Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducay
I think it speaks to exactly what 40%+ of the populace resents where most act like it is somehow more advantageous being a career politician, with very few real successes to your name, rather than a businessman with success out the wazoo.
|
So the criteria for being successful in a political office is not being a politician, but a businessman? Why not have businessmen design nuclear power plants? After all, if you're a businessman, you are qualified for anything!
This idea that government would be better if run like a business is a pernicious falsehood beloved of simpletons. It's like the North American equivalent of the South American love of military juntas - instead of generals, we yearn for CEOs to run things. Hey, all Trump needs is some fake militia rank and he could be both - Colonel Trump, with a chestful of gaudy medals and a fistful of dollars!
There is, of course, no reason that a sufficiently intelligent businessman or general cannot be a good President - like Eisenhower - but believing people who spend their lives in politics are automatically worse at it than people who spend their lives doing business is so asinine it barely deserves the label "idea". Doubling down on such idiocy by thinking Trump - who has parlayed tens of millions of inherited dollars into multiple bankruptcies and (almost certainly) negative net worth - is an example of a successful and smart businessman makes it even more laughable.
I don't deny there are many angry people who perceive themselves as marginalized. Some of them are correct in that perception, but almost all of them are incorrect in the causes of that marginalization - it isn't the Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, politically correct, or socialists who are sidelining them, it is technology and the increasing efficiencies of globalization. Yet it's much easier to fight a culture war than it is to war against either of those, so demagogues will gain in popularity in lockstep with the increasing economic irrelevance of the lower-middle and working classes.
Finding a real solution to that problem is going to be the great political question of the next few decades. So far nobody has really come up with much, but what we *can* be sure of is that empty bags of air like Trump won't be involved.