Declensions of Suck

Larry asks a simple but wonderfully complicated question. Why must people suck? I don't have an answer, but it might help things along if we break this question down, teasing out the variations of suckitude that permeate our species. After 2.3 million years of wandering around and asking each other for lettuce, we've come up with many varieties.

Epic Historical Sucking: Leading lights include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Torquemada, Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Gilles De Rais, Countess Bathory, Vlad Tepesh, and many many more. Those who suck on this level share a number of nasty traits. They are utterly ruthless, see no value in the lives of others, and enjoy playing out their sadistic fantasies. Most of them also express absolutist sentiments about right and wrong, and most feel a need to surround themselves with an aggressive personality cult that raises them to the level of godhood. Will George W. Bush, who displays most of these traits, rise to this level of suckitude? We must wait and see.

The Mediocre: Examples include Michael Bolton, Christopher Cross, Kenny G, Kerry Collins (we've released him at last!), David Brenner, Aaron Spelling, Glen Larson, Bill Frist, and many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many more. This is a large, but not the largest, category of suck, involving those who have reached a position of success in their field that their talents don't warrant. I'd hoped that George W. Bush would stay in this category, but he's much more ambitious than he ever lets on. If these people were less successful at eating up resources that could otherwise nourish the more talented, people might resent them less.

The Lazy: These people do the absolute minimum necessary to get by in life, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't often inhabit positions that can do us damage. Anyone, in any profession, can suck this way, which is really bad if you need new spark plugs in your car, new plumbing in your house, a good defense in a lawsuit, or a competent heart valve replacement. The masters of the half-assed job, the Lazy are ubiquitous.

The Spineless: Relatives of the lazy, these people always flinch at the first sign of danger. While this is sometimes a useful quality (A spineless Hitler would have been a lot easier to manage--"I want to kill the Jews and enslave the Russians, but, um, that's just me. What does everyone else think?"), it more often leads to disaster (the Democratic Party). The worst of the spineless encourage others to be brave on their behalf. I'm looking at you, Jonah Goldberg.

The Lickspittles: Often, those who are mediocre become notable for it by this route. These people are the Rosencranzes and Gildensterns of the world--slick, servile little friends to anyone who can do them the slightest favor. They are untrustworthy largely because, even if you're in the position to grant them favors, someone else is always in a position to grant more. Elizabth Bumiller is a lickspittle, as is Chris Matthews.

The Pious: Those who imagine themselves as on the side of that which is pure and good, while imagining that all others are degraded and evil. This kind of suckiness crossses all ideological lines, though it tends to be strongest wherever a clergyman is present. The pious can rationalize any awful deed they commit by invoking their piety. They're exhausting to deal with.

The Mingy: Those who delight in putting others through petty torments. Tall people who will seek out a short person in a movie theater and sit in front of them, hackers who write viruses for computers, urinators who piss on toilet seats, these people seek the attention of their fellow humans by giving them a small slice of hell. In countries ruled by people who suck on an Epic Historical level, the Mingy are the bureaucrats who take special delight in stamping DENIED on forms. In the corporate world, they're the people who haul you into their offices whenever you're a minute overdue from a bathroom break.

The Violent: Self explanitory. This applies both to physical violence and the crippling emotional violence common among certain cliques of teenaged girls.

The Duplicitous: Again self-explanitory. In the movie Excalibur, Merlin says that truth is the most important value for a knight, because every time a lie goes unchallenged, part of the world dies. That's more or less right. In our current politics, that part of the world is Iraq.

Now, for extra credit, class, match each declension of suck to its corresponding circle in Dante's Inferno.