I live in Washington, DC. The tiny bandwidth of acceptable opinion here would be hilarious if these people weren't running the country. When I go to parties and meet people with powerful jobs, it's appalling how poorly thought out their analyses of many situations are. Being here for the last 2 years has given me a lot of insight into how and why America is being run into the ground.
Well you know about computers presumably if you're here, so think about how computers, hacking, mainframes etc are portrayed on TV and in movies. Ludicrous, right?
Now consider that a doctor thinks the same about medical dramas, cops and lawyers think that way about crime shows, even pastry chefs probably think that about pastry chefs on TV.
Yet the people who star in and who produce these shows are wildly successful and rich. Politics is the same.
I'll just rattle off some sweeping observations that I think have to do with the narrow set of viewpoints and shallow analysis that often results:
- Incentives in government (and most of the professionals here work for the government in some way, shape, or form) are extraordinarily misaligned. Public servant pay is often crap, so people are easy to buy with stuff like expensive dinners. Public servants thus get obsessed with amassing more power - self-promotion becomes the driving force behind their decisions with little regard as to how their power actually plays out.
- Relatedly, public servants become slaves to the existing power structures, both in practice and in their thoughts. It is very, very difficult for them to think outside of the box... even when they have leadership positions that you would typically look to for this.
- Everyone here majored in political science or economics in college.
- Everyone here worships the New York Times and Washington Post.
It's like being surrounded by zombies sometimes.
Professionally, you can be a big value-add by being willing to be the person who shakes people up with new ideas and having the drive to sustain it.
Politicians need to be excellent at getting elected. That requires skills in persuasion, manipulation, forming alliances etc, but not neccssarily deep thought. Being a politician is at its core a sales job, and how much insight do you typically expect from salesmen?
Initially. They tend to get pretty flustered if you simultaneously remain calm and knowledgeably begin discussing how you disagree with a premise (when people get heated, they're much easier to dismiss).
Especially in the current climate. Donald has really rattled their worldviews by seizing control of the throne.
