In re: liberality and generosity vis a vis being Rich…there is always the dispute over his taxes. The idea of not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing takes on a different dynamic. In any case there is also the philosophical question from the book of Job. Throw some boils on him, take away his wife, his harvard JD, his fortune and his children and watch him curse God…(so says Satan) a rather cruel/old testament thought experiment… but part of disliking Romney is resentment of the rich, from believing that you would be a slightly better person if you were just a little richer, or a little smarter…or if you just had a wife that didn’t argue and nag as much, or children that were a bit more perfect. So a good part of Romney resentment is sort of resentment of the rich/good for being good, and a sort of twisted rationalization for your own faillings and stress.

I am neither a true political scientist or a sociologist but the legal cases/disputes and questions that come from say a nice neighboorhood (Ottawa Hills) vs. the south side of Toledo are simply night and day. Kate’s sort of annoying (sorry Kate) Chardon exceptionalism… is fairly accurate. There are just certain areas where the cops are not called for domestic violence…were certain crimes just don’t happen. Democrats+Republicans of the sort of “broken window” James Q. Wilson environmental conditions school…make a lot of sense to me.

Truth be told, I seriously doubt that folks like Romney are rare in the high reaches of american politics, and business. I don’t know how exceptional he is compared to Obama. Both are probably fairly generous people. They are rather much rarer in the lower reaches of american politics(the damn folks I am forced to deal with:, hell is other people and yourself:)…in the slightly more rough and tumble middle/low middle class, where ambition and self interest sort of crowds out some of that liberality and the idea of a deontological ethics seems incredibly foreign…

It may not be politically correct to have some sort of dislike for Obama or Mitt Romney simply because you consider them to be good or overpriveledged/blessed in all respects, but I do.

But in so far as Aristotle is correct enough about the nature of friendship in saying that one can only have friends of a certain rank, then this isn’t unsuprising.(and I think he is) Not that you necessarily have to be “friends” with the president (albeit both campaigns try on facebook:)…silly modernity.

But the resentment of Mitt Romney, I think also explains and ties into the political science and philosophy behind why in general african americans don’t vote republican. That is the perception that republicans are rich, and are generally priveledged, and can pass on generational priveledge and ideal environments, perpetuating an almost theoretically ideal life. (sort of a part of the legacy of slavery, or environmental poverty of good experience and habits(following aristotle a man is his habits/activity/education).

So even if americans aspire to being rich(which is true)…there is still a sort of sense of unfairness. (there is more greatness in comming up from the “street”, and so in some way Obama seems greater (but he didn’t have a real disadvantaged start, just a relative one.)

In any case resentment of Obama or Romney makes more sense in so far as one can admit that both are good, if one admits that the root of such a resentment is disbelief in an ability to replicate such an ideal life environment or moral code. That is there is something to James Q. Wilson, Aristotle, Kant and the book of Job…and by comparison the rest of us are living a life of broken windows and petty fights. More Homer Simpson in our americaness than Mitt Romney.

I can’t tell you where the Aristotleian limit is (but I suspect it has a reality that is more than conceptual). Romney isn’t singing Darryl Worley’s “sounds like Life to me”, but instead is living near the peaks of american exceptionalism(Olympic Horses, no dispute wife et al.) There is an american exceptionalism to Darryl Worley’s “sounds like Life to me” vis a vis Calculta, or even vis a vis Iraq…but that is a hard sell, and at the end of the day not something that should necessarily be relevant in selecting a president.

But is that sufficient reason to vote for him?