APP - 'Why do so many incompetent men become leaders?'

M

midcan5

Member
This is fascinating. Examples are mainstream today. Media and social media not only show the incompetence, but they both show the reasons. The contorted apologetics, the excuses for incompetent acts abound. Tribalism has a part here too.




“It’s a law of the universe that 87 percent of all people in all professions are incompetent.” John Gardner
 
Years ago I read Francois Lyotard’s 'The Postmodern Condition' I have to check if I still have it. While a bit off topic it covers the society we now live in. The article below is excellent. We all appear today to live in bubbles but bubbles can be both helpful and blinding.

"Citizens were shape-shifting into consumers and actively participating in their own marginalization. "

'Postmodernism predicted our post-truth hellscape. Everyone still hates it.'

https://www.vox.com/features/2019/11/11/18273141/postmodernism-donald-trump-lyotard-baudrillard


"The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers." Jean-Francois Lyotard
 
"'Why do so many incompetent men become leaders?' "

Ask President Trump.

He's got a lot of insight into this.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Midcan5,

Excellent.

And over the head of Trump fans.
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It is so laughable that you hold yourself out as holier than thou crusader of online decorum who doesn't insult, yet you level these types of attacks. I suspect that the irony will be lost on you
 
Bull Durham said:
For the sake of this discussion, are we going to regard women such as Elizabeth Holmes to be outliers?
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There is difference between incompetence and dishonesty. Of course Trump exceeds simple incompetence as he is too unread and uneducated to be judged as only incompetent. His business failures demonstrate the incompetence fact but his conversation and reasoning enter a world in which only the easy led and equally unread can enter. Groupthink is a powerful tool in the hands of a man who says anything and whose adherents believe and follow sans thought.
 
midcan5 said:
There is difference between incompetence and dishonesty. Of course Trump exceeds simple incompetence as he is too unread and uneducated to be judged as only incompetent. His business failures demonstrate the incompetence fact but his conversation and reasoning enter a world in which only the easy led and equally unread can enter. Groupthink is a powerful tool in the hands of a man who says anything and whose adherents believe and follow sans thought.
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She used dishonesty as a cover to buy her more time to experiment. She thought she would ultimately succeed, in the mold of past inventors, who lied to investors while they were still working on their experiments.

I agree that Douchebag Donald was an incompetent business man. His presidency has been the opposite of incompetence (economy, trade deals, war on terrorism, liberal judicial appointments (as opposed to your preferred illiberal variety), arming Russia's neighbours, etc.).
 
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Bull Durham said:
She used dishonesty as a cover to buy her more time to experiment. She thought she would ultimately succeed, in the mold of past inventors, who lied to investors while they were still working on their experiments.

I agree that Douchebag Donald was an incompetent business man. His presidency has been the opposite of incompetence (economy, trade deals, war on terrorism, liberal judicial appointments (as opposed to your preferred illiberal variety), arming Russia's neighbours, etc.).
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Threedee, what is the appeal of Bull Durham? And 'in the mold of past inventors' Huh, who, you know what they say about assumptions by now. I give Pres Trump no credit for the current economy as he inherited it from Pres Obama. His tax policies and deficits will eventually crash as most republican policies have - that is an econ history lesson. You do remember 'it's the economy stupid' and the crash that Pres Obama corrected, or the Saving and Loan debacle. We could add the great depression to the great recession. But history is forgotten today.

I'm not sure what your parenthetical items mean? I'd hardly declare his scotus choices liberal? Check out their decisions so far, pro money, pro business. But you are a member of a tribe and I understand that there is comfort for some on the reservation.

Re: SCOTUS for the reader

"Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. "

'Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted' Ian Millhiser

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22715946-injustices
 
midcan5 said:
Threedee, what is the appeal of Bull Durham? And 'in the mold of past inventors' Huh, who, you know what they say about assumptions by now. I give Pres Trump no credit for the current economy as he inherited it from Pres Obama. His tax policies and deficits will eventually crash as most republican policies have - that is an econ history lesson. You do remember 'it's the economy stupid' and the crash that Pres Obama corrected, or the Saving and Loan debacle. We could add the great depression to the great recession. But history is forgotten today.

I'm not sure what your parenthetical items mean? I'd hardly declare his scotus choices liberal? Check out their decisions so far, pro money, pro business. But you are a member of a tribe and I understand that there is comfort for some on the reservation.

Re: SCOTUS for the reader

"Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. "

'Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted' Ian Millhiser

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22715946-injustices
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Bull Durham is a play on words. That's not Kevin Costner in my avatar.

Democrats do far worse than try to implement market liberalism (which you seem to dislike). They give us civil wars and Vietnam. They wreck our courts with illiberal appointments. Right now they seem determined to make every metropolitan area unlivable.
 
The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence"
 
Bull Durham said:
Bull Durham is a play on words. That's not Kevin Costner in my avatar.

Democrats do far worse than try to implement market liberalism (which you seem to dislike). They give us civil wars and Vietnam. They wreck our courts with illiberal appointments. Right now they seem determined to make every metropolitan area unlivable.
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Threedee, ah, come on surely you realize Vietnam was more complicated than your pointing fingers. History can be your friend. Check out the 'domino theory' as a start. Didn't know you were into romantic comedies and name changing may appeal to some or be useful as a movie topic but....

And a little history to help you along. And I am a fan of Ike.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-president-pledges-support-to-south-vietnam


PS and do we connect the dots after Trump's killing of an Iranian bad guy with the shooting down of a the airline? Incompetence?
 
midcan5 said:
Threedee, ah, come on surely you realize Vietnam was more complicated than your pointing fingers. History can be your friend. Check out the 'domino theory' as a start. Didn't know you were into romantic comedies and name changing may appeal to some or be useful as a movie topic but....

And a little history to help you along. And I am a fan of Ike.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-president-pledges-support-to-south-vietnam


PS and do we connect the dots after Trump's killing of an Iranian bad guy with the shooting down of a the airline? Incompetence?
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As I said, the user name and the avatar are not a reference to the movie.

Some people think that the containment plan itself was a misapplication of George Keenan's advice and famous policy memo. Either way, many of the numerous conflicts we entered into were incompetently managed, regardless of why we undertook them.
 
Regards to the assertion that Trump is "unread, uneducated". Who cares? I look at results. Some of the most competent people that I know never went to college.

We have the best economy ever in my lifetime, and it is built on a solid foundation of energy independence and American manufacturing. What liberals fail to understand is that those two measures also give us tremendous strength in Mideast affairs, and we have to be involved there because of decisions made at the end of WW2.
 
The positives today of the economy are the work of Pres Obama and the policies that brought us back from the Bush disaster. The deficits today are the work of Trump and they will once again bring the economy down. While I hope he loses in 2020, whoever wins will have to deal with his reckless deficits and stupid tax policies. Lost of regulatory structure has a way of catching up on the economy. It appears to be a cycle that repeats after every republican? What should sadden Americans is that none of his promises on healthcare or drugs has materialized, but he has hurt a lot of Americans and immigrants and children. Nothing to be proud of or to honor.

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/23/18194228/trump-uninsured-rate-obamacare-medicaid

'Across America, working-class people — including many of our friends — are dying of despair. And we’re still blaming the wrong people.'


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/sunday/deaths-despair-poverty.html
 
While this is slightly off topic, it helps to explain how America could have elected so dishonest and incompetent a president.

'The Audacity of Hate' By Thomas B. Edsall

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/opinion/trump-anger-fear.html

"Karl Rove had a novel idea for how to organize President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

He and the chief campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd, decided on a “base strategy.” They reallocated the bulk of the campaign’s media budget to focus on social conservatives instead of on moderates — a decision predicated on the fact that the swing, or persuadable, share of the electorate had shrunk from one in five voters to less than one in 10. The most effective use of campaign funds, the thinking ran, was to invest in turning out more of the millions of white right-wing voters who needed to be motivated to show up at the polls.

The result was a shift that year from a traditional centrist strategy to an emphasis on anger and fear, a shift that turned out to have profound long-term consequences.

Campaigns in the past had relied on activating resentment and hostility, of course, but the re-election drive for Bush in 2004 was the first to make this the centerpiece of a mainstream presidential effort.

American politics were irrevocably transformed, polarization strategies became institutionalized and the stage was set for the explicit racial and anti-immigrant themes dominating Donald Trump’s campaigns for election and re-election.

Three major events over the next 10 years bridged the gap between the White House campaign of George W. Bush and the White House campaign of Donald J. Trump.

The economic meltdown of 2007-9 devastated faith in the American economic system and in the nation’s elected leaders — especially the Republican establishment."

See rest of article at link on top.


Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as necessity." Simone Weil
 
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