Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
She's not playing for negotiating leverage in the next two years.
Also, unrelatedly, apropos of Sen. Klobuchar: Believe it. Terrible boss.
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I don't know jack about Klobuchar, but again: Is this what we decide who can run upon? That she's a lousy boss?
Patients who confuse excellent bedside manner with skill often make a grievous error.
ETA: Along these same lines, can we please retire this ludicrous platitude: "Character is destiny." John Meacham, the Peggy Noonan/Tom Friedman of historians, said this on Bill Maher the other night and I waited in vain for Maher to reply, "Really? Donald Trump is President. Stalin died of a stroke in his office. Goldman Sachs is... well, still in business. Or how about, say... Pol Pot?"
Along with belief in karma, or my favorite, "Everything happens for a reason," that comment about character is one of the greatest delusions out there. "It all comes out in the wash" also needs to go. The reason you think past sins come back to bite people in the ass is because the only time you hear about it is when it happens. What you don't hear about is the 10 trillion skeletons and past misdeeds wildly successful people keep hidden in their closets their entire lives.
And the biggest - the granddaddy of them all I'm hearing these days as the right replies to AOC is, "If you work hard enough, you make your own luck." Who made up this pile of horseshit? You can work your ass off your entire life and not get lucky. You can be a middling ne'er do well and fall into a plum position by happenstance of getting on the right elevator with the right person at the right time. (Zuckerberg's college roommate is worth billions, just for being his roommate.) Sure, you can increase your chance of getting lucky by putting yourself in situations where that elevator meeting is more likely to occur. But that's an incremental increase in likelihood barely north of a rounding error. And that luck is usually the sort that'll only put you one or two rungs up the ladder. The luck that gets you a yacht with more staff than guests is more analogous to playing the lottery.
End of rant.
