The colossal defeat of the proposal to split off budget voting from Hanover Town Meeting (SB 2) needs to be explained, if for no other reason than to prevent its proponents from embarrassing themselves again next year. All their effort did was demonstrate how poorly the petitioners understand the town they live in.

But at least it is a good excuse to explain who we are and what we do, something I’ve been waiting for for years.

Yes, you have to be a sociologist to deconstruct the quite unusual menage that is Hanover, but since we all know something about human motivation, a deep dive into Big Green Town ought to be reasonably understandable for the layman.

Sure, this is a rich, white town, drenched with billions annually, in one of the greatest positive balance of payments arrangements in all of America, if not the world. (And don’t kid yourself, reader in Canaan or Windsor, this flood slurps out in every direction for 50 miles or more.)

Beyond that, and more important in this connection, Hanover is defined as being the end of the line: This is it. If you move here, you’re done. This is your paradise and you mean to keep it that way. Oh sure, you may be working to cure cancer or write another best seller, but your home turf is to be immutable. You’re even going to die here (or in Lebanon, but only if you can’t get into Kendal).

To manage this stasis, the Selectboard doesn’t run Hanover, the Planning Board does. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more doctoral degrees on that panel than there are on a Nobel Prize committee, and it’s probably easier to get a medal for medicine in Stockholm than a permit to build a doghouse in Etna.

The Selectboard functions essentially as the board of an adult day care center. Its agenda includes approving banners over Main Street and the purchase of new motorized toys for the various departments. SB 2 put the fear of god in them, hence the remarkable overkill that appeared in letters to the Forum.

Now we get to the nub of it: What were they so afraid of?

Sure, Hanover is well off, and those in the ivory tower have always been uneasy at the presumed envy of those on the other side of the moat. But here we have a reinforcing phenomenon, the chastity belt of liberal guilt that so dominates every aspect of governing.

In a town where (I am told) there is a world-class graduate school of management, a discussion of the most basic concepts — what do we do and why are we doing it? — could not be permitted to occur. SB 2 would have allowed defeat of a proposed budget in a separate vote, and that is simply unthinkable. We have achieved perfection; what could possibly be cut?

Unthinkable, and also impossible, because lying in wait is this newspaper, ready to lash out at any hint of right-sizing, downsizing, management for results or the mere suggestion that somebody from Canaan or Windsor might lose his job. (Let’s put it this way, the “v” in vnews.com stands for “victim.”)

So there you are: Fear sank the article, never to be seen again here in helpless Hanover, land of the passive and home of the ever-penitent.

To the SB 2 petitioners, all I can say is, I feel your new tax law pain. That $10,000 maximum deduction for local taxes doesn’t go far in this town. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that, as a small-business man, I’m going pass-through. Sorry about that, but you know, what with a new assessment at my yacht club, well …

Dick Mackay has lived in Hanover since 1971, and wouldn’t live anywhere else.