Assholes (8 page)
Authors: Aaron James
Now, even the progressive Mill seriously advanced similar arguments from liberty, incapacity of self-governance, and benevolent duty. As uncomfortable as they are for us to contemplate today, one can at least understand the logic behind Mill’s view. But Beveridge also trumpets Manifest Destiny, a doctrine that is asshole in its purest form. That is, it is not just a mistaken justification but mainly a way of refusing to engage the potential objections of others. Imagine, by way of illustration, how it would play in an attempt by Beveridge to justify colonial subjection to a representative Filipino.
Filipino: It seems like you guys are trying to take over. Might I ask why you think that is okay?
Beveridge: It is manifest that our destiny is to rule over you.
Filipino: Really, that isn’t quite manifest to us. Is it that you are somehow
forced
, perhaps by God, to come all this way to our shores?
Beveridge: No, we aren’t forced; we are right, right because we plainly
will
rule over you.
Filipino: Sorry, I’m not following. Isn’t the question between us
why
you have a right to rule, and, in particular, why this is
plainly
true?
Beveridge: It
is
plainly true. You just don’t get it, do you? I wouldn’t expect understanding from a savage.
In fact, the Filipinos did eventually make their preference clear. Realizing that the United States was merely replacing Spain as a new imperial power, they kept up the war for political independence. But this of course gave the colonialist little pause; he had no interest in listening. As Kipling would explain, Filipino resistance only strengthens the call of duty to “take up the White Man’s burden,” to “Go bind your sons to exile / To serve your captives’ need / To wait in heavy harness / On fluttered folk and wild—Your new-caught, sullen peoples / Half devil and half child.”
43
It is hard to say whether the American doctrines of Manifest Destiny and exceptionalism became thinner and thinner as
rationalizations, over time, than the original British arguments for imperialism. The clear common element is reinforcement of a cosmic entitlement to do pretty objectionable things without a lot of circumspection—assholery and more on a world-historical scale.
1
. The Supreme Court of Assholedom has been officially chosen; see Matt Taibbi, “The Supreme Court Named,” January 31, 2011,
www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-supreme-court-named-20110131
.
2
. See Plato,
The Republic
, book 2.
3
. What should those who are worried do? Though this book offers little specific advice, here, for what it is worth, is a thought: treat our exemplars as cautionary tales; keep reminding ourselves that we are all moral equals; and cultivate a healthy sense of gratitude and responsibility to others. See also “Letter to an Asshole.”
4
. The complex criteria for narcissistic personality disorder in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
are pretty good, if not quite definitive of the asshole. They include narcissists who aren’t necessarily assholes, such as what some call (in terms not found in the
DSM
) “piece of shit” narcissists, who suffer from a firm sense of inferiority. The asshole concept does include what some call the “piece of gold” narcissist, who affirms his superiority over others, although that category might apply in other cases as well.
5
. One blogger, who puts Noel Gallagher in his top four assholes in rock, cites his comments about members of rival band Blur (who should “catch AIDS and die”), Phil Collins (“the Antichrist”), Green Day (for plagiarizing “Wonderwall” in much the way Oasis plagiarizes other artists), and Radiohead (“at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play ‘Creep.’ Get over it. I never went to fucking university. I don’t know what a paintbrush is; I never went to art school”). See
http://brettwatts.blogspot.com/2008/05/top-4-assholes-in-rock_19.html
.
6
. As Gallagher himself emphasizes in this interview at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNe4qkfkLws
. He claims he is not an asshole, even as he makes numerous asshole remarks.
7
. To compare other boorish assholes, Ari Gold, from the television show
Entourage
, is gratuitously aggressive, much as Gallagher is. Gregory House, from the television show
House
, is aggressively rude but justifies this in the name of his manifest talent as a doctor in saving lives. His argument from moral cause seems more plausible than either Limbaugh’s or Moore’s, though he is still plainly an asshole.
8
. Collected by Robert Edwards at
www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=706
.
9
. H. L. Mencken, “The Mailed Fist and Its Prophet,”
The Atlantic
, November 1914,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1914/11/the-mailed-fist-and-its-prophet/6393/
.
10
. Richard Dawkins,
The God Delusion
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006).
11
. The book title is an asshole title—since it lacks a serious philosophical refutation of the existence of God of the sort that Dawkins is not, as a biologist, professionally qualified to provide.
12
. One friend explains Summers’s related view of salaries this way: “Larry felt that it didn’t make sense that while he was being paid well by Harvard, some other professors were being paid in his ballpark. After all, he was Larry Summers, and who the hell were the rest of them?” See Ron Suskind,
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
(New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 199.
13
. Suskind,
Confidence Men
, 348–49.
14
.
www.famousquotescollection.com/author/Gustave-Flaubert
.
15
. The phrase is due to Michael O’Donnell’s “Another Frenchman Assesses Our Democracy,” a review of Lévy’s
American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, San Francisco Chronicle
, January 29, 2006,
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/29/RVGHUGQ7341.DTL
.
16
. Bernard-Henri Lévy, “A Moral Tipping Point: Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Unsettling Implications of Gaddafi’s Gory End,”
The Daily Beast
, October 23, 2011,
www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/23/a-moral-tipping-point-on-gaddafi-s-gory-end.html
.
17
. James Crabtree, “Philosophes sans frontières as Plato Battles Nato,” London
Financial Times
, April 1, 2011,
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/986a997e-5c8d-11e0-ab7c-00144feab49a.html#axzz1nXUYMxy1?
18
. Here we might compare Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne within a year to marry an American divorcée. Although he was spoiled and self-indulgent, and lacked any sense of duty to his country, he does not qualify as an asshole in our sense, since he did not seem to act from entitlement, not even the royal institutional entitlements at his disposal.
19
. Hugo Chavez called Bush an asshole on the implausible grounds that he heeded advice from “imperialist” aides to support a 2002 coup against him. “He was an asshole to believe them,” Chavez said at a rally in Caracas. See Patrick Markey, “Chavez Calls Bush ‘Asshole’ as Foes Fight Troops,” February 29, 2004,
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17578-2004Feb29.html
. Merely believing someone or heeding their advice—whether good or bad—is hardly sufficient to make someone into an asshole. Perhaps presidential responsibilities in an important decision require not believing too readily. But believing, per se, would not suffice.
20
. Beltway insiders apparently distinguish between aggressive campaigning, aimed at scoring points against the opponent, and a “dick move,” which crosses some fine line. Such moves put one a step in the direction of being an asshole while stopping short. To pull dick moves systematically would move one into asshole territory, as in “What a dick, what an asshole!”
21
. However, no one has ever accused Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, of being an antiasshole. For discussion, see Matt Taibbi, “Supreme Court of Assholedom: Rahm Emanuel et al.,” March 4, 2011,
www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/supreme-court-rulings-daniel-snyder-rahm-emanuel-elton-john-et-al-20110304
.
22
. Gail Sheehy, “The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich,”
Vanity Fair
, September 1995,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair1.html
. Not that he seems terribly insecure when he explains, “I think grandiose thoughts,” comparing himself favorably to great American leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Henry Clay. See Alana Goodman, “Gingrich’s ‘Grandiose Thoughts,’ ”
Commentary
, January 20, 2012,
www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/20/gingrich-grandiose-thoughts/
.
23
. But was Berlusconi in sufficient control of the media such that the public discourse needed for a functioning democracy just wasn’t there? Might this mean that he was not corrupting a democracy but rather preserving the fascist order of old (much as Mussolini did by manipulating the public through mass communication)? I doubt it, but there is perhaps an argument to have here.
24
. Not to mention that Italy has its share of distinguished political thinkers and leaders. Along with the corrupt figures mentioned in the text, Tony Barber, in his incisive “Why Italy Is Short of Statesmen but Long on Scoundrels,” notes upstanding figures such as Antonio Gramsci, Benedetto Croce, Piero Gobetti, Alcide De Gasperi, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and Giorgio Napolitano. See London
Financial Times
, September 23, 2011,
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1ecf9cfa-e481-11e0-92a3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1oAZQSAus?
25
. See also “Asshole Even Shoots Pool Like an Asshole,”
The Onion
, January 15, 2003,
www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/asshole-even-shoots-pool-like-an-asshole,2938/
.
26
. Jon Ronson,
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
(New York: Riverhead, 2011).
27
. Lucy Kellaway, “Everyone Benefits from a Beast in the Boardroom,” London
Financial Times
, October 9, 2011,
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3bdb9b68-f0cb-1e0-aec8-00144feab49a.html#axzz1oAZQSAus?
.
28
. Here we follow moral philosopher Gary Watson’s reading of the psychological evidence, “The Trouble with Psychopaths,” in
Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon
, eds. R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar, and Samuel Freeman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Psychopathy is thus not mere “empathy erosion,” as according to Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen in
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
(New York: Basic Books, 2011). It is a specific way empathy might be eroded.
29
. Even after a prematurely published obituary commented that he was miserly as regards charity, Jobs, having resumed control of Apple, ended the firm’s philanthropic ventures. The thought was apparently that the firm could make great products and therefore have no further obligations to society. Yet it does not seem that providing gadget orgasms and access to computers for any number of people justifies not supporting worthy causes, at a small relative cost, that might benefit large numbers of people who are vastly worse off (causes such as malaria eradication, diabetes treatment, water tank construction, and so on).
30
. Dylan Love, “16 Examples of Steve Jobs Being a Huge Jerk,”
Business Insider
, October 25, 2011,
www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10#why-was-jobs-such-a-rude-person-16
.
31
. Spiegel Online, “Going Rogue: Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows,”
Der Spiegel
, September 26, 2011,
www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,788462,00.html
.
32
. Although we focus on the way Cheney holds his political views, the hunting accident in which he shot his own friend at least suggests an affinity with his personal conduct. Further evidence of personal entitlement (though not of recklessness) is Cheney’s explanation of why he avoided Vietnam: “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” While wanting to avoid war is understandable, and the remark could have been self-mocking, it does suggest that he set himself apart. What draftee didn’t have other priorities? See
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2004/03/elizabeth_cheney_deferment_baby.html
.
33
. H. W. Brands,
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(New York: Doubleday, 2008), 260.
34
. T. Harry Williams,
Huey Long
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 708.
35
. Williams,
Huey Long
, 589.
36
. Williams,
Huey Long
, 298.
37
. Michael E. Parrish,
Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920–1941
(New York: Norton, 1994), 164.
38
. Richard D. White, Jr.,
Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long
(New York: Random House, 2006), 248.
39
. John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty
, 2nd ed. (London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1859), 23.
40
. “Cecil Rhodes,” in
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
41
.
www.bartleby.com/73/1207.html
.
42
. Albert Beveridge, “The March of the Flag,” in
The Meaning of the Times
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1908; repr. 1968). The quotations in the text below are also from this speech.
43
. Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” 1899.