You are correct that the problem is the manager and not Kanban, but in my experience it has been the case that the problem is always the management at some level. The point of this article is that if you think adopting Kanban is going to solve long standing organizational and inter-personal issues, you're in for disappointment.

I have personally experienced this situation more than once. A manager/team/organization who claims to be adopting (Scrum/Kanban/etc) but when push comes to shove they immediately discard any discipline imposed by any approach their team has decided to commit to, thereby rendering it completely pointless.

If your manager is competent enough to understand the reasons for the rules of Kanban (or any Agile methodology), and has the power to enforce those rules despite pressure from other parts of the organization, then it's likely you don't need to ascribe to a particular methodology anyway. Your team will adopt an approach that works best for them, borrowing best practices from various methodologies, and will get the job done regardless.