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.
No he hasn’t. If he’d just kept the money he stole / inherited from his dad and retired, he’d have come out ahead. The timeline diverges when he manages to get elected and starts being able to funnel billions to himself. But, until then, his story was mostly about self-promotion and failing at business.
His stock market name brand did well. The apprentice did well, and was arguably the launchpad for his presidency. He’s owned his Mar-a-lago mansion since 1985.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Even if built on bullshit, his life hasn’t been one of failures in regards to his personal urges and lifestyle. Compared to ‘commoner’ Americans, he’s rich and successful. And that he was able to get away with it, we can use an American quote: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” (Ice T). To succeed via corruption and gaming the system, is as American as apple pie.
The Apprentice saved him. If they had cast Michael Dell or Larry Ellison I think Trump would have run out of money and his name would just be one of those people from the 80s and 90s that you forgot about.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Yes, and he could have done that if he’d just retired on the money he inherited / stole from his father. He didn’t need to start and fail at a bunch of businesses, but his ego demanded that he do that. So, slowly he depleted the half a billion and it was almost gone when The Apprentice gave him a lifeline.
Actually, to try and help highlight the viewpoint I’m describing, in light of what you’re putting out, let me try to frame this stuff a little differently.
Consider something like the CEO of Blackberry. His company is now essentially defunct, in part due to the lack of security and stolen IP, but also because they screwed up their business market dominance by trying to chase the retail market when Apple/google started showing up. His business is toast, and for the sake of argument, let’s say the CEO now lives a basic lifestyle, with very little to his name – most likely he’s living pretty damn good though, in reality, but likely not “ultra rich” wealthy.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man. At the nadir of his wealth curve, he’s a failure.
Business people are often considered successful or not based on their current positions and most recent endeavours, and their overall hoard of wealth. Given that the apprentice ‘saved’ him, anytime after the apprentice it’d be reasonable to say Trump’s a successful business person, even if he was drastically inflating the actual numbers associated with his wealth. Even if he’d previously failed a bunch. There are lots of entrepeneurs that will see their efforts fail a bunch at the start, and if they have enough wealth they’ll often eventually succeed. Doesn’t make it less of a success when it happens, in some ways.
And now that he’s managed to leverage that into owning America, his profit’s gone up exponentially – for both himself and his entire family line. So by American standards, that’s pretty successful. And we all know there’ll be no accountability, especially not for his family.
The last paragraph highlights something else as well: those who define this way of being as “success” are quite empty of substance. These shouldn’t be American standards of success. It’s up to us what our definition of success is. I reject Trump as any example of success.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man.
I guess you’re using Research in Motion as an example of a company that went up and went back down, and are picturing some imaginary CEO, not Mike Lazaridis or Doug Fregin who were the co-CEOs of RIM, but are no longer with the company.
The difference from Trump is that this imaginary “Blackberry CEO” took a company that was worth nothing and then made it into a company that was one of the most influential in the world. That “zero to hero” story is something Trump never did. He started at the peak, with half a billion dollars he inherited / stole from his dad, and then he went down from there.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Jay Gould was considered a successful businessman because he grew up in poverty and then became a multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s dollars). His son George Jay Gould isn’t considered a successful businessman because all he did was inherit his dad’s company and didn’t meaningfully increase its value.
Fred Trump was a successful businessman because he made the fortune that Donald Trump squandered.
And how much money has Trump made pillaging America? Pretty sure he’s got most of those folks beat. Heck, Jared Kushner got like $2billion from the Saudis to play around with, and that was just one of the kickbacks to Trump’s family orbit. Pretty successful at enriching themselves – Gould become a billionaire, Trump’s become a multi-billionaire and made his family connections all billionaires in their own right aswell.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Trumps made himself worth more than he was previously worth. He’s also made his family and friends worth more than they were previously worth. So he fits your definition of being a successful businessman.
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.
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.
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.
No he hasn’t. If he’d just kept the money he stole / inherited from his dad and retired, he’d have come out ahead. The timeline diverges when he manages to get elected and starts being able to funnel billions to himself. But, until then, his story was mostly about self-promotion and failing at business.
His stock market name brand did well. The apprentice did well, and was arguably the launchpad for his presidency. He’s owned his Mar-a-lago mansion since 1985.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Even if built on bullshit, his life hasn’t been one of failures in regards to his personal urges and lifestyle. Compared to ‘commoner’ Americans, he’s rich and successful. And that he was able to get away with it, we can use an American quote: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” (Ice T). To succeed via corruption and gaming the system, is as American as apple pie.
The Apprentice saved him. If they had cast Michael Dell or Larry Ellison I think Trump would have run out of money and his name would just be one of those people from the 80s and 90s that you forgot about.
Yes, and he could have done that if he’d just retired on the money he inherited / stole from his father. He didn’t need to start and fail at a bunch of businesses, but his ego demanded that he do that. So, slowly he depleted the half a billion and it was almost gone when The Apprentice gave him a lifeline.
Actually, to try and help highlight the viewpoint I’m describing, in light of what you’re putting out, let me try to frame this stuff a little differently.
Consider something like the CEO of Blackberry. His company is now essentially defunct, in part due to the lack of security and stolen IP, but also because they screwed up their business market dominance by trying to chase the retail market when Apple/google started showing up. His business is toast, and for the sake of argument, let’s say the CEO now lives a basic lifestyle, with very little to his name – most likely he’s living pretty damn good though, in reality, but likely not “ultra rich” wealthy.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man. At the nadir of his wealth curve, he’s a failure.
Business people are often considered successful or not based on their current positions and most recent endeavours, and their overall hoard of wealth. Given that the apprentice ‘saved’ him, anytime after the apprentice it’d be reasonable to say Trump’s a successful business person, even if he was drastically inflating the actual numbers associated with his wealth. Even if he’d previously failed a bunch. There are lots of entrepeneurs that will see their efforts fail a bunch at the start, and if they have enough wealth they’ll often eventually succeed. Doesn’t make it less of a success when it happens, in some ways.
And now that he’s managed to leverage that into owning America, his profit’s gone up exponentially – for both himself and his entire family line. So by American standards, that’s pretty successful. And we all know there’ll be no accountability, especially not for his family.
The last paragraph highlights something else as well: those who define this way of being as “success” are quite empty of substance. These shouldn’t be American standards of success. It’s up to us what our definition of success is. I reject Trump as any example of success.
I guess you’re using Research in Motion as an example of a company that went up and went back down, and are picturing some imaginary CEO, not Mike Lazaridis or Doug Fregin who were the co-CEOs of RIM, but are no longer with the company.
The difference from Trump is that this imaginary “Blackberry CEO” took a company that was worth nothing and then made it into a company that was one of the most influential in the world. That “zero to hero” story is something Trump never did. He started at the peak, with half a billion dollars he inherited / stole from his dad, and then he went down from there.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Jay Gould was considered a successful businessman because he grew up in poverty and then became a multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s dollars). His son George Jay Gould isn’t considered a successful businessman because all he did was inherit his dad’s company and didn’t meaningfully increase its value.
Fred Trump was a successful businessman because he made the fortune that Donald Trump squandered.
And how much money has Trump made pillaging America? Pretty sure he’s got most of those folks beat. Heck, Jared Kushner got like $2billion from the Saudis to play around with, and that was just one of the kickbacks to Trump’s family orbit. Pretty successful at enriching themselves – Gould become a billionaire, Trump’s become a multi-billionaire and made his family connections all billionaires in their own right aswell.
Trumps made himself worth more than he was previously worth. He’s also made his family and friends worth more than they were previously worth. So he fits your definition of being a successful businessman.
That’s post-election.
The timeline is:
At no point was he a successful businessman.
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.
This is a hard pill to swallow even for the people against him.
But when it comes to the state of America, we are all to blame.