his superior skills, hard work, or intelligence. By virtue of his birth, Romney has never had to worry about a lack of money. No, his only money worries have been about the accumulation of more wealth.

So that's the basis for my envy. What's at the root of my dislike for Romney is the fact that he seems unwilling to even imagine for a second what it's like for most Americans who have worked hard for the last thirty years and are still just running in place.

His refusal to acknowledge that there might be valid reasons for people to be pissed off tells us what we need to know about Mitt. He has no interest in understanding the plight of the middle and working classes, the poor. He subscribes to the idea that, unlike his situation of being born to wealth setting his destiny, if you're not rich like him, it's because you're not smart enough, you don't work hard enough. The fact that American socio-economic mobility is pretty much a myth and getting worse holds no sway with Romney.

I would say that by virtue of that same solid gold birth, perhaps Mitt Romney is incapable of empathy for the less fortunate, but then how do you explain wealthy families that breed bleeding heart liberals? Does it really come down to how the brain is wired?

Mitt Romney wants to run on his record as a businessman. Fine. Look at his record at Bain Capital where he was far more comfortable dealing with profits and numbers and data. People who lost their jobs were merely collateral damage. No, that's too generous. They were the cost of doing business and they were expendable.

Running a government is far different from running a business. The missions are different. Romney isn't smart enough to know that. As President, he would do just as he did at Bain. He would increase profits for the shareholders by any means just this side of legal while cutting out the waste and inefficiency.

What Americans need to understand is that unless you're a top investor, you are waste and inefficiency.

Read Bob Lefsetz on this.


14 comments:

  1. It's like what Ann Richards said about Daddy Bush, "He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple!!"

    Part of Mitt's problem maybe because of what happened to his dad. When he admitted that he had been lied to about the Vietnam War and made the mistake of saying he'd been "Brainwashed", that was the end of his political career. Mitt will do anything to prevent that.

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  2. Excellent points, Kulkuri. Have you seen the long ad re: Bain?

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  3. There's a reason they call it human resources.

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  4. When we're no longer useful...Soylent Green.

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  5. Actually, I read somewhere that it has everything to do with how our brains are wired -- that Republicans tend to seen things as either black or white, while Democrats view a whole range of grays in between.

    You're spot on about Mitt. Human beings are expendable. Another funny thing; this week Chris Wallace was scolding Mitt for putting his dog on the roof of the car going to Canada. Romney's response: "He was fine. It was an air-tight crate." WTF? How the hell was he supposed to breathe?

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    1. About that dog - I saw the journalist who broke the story and he said it thought it was a great illustration of Mitt's personality. When the dog pooed loose poos, Mitt stopped at a gas station, hosed the dog, the car and the crate down, loaded the dog back in the crate and went on their way. No emotional response, simply sticking to the plan.

      Yikes.

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  6. I worry about the potential of having a president with no personality. I worry more about having a president with HIS personality.

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  7. Your last two sentences hit this head on.

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  8. Great piece, Lisa. Mitt owns property up here in Ontario, northern Ontario where the air is sweet. Where boys with acoustic guitars still sing Neal Young songs sweetly and out of tune. Ok, I'm willing to let Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn keep their ugly and ostentatious "cottage", but I wish I could kick the Mitt out.

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  9. Thanks, Deloney. I'm afraid we're infecting you with our bad policies. Are we at least partially responsible for the right turn your government has taken? I'm sorry if that's the case.

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