I’m not verified this yet from other sources so it’s just a “maybe” right now. The reason why this would be important is that China may currently have a system where the top brass are making decisions behind the scenes and just making Xi be the face of the party. It wasn’t like this with the 2 previous Presidents. This harkens back to Mao, where the Gang of 4 were the ones making the decisions for him although China will never go back down that route because those people were also idiots. However, like you suspect, a lot of erratic decision-making with regard to policies will take place if this is the case.
If this leads to lots of instability, it’s going to affect my investments and business dealings there so I’m keeping tabs on the situation.
@loppar
I think that would reflect China in the past, but now they want both “‘yes’ men” and smart people. I’ve dealt with guys at the middle level and from my own experiences they’re usually pretty smart but know how to navigate the system well like in your example with Khruschev,
The dumb ones got purged during the crackdown on corruption when Xi became President because they were too flamboyant with their ill-gotten wealth along with non-allies of the current administration. Every single fucker is corrupted. There are literally no exceptions. So anyone can be purged at any time if the Party wants to do so and the public will not be alarmed because they can easily provide evidence that the official was corrupt. That’s enough for the smart guys to know they have to step in line.
For China, it’s not that hard to get these guys because they have a large talent pool to choose from and unlike other countries, the top talent WANT to work for the government because they know they can eventually get more money than people working in the private sector. It’s why people with resources are willing to pay so up to $16,000 to get into the military with the promise of being set up for the post of an official.
Also, the government has a say on things like who gets to the top of the large corporations and who get’s fucked. Look at what happened to Jack Ma recently. They cancelled an IPO just because he said the wrong thing in public. A fucking IPO. And the guy isn’t a particularly smart person to begin with though he’s not stupid. He made his wealth through lots of collaboration with the government during the right time frame and having good people skills and foreign contacts.
Not really. Successful con men do this all the time. Not all con men are successful. The man has managed to stay wealthy all his life despite all his shitty business deals and screwing over so many wealthy and prominent shareholders over decades and such people were still willing to invest in his projects before he was President. He can’t be stupid.
I think he’s just like every other politician (ok most), so yeah.
I was a fan of the way he messaged and worked on the pandemic early on last year before we knew much (particularly in contrast to the president’s messaging), but he’s lost that thread long ago and he’s always struck me as exactly what this recent scandal shows.
Trump also screwed over a lot of small businessmen and just “regular working folks” over the years. Hell…he even got many of them to storm the capital with the promise that he would be “right behind them”…
How people worship this man is beyond comprehension. And yes…worship is the right word.
He was chosen as the democrat anti-Trump because he’s his mirror image. He’s a narcissistic blowhard who treats his state like a personal fiefdom.
The press was happy to fellate him while they could use him against Trump and were, unsurprisingly, determined to be incurious about his record while that was useful.
Now his wing of the party isn’t in the White House so they’re defenestrating him because there’s no political cost to doing so.
But hey, at least he won an Emmy .
(He’s also still, by some miracle, not appreciably worse than the London Mayor)
The English invented a word to describe a peculiar form of Protestant mob violence in then Bohemia. I guess “being thrown out of a window” was too pedestrian
Yeah, I wasn’t describing how much of a dick Trump is. I was just saying that a stupid person wouldn’t be able to do what he did.
I mean, seriously, imagine giving the average dumbass a trust fund of a couple of million dollars and a large, financially healthy company to run. Come on. You all know that the only question would be how “badly is he going to fuck it up?”.
Shit, just do the same for someone with average intelligence and there’s like a 20% chance he’ll be able to sustain it for over 5 years.
Then factor in the fact that this dude eventually became the President of the most powerful country in the world.
I am often accused, and occasionally guilty of, supercilious behavior in real life. But in this case I’d classify it as more of an extemporaneous display of wordsmith chops.
Nope. The Latin word for opening/breach was fenestra (ae) from which derive the terms la finestra and la fenêtre for window in Italian and French respectively.
The door in Latin was porta (ae) and as you may guess is the origin of a compound phrase that attained widespread use in English, albeit with a somewhat different meaning.
Albeit as an etymology nerd I’d prefer if they were delimiting (from limes meaning border) illegal immigrants instead of deporting them.
You are absolutely correct. The term fenestration refers to the arrangement of all openings in a building.
Or as it is known in industry parlance: “The architect (pronounced slowly with a pause for emphasis), wants to put a window (another pause for emphasis) there? (raised eyebrows)”
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