3 ms·

I am not sure about Boris, but I am 100% certain that the narrative about Trump playing 4D chess is bullshit. I believe that George Bush may have had a persona

I am not sure about Boris, but I am 100% certain that the narrative about Trump playing 4D chess is bullshit. I believe that George Bush may have had a persona to some degree (https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/ https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/) because it pays off to speak like a man of the people. But everyone who's worked with Donald Trump and spoken out afterwards tell the same story about how utterly stupid he is. In Denmark, we once elected a comedian into parliament. He won on promises like "more sunshine" and "bigger christmas presents". People loved it because it was fun and a bit of a finger to the boring, smooth politicians that they usually saw. I guess you could argue that he is smart in that he was able to win the crowd, but what I take away from that is more that the crowd is fickle and will go with (and push) a trend or a fad if it looks fun or supports their anger.

coldtea 7y ago
>I am not sure about Boris, but I am 100% certain that the narrative about Trump playing 4D chess is bullshit. Compared to the narrative that a person who could run several multi-billion dollar businesses, negotiate deals all around the world, get back from bankruptcy (even if it was with cunning and winning banking favors) and play the media to become President is stupid?
- mikeymz 7y ago
  You are missing the subtext of that narrative - Trump did none of those things. People around him and behind him are responsible. I'm not saying that is true (probably is) but it explains how a dullard with his dad's cash can achieve what he has.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    All billionaires have an army of support. Even if Trump didn't handle the details, he was still on the forefront on high end deals, not sitting in the back and letting some CEOs do them (which many heirs do). Lots of dullards with dad's cash just spent it on women and booze or lose everything, Trump kept it (if he didn't increase it, considering the bankruptcies and re-emergences) and made his name a kind of brand. He is not gracious or polished (he's an American businessman after all, that's par for the course), but he does have the P.T Barnum kind of spirit (which is not exactly that of the dullard). And even if we forget the business thing (say he had zero accomplishments there). The elections thing, he did mostly by himself. He obliterated opponents and won voters (including from his own party) starting from zero, when media and pundits gave him zero chances. Could you or me?
    - objectivetruth 7y ago
      I feel a duty to correct your misinformation for any other readers: Is it true that "Trump kept [his inheritance]" and possibly "increased it?" Nope, he actually would have done much better by just investing in a market index fund and playing playboy with the dividends. (Source: http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/) Is it true that "the elections thing, he did mostly by himself?" Nope, after the GOP primary, he had the help of the entire GOP national apparatus (minus a few holdouts who came around after the election)! PLUS the help of an entire menagerie of sketchy criminals led by his then-campaign manager who is now in jail. And don't forget the help of GRU-affiliated hacking and propaganda collectives. (Source: about two dozen indictments and related subsequent convictions and guilty pleas in US federal court)
    - notahacker 7y ago
      I think the PT Barnum spirit comment is absolutely fair, but it's also true to say that PT Barnum was more unusually driven and genuinely fond of attention than a 4D chess player. As for Trump, there's a theory fashionable in some circles that his speaking style is purely performative to simplify or reframe his genuinely sharp grasp of the issues for his audience. But it's undermined by his tendency to embark upon similar rambles about how his pilot said the airports should give airlines better equipment (?!?) and pilots are very clever and if the FAA isn't run by a pilot it should be in front of the sort of apolitical business audience where there's nothing to gain from not just doing the presidential thing and appearing to listen. Sure, nobody's saying his drive isn't exceptional or that the basic strategy of seizing media attention and promoting the sort of populist policies his opponents were squeamish about didn't work, but that's not the same thing as him actually being the smartest person in the room playing 4D chess to disguise it. His persona's at least as WYSIWYG as any other politician. I think Johnson might be more deliberate in his unpolished approach, but I also haven't seen any reason to believe the whimsicality and studied flustered look isn't there mainly because he genuinely does prefer anecdotes to details and struggles to give a straight answer. The counterpoint to this Johnson story of charmingly chaotic speeches is a recent video where he's asked what he does in his spare time, and he appears to be making up a hobby as he goes along in a manner which just looks incredibly awkward. And yet references to this hobby (making models from boxes) in an old column suggest he was actually honestly trying to explain it! Would have come across a lot better if he'd told a joke about not having any spare time and thrown in a half-remembered story about how Winston Churchill spent his time...
  - rjf72 7y ago
    The problem with this hypothesis is that it seems to imply that his money resulted in some sort of advantage other candidates did not have. In reality he was outspent by nearly half a billion dollars in the general election and he was also outspent by every major competitor in the primaries as well. If it wasn't an economic matter and instead he just hired better people - that would still be quite an amazing skill. To be able to have hired better people for his campaign than professional politicians who have been studying and living politics for decades?
Sammi 7y ago
My favorite promise of his is "more tailwind on bike paths" because it's so utterly danish :)
rjf72 7y ago
Do you think the individuals that choose to go to the media and speak negatively of him are an unbiased sample of all of the individuals he has meaningfully engaged with through the years? This is the problem with basing your perception of reality on the media. Dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is news. If all you have to rely for your characterization of "other" people is the media then you'd suddenly think there was a massive epidemic of men running around biting dogs! Won't anybody think of the puppies!? We need to urgently pass anti-dog biting laws! As one example of this that we can quantify, a major issue in the US is "responsible gun control" to combat an epidemic of homicide and violence driven largely by high powered "assault rifles." In quotes there since an assault rifle entails selective fire, generally between full and semi automatic - those weapons are already illegal. Anyhow, let's test this against the data. In the US in 2016 there were 11,004 firearm homicides. [1] How many of these were caused by rifles? The answer is 374, about 3%. Nearly all of our gun crime is driven by cheap little pistols. But "assault rifles" make much better media and sound scary, so it results in a grossly misinformed public who think there's some massive epidemic of "assault rifle" driven homicide. [1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

coldtea 7y ago

>I am not sure about Boris, but I am 100% certain that the narrative about Trump playing 4D chess is bullshit. Compared to the narrative that a person who could run several multi-billion dollar businesses, negotiate deals all around the world, get back from bankruptcy (even if it was with cunning and winning banking favors) and play the media to become President is stupid?

mikeymz 7y ago
You are missing the subtext of that narrative - Trump did none of those things. People around him and behind him are responsible. I'm not saying that is true (probably is) but it explains how a dullard with his dad's cash can achieve what he has.
- coldtea 7y ago
  All billionaires have an army of support. Even if Trump didn't handle the details, he was still on the forefront on high end deals, not sitting in the back and letting some CEOs do them (which many heirs do). Lots of dullards with dad's cash just spent it on women and booze or lose everything, Trump kept it (if he didn't increase it, considering the bankruptcies and re-emergences) and made his name a kind of brand. He is not gracious or polished (he's an American businessman after all, that's par for the course), but he does have the P.T Barnum kind of spirit (which is not exactly that of the dullard). And even if we forget the business thing (say he had zero accomplishments there). The elections thing, he did mostly by himself. He obliterated opponents and won voters (including from his own party) starting from zero, when media and pundits gave him zero chances. Could you or me?
  - objectivetruth 7y ago
    I feel a duty to correct your misinformation for any other readers: Is it true that "Trump kept [his inheritance]" and possibly "increased it?" Nope, he actually would have done much better by just investing in a market index fund and playing playboy with the dividends. (Source: http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/) Is it true that "the elections thing, he did mostly by himself?" Nope, after the GOP primary, he had the help of the entire GOP national apparatus (minus a few holdouts who came around after the election)! PLUS the help of an entire menagerie of sketchy criminals led by his then-campaign manager who is now in jail. And don't forget the help of GRU-affiliated hacking and propaganda collectives. (Source: about two dozen indictments and related subsequent convictions and guilty pleas in US federal court)
  - notahacker 7y ago
    I think the PT Barnum spirit comment is absolutely fair, but it's also true to say that PT Barnum was more unusually driven and genuinely fond of attention than a 4D chess player. As for Trump, there's a theory fashionable in some circles that his speaking style is purely performative to simplify or reframe his genuinely sharp grasp of the issues for his audience. But it's undermined by his tendency to embark upon similar rambles about how his pilot said the airports should give airlines better equipment (?!?) and pilots are very clever and if the FAA isn't run by a pilot it should be in front of the sort of apolitical business audience where there's nothing to gain from not just doing the presidential thing and appearing to listen. Sure, nobody's saying his drive isn't exceptional or that the basic strategy of seizing media attention and promoting the sort of populist policies his opponents were squeamish about didn't work, but that's not the same thing as him actually being the smartest person in the room playing 4D chess to disguise it. His persona's at least as WYSIWYG as any other politician. I think Johnson might be more deliberate in his unpolished approach, but I also haven't seen any reason to believe the whimsicality and studied flustered look isn't there mainly because he genuinely does prefer anecdotes to details and struggles to give a straight answer. The counterpoint to this Johnson story of charmingly chaotic speeches is a recent video where he's asked what he does in his spare time, and he appears to be making up a hobby as he goes along in a manner which just looks incredibly awkward. And yet references to this hobby (making models from boxes) in an old column suggest he was actually honestly trying to explain it! Would have come across a lot better if he'd told a joke about not having any spare time and thrown in a half-remembered story about how Winston Churchill spent his time...
- rjf72 7y ago
  The problem with this hypothesis is that it seems to imply that his money resulted in some sort of advantage other candidates did not have. In reality he was outspent by nearly half a billion dollars in the general election and he was also outspent by every major competitor in the primaries as well. If it wasn't an economic matter and instead he just hired better people - that would still be quite an amazing skill. To be able to have hired better people for his campaign than professional politicians who have been studying and living politics for decades?

Sammi 7y ago

My favorite promise of his is "more tailwind on bike paths" because it's so utterly danish :)

rjf72 7y ago

Do you think the individuals that choose to go to the media and speak negatively of him are an unbiased sample of all of the individuals he has meaningfully engaged with through the years? This is the problem with basing your perception of reality on the media. Dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is news. If all you have to rely for your characterization of "other" people is the media then you'd suddenly think there was a massive epidemic of men running around biting dogs! Won't anybody think of the puppies!? We need to urgently pass anti-dog biting laws! As one example of this that we can quantify, a major issue in the US is "responsible gun control" to combat an epidemic of homicide and violence driven largely by high powered "assault rifles." In quotes there since an assault rifle entails selective fire, generally between full and semi automatic - those weapons are already illegal. Anyhow, let's test this against the data. In the US in 2016 there were 11,004 firearm homicides. [1] How many of these were caused by rifles? The answer is 374, about 3%. Nearly all of our gun crime is driven by cheap little pistols. But "assault rifles" make much better media and sound scary, so it results in a grossly misinformed public who think there's some massive epidemic of "assault rifle" driven homicide. [1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...