#positivefalsepositive The calamity of Covid and the shambolic response should spell the doom of the "retail" politician, the rabid "populist," who is not prepared or capable of managing anything except what massages their ego as they attack non existent enemies...
...while remaining incoherently helpless, absurdly comical in the darkest sense, and rendered utterly incapable of defending the people who put them into office from actual dangers. Or, they get a poll boost from all this, and cash in on the hard sacrifice of better people.
If there is a political and social change from the Covid calamity it should be to recognise that the only people who matter are people who make things, do things, think of better ways to do things, and people who are smart enough to know what they don't know.
Knowing what you don't know is a valuable skill. I heard Andrew Cuomo use that phrase; "One thing I know is that I know what I don't know," and he deferred to someone smarter than himself to address a press conference. It didn't bother him that he didn't know something.
He is one of the few American politicians on top of the detail of the response to Covid, not least because he knows what he doesn't know, but mostly he isn't afraid to ask those who do know and is trusting what they say, and acting on it. He's not in office to prove his worth.
Egomaniacs like Trump, and Morrison, don't know that they don't know, or do know, they must know - because it's their deepest psychic wound - and they have crafted facades of bluff and belligerence to hit out whenever anyone gets close to seeing just how little they do know.
These personas seek office to make the office serve them - power is the ultimate padding around a wounded ego. It may seem counter intuitive, but individuals like Trump and Morrison, and most populists, who seem so vain, preening and self-confident, are usually roiling...
...pots of self loathing inferiority neurosis. They know their inadequacies are their deepest wound and they seek the grandest platforms by which to deny them.
This works for a time, because they know how to trigger the sense of inferiority and raging inner shame that boils away within all to many of us. Then something genuinely difficult bursts the bubble and they are exposed for what they are. An empty joke. As with this event now.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
