Tuesday Potpourri

First, among the most important stories in the world of geopolitical economy is what is happening in Argentina. I have been at pains to keep everyone informed, but it is worth the trouble to offer Doug Casey’s summary of what Argentina’s new president Javier Milei has accomplished:

The most important geopolitical event has received the least press: the election of Javier Milei in Argentina. His success in rolling back the size of the Argentine government is historic. He has fired scores of thousands of government employees, abolished agencies, abolished many taxes, and abolished a lot of price controls and subsidies. The government, which has perpetually run in deeply the red, financed by printed fiat money, is now in the black after only one year. This is a really major change, a veritable first in world history, and a change in the megatrend, with any luck.

Second, and then there is the fate of liberal democracy. You might recall that one Francis Fukuyama argued a quarter century ago that liberal democracy would end up being the most effective and efficient form of governance. Fukuyama learned this by reading Hegel. One feels compelled to remark that it is probably not a very good idea to hitch your wagon to the godfather of Marxism.

Where Fukuyama saw a conflict between liberal democracy and Communist tyranny, more recent thinkers have insisted that the conflict is between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. 

And yet, for those who see democracy winning, one notes the analysis offered by British Lord, one Danial Hannan, in The Daily Mail.

Apparently, things are not quite so rosy for democracy.

More countries than ever are going through the motions, with manifestos, candidates, polling stations and returning officers. Yet actual democracy, in the sense of people being able to change their rulers through the ballot box, is in retreat.

He continues:

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) records that, last year, 46 per cent of countries saw a decline in the rule of law and democratic norms, while 24 per cent have seen an increase.

The Economist Intelligence Unit states: ‘Less than 8 per cent of the world’s population live in a full democracy, while almost 40 per cent live under authoritarian rule – a share that has been creeping up in recent years.’

What is causing this disruption? What was it, from the start of the 2010s, that undermined so many of the old political certainties – and the parties that upheld them?

Was it the global financial crisis, which delegitimised the entire system in many people’s eyes? Was it mass immigration, which wrecked the sense of shared identity that allows strangers to trust one another?

Or was it the spread of social media and of smartphones, which have left us bored, gullible and angry?

Worse yet, it might be the Chinese example. Over the past four decades China grew its economy by some 3000%. Which is a lot. It turned a backwater into one of the world’s largest economies.

And, dare we mention, it did not do so with liberal democracy, with free elections, free expression or human rights.

Third, Gideon Rachman explains in the Financial Time that democracies are not quite as functional as we would wish:

The major­ity of G7 gov­ern­ments are now so burdened with domestic polit­ical prob­lems that they are incap­able of steer­ing their own coun­tries — let alone the free world.

Con­sider the polit­ical situ­ations in France, Ger­many, Canada, Japan and South Korea (the lat­ter is not form­ally a mem­ber of the G7, but routinely attends the sum­mits). In France, the gov­ern­ment recently fell after it was unable to pass a budget. A new prime min­is­ter is in place but will face the same prob­lems.

There is much spec­u­la­tion that Emmanuel Mac­ron will resign as pres­id­ent before the sched­uled end of his term in 2027.

Fourth, meanwhile back in the USA, the Trump world is debating the issue of H1-B visas, and especially the issue of whether our great nation can produce a sufficient quantity of engineers. We are world class in producing lawyers and social justice warriors, but when it comes to engineering, we are woefully inadequate.

David Goldman has been debating the issue for quite some time. He offers some statistics, to add to your morning coffee:

The United States awards about 230,000 bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science each year, compared with about 1.2 million in China. The biggest problem at US engineering schools—excluding a few top-rated schools—is finding students qualified to major in the subject at the undergraduate level.

In 2009, 34% of US eighth graders tested at “proficient” (26%) or “advanced” (8%) on the National Assessment of Education Progress test. By 2020, that had fallen to just 24%, with 20% at “proficient” and 4% at “advanced,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Only 6% of American undergraduates major in engineering, compared with 33% in China and Russia.

No surprises here. The problem lies in the American educational system. Recent tendencies toward DEI have aggravated the problem:

In many parts of the country, math instruction is deliberately dumbed down in the name of “equality.” San Francisco eliminated accelerated math instruction in middle and high schools in 2014. The school boards of Troy, Missouri, Tulsa Oklahoma, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and many others followed suit.

In 2023 the California State Board of Education proposed to delay algebra instruction until ninth grade. That schedule, the board claimed, “affirms California’s commitment to ensuring equity and excellence in math learning for all students.”

As for the abuses to the system-- employers who hire foreign workers because they can pay them less-- Goldman recommends the Australian solution:

Educating enough American engineers to reduce dependence on immigrants will take years under the most optimistic assumptions. The present H-1B program does depress pay for qualified Americans, as its critics aver. That is simple to fix. Many countries, for example, Australia, require employers who sponsor a skilled immigrant to pay the going rate for the same job.

The Australian model is designed to “ensure that overseas workers are not paid less than an Australian worker doing the same work. They will also stop these visa programs being used to undercut the Australian labor market.” The onus is on employers to prove they are not paying a sponsored immigrant less than the going salary.

The H-1B program could stand improvement, but the United States can’t do without imported talent – not for years to come.

No one seems willing to mention, if we cannot import enough engineers to fill in the gaps, we can always offshore production. If you cannot bring in more Indian scientists, why not simply move your business to India?

Fifth, as for renewable energy, Powerline lays out the problem, with exemplary clarity.

Wind and solar energy are both unreliable and ridiculously expensive, a fatal combination. They exist only because of government subsidies and mandates, without which they couldn’t begin to compete with real–i.e., reliable and affordable–sources of energy. But no matter how hard governments try, they can never … waste enough money on “green” energy.

Sixth, it’s the latest and the greatest in therapy. Or, that is what its practitioners want us to believe. Ellen Barry writes in the New York Times that the therapy world has a new fad-- divorcing your parents. That means, shunning them, canceling them, writing them out of your life.

Needless to say, the practice is highly disputed. Barry writes:

Whether or not mental health clinicians should encourage this practice is hotly debated. There is no scientific evidence that separating from family is beneficial for the client, critics say; on the contrary, estranged children are likely to lose access to financial and emotional resources. And such cutoffs can also harm family members left behind, like siblings, grandchildren and aging parents.

As they begin to organize online, some parents are scrutinizing those therapists who endorse cutoffs, arguing that they are violating foundational ethical principles. Therapists are trained to avoid imposing their own views when clients contemplate major decisions, and to uphold the principle of non-maleficence, or doing no harm. And for the most part, they are taught to regard family relationships, even flawed ones, as an important part of a flourishing life.

One understands, only too well, that there are some circumstances and some families where children need to divorce their parents. But then, aren’t these extreme circumstances, not a part of everyday growing up? Extremes should not be the rule.

By that I mean that the proponents of this action tend to believe in a trauma theory, to the effect that children were traumatized by their parents, that they suffered emotional abuse, and that their problems are the fault of their parents.

But, what do we really mean by trauma. Are we talking about children who have suffered from sexual abuse or about children who are being forced to do extra homework. There is a difference.

True enough, we would agree that extremes exist, but then again we should question the theory that tells us that large numbers of parents are impediments to childhood flourishing.

How does it happen that the therapy world becomes engulfed in these occasional fad cures?

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How Not to Socialize

It isn’t a secret. America’s social fabric lies in tatters. It is not merely a question of liking or liking each other. People do not get along. They do not know how to cooperate or to socialize. In many cases they simply do not care. 

Our country is divided against itself, and it does not know how to heal the breach. 

The most trendy explanation blames it all on gadgets, thus, on smartphones. The case against these gadgets is compelling and persuasive. And yet, it feels a bit like blaming drugs for addiction. 

The more salient question is why people feel so disconnected from each other that they indulge an ersatz human connectivity via their smartphones. 

Today we have two different studies that seek to address the problem. They reveal two aspects of the problem: multiculturalism and remote work. 

The researchers did not connect the studies, but we can conjoin them for a single post.

The first study, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, reported by Eric Dolan in PsyPost , explains that people are naturally inclined to socialize with others who are similar to them. It’s called similarity-attraction theory.

In truth, this is not a new idea. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam did a study, entitled E Pluribus Unum,  that showed what happens when we engineer more diverse neighborhoods. People do not get along. They do not socialize. They do not engage each other. They tend, in his phrase, to hunker down. 

Forcing people into multicultural social configurations, the kind that you see in television commercials ad nauseam, does not produce social harmony. It produces social dislocation. 

One understands that at a time when everyone is terrified about being exposed as a bigot, fewer and fewer people are willing to risk opprobrium. Why would you try to socialize with people who belong to different racial or ethnic or national groups if you risk being tarred as a bigot?

As for the solution, Putnam suggested that we need to have an encompassing monoculture, one that all belong to equally.

But, that is not all. Another study has shown that remote work, the latest covid-induced fad, is bad for your mental health. The reason: the less you are in the office, the less you are interacting with colleagues, managers and subordinates, the more you will lose your social skills. You will feel isolated and detached, to the detriment of your mental health.

The New York Post has the story:

A shocking 25% of remote workers say their social skills declined since going fully remote, with millennials being the most susceptible to the harms of telecommuting, a ResumeBuilder.com survey of 1,000 US workers found.

Transitioning to a remote set-up full time has many employees struggling with behaviors and norms expected in social settings, including initiating conversations (18%), maintaining eye contact (16%) and participating in group discussions (15%), the November study found.

Evidently, and correctly, the study analyzes the components of social interaction. One might consider them to be like muscles-- you need to work them lest they atrophy. This suggests that if you do too much remote work, and do not compensate with a rich social life outside of the job, you will need to make an extra effort to regain your social skills.

Nearly one in five remote workers reported their overall mental health has taken a nosedive, with almost two-thirds citing a lack of social connection as contributing to their psychological decline, and 57% pointing to an increased sense of isolation.

Of course, the study does not tell us what else might or might not be going on in these people’s lives. If a woman has children at home or if she has an active social life, remote work might not be quite as negative influence.

Working outside of the office, however, has a positive impact for some, with about 38% reporting their mental health improved and 46% claiming it remained the same.

And yet, mental health notwithstanding, remote workers often miss out on promotions.

Beyond crippling employees’ mental and social health, the out-of-office set-up is a career killer for some.

An analysis of 2 million white-collar workers by Live Data Technologies found full-time remote workers were 35% more likely to be canned and 31% less likely to get a promotion in 2023, compared with their in-office colleagues.

So, we have two factors contributing to America’s shredded social fabric. They are not the only factors, but they still need to be taken seriously.

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Sundaze

With a warm welcome to new subscribers.

As has become habitual, I pause on Sunday. It’s that time of the week, a time for reflection and contemplation. It also allows my readers to catch up on posts that they might have missed during the week.

I would like to think that among the topics for deep reflection is this one. Considering the time and effort it takes to write these posts, one would like to think that they are worthy of compensation.

Thus, in place of a tithe, I make a humble request for donations. 

I have been posting on my blog for many years now. It is not self-evident. I could not have done it without the financial support of you, my readers.

If you would like to show appreciation and to encourage me to continue, a good way would be by making a financial contribution. Gratitude is a virtue. 

I try to make my writing sound effortless, but, as the old saying goes, it takes a lot of work to make anything seem effortless. 

If you would like to donate please make use of the Paypal button on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017.

I’m counting on you. 

If you have already donated, please pass the word along to your friends, family, neighbors, associates and colleagues.

Thank  you in advance.

Saturday Miscellany

First, it should not be coming as news. Silicon Valley has long had a predominance of Asian tech workers. Not just Asian-American tech workers, but Asian-Asian tech workers. 

And yet, when Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that if we are going to compete in the world of high tech we are going to need to hand out more visas to Asian engineers, many people were sorely offended.

Turn back the clock, just a bit. Kenny Xu reported on this in Quillette in July, 2021. I discussed it on my blog:

Silicon Valley runs on Asians. This is a well-known aspect of the tech world in general, but it’s especially apparent in elite sub-sectors. Even by 2010, Asian Americans already had become a majority (50.1 percent) of all tech workers in the Bay Area: software engineers, data engineers, programmers, systems analysts, admins, and developers. Census Bureau statistics from the same year put white tech workers at 40.1 percent. Other races made up, in total, slightly less than 10 percent.

Leon is a 24-year-old Facebook product manager fresh out of the University of Virginia. He interacts daily with teams of software engineers at Facebook, coordinating and leading projects and getting them in line. Among the four teams of five or so software engineers he works with on a daily basis, Leon told me, 15 out of the 20 are Chinese. “I don’t mean Chinese-American,” he clarified. “I mean Chinese-Chinese, like from China.” These Chinese engineers largely speak Mandarin during work, making the company billions as they write code with machine-gun efficiency.

And now it has become a problem.

Second, some consider that American firms hire Asian engineers because they can get away with paying them less. Kenny Xu is suggesting that these workers are better at their jobs. I am hardly in a position to judge, but I suspect that Ramaswamy is correct.

In his view, American culture does not set out to produce competent engineers. One might mention-- he does not-- that the American push for diversity requires us to dumb down the curriculum, especially in the sciences and engineering. 

Allow Vivek his word:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH: Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers. 

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.” Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.

One suspects that many Asian-American families shield their children from certain aspects of American culture.

Third, of course, there is more to business than tech engineers. The same is true of the H1B visa that brings foreign talent to our shores.

So, we keep in mind that Amazon had 9,200 warehouse jobs approved for H1B for 2024. 

As opposed to tech engineers, one imagines that Americans could have done these jobs.

Fourth, Bill Maher has suggested that the American left is chock full of intolerant bigots. Who knew? Considering that a deliberative democracy requires us all to respect the opposition, we draw the unfortunate conclusion that the left is opposed to democracy.

Newsmax reports Maher’s statement to Jay Leno:

It's so funny you mention that because today we live in this time where you're not allowed to have friends from the other side or cross lines politically. I forgot that there's an example of that way back when — a guy who crossed lines politically. Oh, the worst thing you could ever do. Be friends with a Republican? Ah! Call 911!

Fifth, meanwhile we have been told that democratic India was soon going to overtake authoritarian China. At the least, it has a larger population. And it has many citizens who excel in business in America.

If you believe that democracy will win out, you will find the following remarks, from Indian expatriate Jayant Bandhari in the American Renaissance sobering. Since we never ask ourselves how things are going in India, I will quote at length.

I had first returned to India with the idea of improving it, but after 11 years, I realized that India was a sinking ship, with worsening and increasingly shameless corruption, degraded people, and a society that was falling apart. I had never met an honest bureaucrat or politician. I applied to emigrate to Canada and my application was approved in a record three weeks….

In India, I have rarely seen someone in authority take the initiative to solve a problem he was responsible for. When I was at university, an underaged boy who worked in the kitchen was raped and sodomized by the janitors. I reported the matter, but not only did no one in authority do what was right — something well within their power — the authorities and fellow students threatened me with severe consequences if I pursued the matter further. Devoid of empathy, they also made fun of the boy and me….

Indians cannot maintain the institutions established by the British. These institutions have been hollowed out and corrupted, becoming predatory. The constitution and laws hold little value. The only forces driving these institutions are bribes and connections. Whether you approach the highest political leaders or the pettiest bureaucrats, they openly and unashamedly demand bribes.

The institutions left behind by the British have been hollowed out, becoming purely predatory and sadistic. This occurred because, in post-British India, those in power prize expediency and acquiring wealth as life’s sole purposes. Today’s India lacks even the vague rule of law that existed before the arrival of the Europeans. This is why it will be an improvement when India eventually collapses and the Taliban-like authoritarian system that existed before the British reemerges from the ashes.

So much for democracy. If you want to console yourself you can remark that they do not have a Communist Party. And you can also point out that if Indian nationals work in a more congenial culture, they excel. After all, people of Indian background are the most successful economically in America.

Sixth, for those of us who have been pondering the outpouring of unbridled lust, directed by young women at assassin Luigi Mangione, a Gen Z woman, named Rikki Schlott offers some excellent analysis in the New York Post.

Schlott shows how the feminist criticism of manly behavior leads to the idolization of a murderer like Mangione.

After years of harping on toxic masculinity, shaming men and stiff-arming chivalry, some women on the left seem to have fixated on Mangione because he represents a sort of masculinity they are finally allowed to celebrate — one that is coded as politically acceptable.

Murdering someone in cold blood is the most “toxic” form of masculine aggression imaginable … unless, apparently, it’s allegedly done in the name of being anti-corporate and anticapitalist.

If leftist women are damsels in distress, held captive by the insurance industry and pricey healthcare system, Mangione is their knight in shining armor: fighting on their behalf, slaying the enemy, taking up arms to defend their cause.

As we have occasionally noticed, when men are not held to standards of gentility they have recourse to machismo. Being incapable of protecting and providing for women, especially when women never let them forget it, leaves with no other choice.

After shaming the masculinity out of the men around them, ultra-feminists are left with no choice but to grasp at an exaggerated fantasy of gallantry in the form of Mangione, because, when healthy expressions of masculinity and femininity get suppressed, unhealthy extremes get fetishized.

This is no mere theory. 

The young feminists who are craving the touch of Mangione are far less repressed sexually than were their mothers or grandmothers. More importantly, they are apparently happy to allow or even encourage their partners to choke them during sexual congress. Schlott reports that some two-thirds of college girls have been choked during sex. Say what?

While young women today are outspokenly progressive on gender dynamics in public, a very different story is playing out behind closed doors.

Privately, they are demanding en masse that their sexual partners choke them during sex. In fact, a full two-thirds of college girls — perhaps the most progressive sampling possible — report having been choked during intercourse.

 

This does not make them empowered. It seems to compensate for the fact that however often they declare themselves to be strong and empowered, they have sacrificed their femininity, what they might call the feminine mystique.

Young women insist that they are just as powerful as men in day to day life and yet, in the bedroom, they are turned on by handing their sexual partner the power to kill them.

Because, when women are conditioned to believe that holding a door and offering a subway seat are misogynistic slights, a suppressed desire for natural gender dynamics will express itself in some other way.

Her point is well taken here. Women who refuse to accept the more genteel expressions of masculine behavior do not erase the gender dynamic. They find themselves playing out the same dynamic in different ways. They despise the feminine mystique and they moon over an assassin like Luigi Mangione-- because they want to be hurt by men.

Clearly, third-wave feminism has left women with a distorted relationship with masculinity: It’s something to be disparaged in its healthy forms, and fetishized in its depraved extremes.

Excellent analysis. 

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Straight Thought about China

Given the current political configuration it is devilishly difficult to find any straight thought about China. By straight thought I mean a cogent and objective analysis that might be the basis for a constructive policy.

Some people are at war against China because they want to relive the glory days of the Cold War. Since we won it, why not replay it.

And then there is the chorus of shrieky schoolgirls who are waving their weapons at the big, bad CCP.

And finally, we have the experts who have been telling us, for some quarter century, that the end of the Chinese regime is imminent. In some quarters being wrong all the time makes you an expert. 

Don’t we live in a great country?

Now we have one David Purdue, recently named to be the new ambassador to China, saying this:

The C.C.P firmly believes its rightful destiny is to reclaim its position as the hegemon of the world order and convert the world to Marxism.

As it happens, this is not true. For a counterargument we turn to Thomas Friedman, last seen in these pages pontificating about Israeli politics, and largely getting it wrong. In all fairness, since I have never hesitated to criticize Friedman’s ramblings I owe it to him to point out when he offers some straight thought.

In a recent column, Friedman points out that China is communist in name only. It is a mix of state directed capitalism and wild cowboy capitalism. 

Considering that China has since the time of Deng Xiaoping grown its economy by some 3,000% we surely do not want to suggest that Communism deserves the credit.

Know thy enemy… one might say. Know thy competition… might be more accurate. It is best not to make your competition into your enemy. 

As it happens, Friedman continues, the Chinese would rather deal with Donald Trump than with Joe Biden. They see Trump as another Deng Xiaoping, a capitalist deal maker.

Better yet, consider that Prof. Marshall Goldman once opined that Russia and China had chosen two different ways to overcome the ravages of communism. Russia under Gorbachev had chosen Jeffersonian liberal democracy while China had chosen Hamiltonism industrialism.

We are all convinced that you cannot have one without the other. Clearly, the Chinese authorities disagree. See Tiananmen Square.

Friedman’s idea is that the United States and China should join together to fight world disorder. What the Chinese call, in my translation, turmoil. He recommends something that I have long since recommended in these pages-- detente between America and China.  

Friedman is thinking the way Nixon was thinking, to break up the axis of our enemies by allying ourselves with one of them. At the very least, Donald Trump is probably the only one who could pull this one off.

All things considered, Donald Trump would be the man to do it. Joe Biden evidently was not.

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Kamala's Breathtaking Arrogance

For anyone who watches politics closely it was hardly a surprise that the nation rejected the candidacy of one Kamala Harris. Being the ultimate diversity hire, she was in no way qualified to occupy the office of the presidency.

If America had chosen a subliterate former courtesan as its leader it would have suffered four years of embarrassment. Between the giggles and the cackles, the nation would have felt serially mortified.

The president represents the nation. A great country does not allow itself to be led by Kamala Harris. A backwater, perhaps, but a great country, certainly not.

Among the leadership skills that Kamala did not possess lay her inability to articulate a coherent sentence in the English language. You cannot lead if you cannot articulate your policy. You cannot lead if you cannot explain why you have formulated this or that policy. 

Leaders should commend respect. They should show a clear command of the information at hand. They should show that they are in charge. Such was the case of Gov. Ron DeSantis when his state was threatened by hurricanes. You would never imagine Kamala organizing a hurricane response effort, or much of anything else.

Perhaps more telling was the fact that nearly every staff member who worked for Kamala quit on her. When more than ninety percent of your staff walks away from the job, you are a bad manager. Or better, you do not know how to manage. 

And yet, the issue rarely arose during the presidential campaign. Staffers of the vice president were wise enough to maintain their silence. They wanted to have a future in the Democratic party and speaking out against Kamala would have ended any chances they might have had one.

So, we are especially interested in Sean O’Brien’s views on Kamala. O’Brien heads the Teamsters Union and for the first time in many years it did not support the Democratic candidate.

O’Brien was explaining his interactions with Kamala to Tucker Carlson:

He spoke about a meeting his lieutenant Joan Corey had with Harris in June, before Biden dropped out of the race.

After she introduced herself and said she was with the Teamsters, Harris became demanding.

'Teamsters? You better get on board. You better get on board. Better get on board soon,' the candidate had told the union.

Seriously, she is not asking for his support. She is not showing him any respect. She is treating him like a lackey. And she is showing a colossal confidence in winning. Doubtless, she considered it her birthright.

After she became the nominee Harris refused to answer the questions that the Teamsters had asked of every candidate:

Later on O'Brien discussed a meeting his union leadership had with then-nominee Harris where she was refusing to answer certain questions they asked of every candidate.

'Her declaration on the way out was: I'm gonna win, with you or without you.'

He said his union gave 16 questions to each candidate and Biden would only answer five, whereas Trump and even the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West would answer all 16. 

O'Brien said that Harris only answered four before making her shocking and eventually incorrect declaration that she would win.

You have an instance of colossal arrogance, a willingness to insult and offend potential supporters, and a confidence based on nothing but her sense that the job was hers for the taking.

Kamala failed to understand that you cannot lead if you cannot cooperate with your underlings. She did not see that being in charge did not mean telling people what to do and expecting them to do it automatically.

Doubtless, her gross insecurity made it impossible for her to speak respectfully to people who did not respect her.

Considering that the Democrats were constantly attacking Donald Trump for being a wanna-be dictator, the campaign showed us a more humble side of Trump.

Trump reached out, in particular, to minority voters who had never supported Republicans. Whether in a bodega in the Bronx or a Chick-fil-a in Atlanta, or a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, or at a McDonald’s or even in a garbage truck, Trump presented himself as someone who was relatable, and who did not believe that he was lowering himself by reaching out and asking people to vote for him.

When journalist Stephanie Ruhle wanted to interview Donald Trump she called him on the phone. He picked it up and spoke with her. He also rejected the offer of an interview.

And yet, when Ruhle wanted to invite Kamala for a similar interview, she had no chance of talking with the candidate. She stated that she had to go through “fifty” handlers and never got to speak with Kamala.

The one candidate was an arrogant, incompetent, unqualified fool. The other understood that no executive can function effectively if he does not sustain cordial relationships with his employees.

If you disrespect your staff, and use every interaction as an occasion to put people down, they will not do their best for you. If it happens too often they will pick up and leave.

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