My interlocutor wrote:
CEO? I left the Navy because they wanted to move me out of fixing things to being a manager. Thirty-plus years of software engineering preceded by ten years of electronics—and the first thing I remember fixing was a three-speed bicycle transmission when I was thirteen. So all my life I’ve had a bent for fixing things. But I don’t see any fix for most of America’s problems. Best I can do is make suggestions for improvement which will likely never be implemented.
> p.s. I hope you don’t mind: I’d like to put your post and this my response to it in my blog so kindly provided by you.
Well, if you badmouth the Republicans without giving equal time to the Democrats, you’ll misrepresent me. 🙂
I won’t badmouth Stein or Johnson just yet—I don’t know enough about them.
I responded:
By CEO I meant the top-down management style of the U.S., as opposed to the Japanese style. They are different, one providing quick decisions and slow implementation (U.S.), the other interminable decision-making time but swift and conflict-free implementation. Take your pick. Fixing a mechanical object is entirely different from “fixing” human problems, i.e. resolving them. Resolving problems with people who take ideological stands is much harder than working with people toward a solution requiring compromise. I always think of the lady in the process of a divorce who sees her lawyer having a drink with her husband’s lawyer: she is sure they are colluding against her, otherwise, why would they be so friendly? She has no concept that they have a working relationship even as they combat each other in their casework. So Congressmen used to convene at the local watering holes and talk over issues in a fraternal (and sororal) way. No more. Fukuyama lists the numbers of lobbyists starting in the 70s and bringing it up to 2012 or so….. unfucking believable. Now your Congressman consorts with lobbyists. That is the process Fukuyama labels “capture by the elites”, referring to government, esp tax policy.
Re Republicans and Democrats. Who destroyed the consensus in this country by pursuing an insane war? Democrats. Who took the Party down the garden path by rolling over old, White Party loyalists to diversity the Party with women and minorities? It sure wasn’t the Republicans. Right now the GOP is the Party of blocking legislation. Period. The history books will record that, too. As someone said on TV yesterday, this may be the first Republican President in 8 years and the last President ever if Trump wins. American Exceptionalism sounds nice but just look at all the people who support Trump’s unconstitutional plans for governing.
Johnson is a solid guy as far as I can tell, as is his running mate, but Libertarians are ideologues. How would they govern? The first Libertarian driving the freeway and losing an axle on a break in the surface will be a Democrat before the tow truck arrives. And Stein’s Party floats in Europe but not here, for cultural reasons (if Greens started packing guns, they would get a few more votes). The Greens are similar to Sanders and Sanders has shown a HUGE hunger in this country for a more left-leaning governance just as Trump’s rise has shown a hunger for a nostalgic return to a non-existent path which is in reality proto-fascism. We may yet go down one of those paths.
Take your pick