not_IOsmart people can admit mistakes and apologize
abigscaryhoboMay as well rant about it here.
Whenever someone say about trump “But he’s a good businessman!” As some sort of defense, I get immediately annoyed. He is an absolute garbage businessman. He has failed or run so many businesses into the ground. He made a casino go broke, you know the business that thrives on basically just letting people come in and throw their money at you and leave?
What he is good at is lining his own pockets. He goes into anything and lies, cheats, and schemes, then shovels as much money into his pockets as he can before someone notices and the bills come due. He makes deals with contractors, then refuses to pay, then drags them through courts until they give up and claims he got a discount. That’s not “good business” that’s theft. It’s despicable and gross.
Every allegory we have for a corrupt, lying, thieving businessman is embodied in Trump. He is not good for business. He’s good for himself until the business fails then he moves on to the next persons pile of money to steal.
And that’s what he is doing as president. He is selling the country piece by piece to line his own pockets, then once everything goes belly up he’ll take his money and walk away.
Fuck Trump.
Slight counter thought on the ‘business man’ thing – Trump’s clearly done well for himself. Yes, his businesses all tended to fail, he was convicted of fraud, etc etc – he made a stock market entry based solely on his brand name. His entire reputation is based on vapor.
But that’s not much different than a lot of celebrities these days. They’re also rich as fuck, with basically no real ‘deliverables’ to speak of in terms of productivity benefits for the broader community. It’s practically the definition of an influencer.
Also consider the standard advice that young people get in regards to work/business – that they should essentially constantly change jobs / jump around to try and ratchet up that salary. That sort of behaviour is inherently reducing their overall benefit/contribution to the businesses they work for, and is entirely about lining their own pockets.
Americans inherently tie having large sums of money, to being a good business person. It’s not about productivity, sustainability or supplying a need / service or anything of that sort. So lining his own pockets, is him being a good business man by the American definition of what that means.
I think you’re correct that this is how Americans define “good businessman”. But there’s some missing cognition when they then decide that he should run things.
“A ‘good dream’ is when you’re in a dream and enjoy yourself. Freddy Kruger has many good dreams. Therefore, I hope Freddy is in my dream.”
Yeah, no argument here. Though I think that’s been a societal norm in America for a very long time, and in many western/capitalist countries. People have value based on wealth, not on historic/potential benefit to the broader public.
I always think back to the time Gene Simmons from KISS had his reality show, like back in the 90s or something ancient like that. One of his asides, he basically says he wants to amass money, and he wants his kids to amass money, cause money is what demonstrates how much value you’ve added to the world. That sort of thinking, I reckon, is baked into Americans. So Trump, Elon and Thiel and them have billions/trillions of dollars, they’ve ‘clearly’ been the most positive forces in American life in recent decades, and are inherently ‘good’ business men. Regardless of how they made that money, or whether anything was delivered. It’s flawed, but as noted, that sentiment’s been around for decades.
Elon and Peter are not Americans. Like not in any way culturally or physically are they American.
Elon is a fucking illegal on top of it.
So Elon allegedly became an American citizen in 2002. He immigrated, sure, and seemingly spent 10 years as an illegal, but he’s as American as any other immigrant that America’s taken in – you can’t realistically say he isn’t, unless you want to expand the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the current administration. Peter Thiel’s been an American since he was 1 year old, and was naturalised I guess. So similar story on that front.
Point there being that if you want to make a case that they aren’t Americans, you’d need to accept the current administration’s take that immigrants aren’t Americans. Which seems un-American historically (I mean, statue of liberty quotes and all…).
However at the same time, Americans, in the eyes of the current administration, are white protestant sorts. Like how they’re kicking out “immigrants”, but generally haven’t been deporting the absurd number of Canadians who immigrated south, because the Canadian immigrants are generally white protestant sorts (even if non practicing, the same sort of work ethic). To accept the current administration’s take on immigrants, you need to be a white nationalist, like Jack Posobiec and the Trump administration that lauds him.
And to reject the current administrations take on immigrants, you’d need to accept that Musk and Thiel are American.