Assholery and Power

[raccoon]

Only the powerful are free to be assholes. If you don’t have power, you may act like an asshole, but you won’t get away with it.

This is true on the macro level. World powers of any century can freely engage in acts of assholery that smaller states could never get away with.

It’s true on the personal level. The abuser, within a family, has the power. The abuser gets to be an asshole. The others don’t.

It’s true in the workplace.

“Smiles, at least in human society, are gestures of submission, and routinely demanded of women as a token of subordinate status. The happy slave smiles; the well-trained "lady" smiles; now even the male white collar striver has to keep his lips pulled back in an expression of eager compliance. Only the top guys get to snarl and snap their way through the day.”

Barbara Ehrenreich

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/47768/

You may say I’m stating the obvious. Maybe so, but it took me a while to figure it out.

Sometimes when something is verbalized, we have an “aha” moment. Like, “I always knew that, but never really put it into words.”

[unpossibles]

1. I have often wondered which came first,

the asshole or the promotion?

I mean, there are good people in positions of power and assholes who are just trying to get power, so this is not entirely true across the board, but... I do feel like our culture often rewards assholes by pushing them further up the ladder.