Sorry, long night/distracted. I'm on 4.5 hours sleep.
I'm not sure how I'd define filthy rich to be honest with you. Maybe worth over 100mil? Idk, but that's also not the only qualification I'm talking about. There's also past retirement age, taking a difficult job, and doing it for personal glory, and that last part comes with the assumption that we know who's doing it for personal glory which is not an assumption I'm willing to make.
That number sounds reasonable to me.
Anyway, a lot of people seem to think if they had money they'd be happy to just enjoy it, and in some cases I'm sure that's true. But when we observe very very rich people they don't seem to be content with that. They generally seem to think about what's next. Which makes sense, that's a very human thing. I also think the
type of person who becomes super wealthy is also not the kind of person to simply enjoy it. They think about legacy, power, respect, stuff like that. Trump certainly did a lot of things after being very wealthy that seem to have no purpose other than fame/notoriety.
At a time when we have to be skeptical of what we hear or read, do we really know that he's not doing the tough parts?
Well, if he was, what would you expect to see? You'd expect to see consistent responses across time. You'd expect to see competence, speed, and transparency in regards to logistical and public health questions. But we're not seeing that. We're seeing the opposite: we're seeing public arguments with health officials, we're seeing lag between reported data and political action to combat virus spread, and we're seeing wildly inconsistent statements about how serious it is, long past the point where there should be any doubt.
So I admit I cannot
prove that he's disinterested in boring managerial stuff. I can only note how much time he verifiably spends on Twitter, holding rallies, and talking about media coverage, and how little evidence of that kind of boring diligence we see manifested. Heck, treat it like a math problem if you want: look at how often he does the big splashy public things and count how many hours are left in the day to do the boring stuff. It ain't much. Without even getting into the many, many White House testimonials.
I think saying the job is more difficult than he thought is an honest and normal thing to say. If he didn't know then, he certainly knows now and he's still trying for a second term.
Well, not if he insulates himself by just not doing most of it. Regardless, even if he had no idea what he was getting into, I'm still not sure it would be selfless to know and run again, given that anyone (let alone someone constantly talking about being a winner) would also care very much about the indignity of losing reelection.
Honestly, it's very foreign to me to think of any President as if they're doing us some kind of favor by becoming the most powerful person in the world. There are massive financial benefits post-Presidency, too, that are far more significant than the salary itself. I'm kinda disgusted with the idea (not with you, just the concept) that we owe our leaders some kind of additional gratitude beyond all the power and fame and wealth they receive. They're there to serve us, and I find it totally backwards when any public servant acts like they're sacrificing for us by assuming power.
Do you think he's accomplished much as President compared to Presidents of the past?
I'd need to ask a lot of follow-ups to answer this properly. For example, a President can "accomplish" something I don't think was good, but was still something they set out to do, and did. But in terms of sheer managerial efficiency this has been an historically bad Presidency. Just run down the list of campaign promises and note how few have come to pass.
Sure, but we still don't know that he doesn't put in a lot of work.
Technically, we cannot know it, we can only look at the surrounding facts. More to the point, though, is that just sort of seeming to move around a lot is not really evidence that he does, either.
I don't feel I'm speculating that he wants to help the country; I'm going by the fact that he's said that. From there, I'm not saying I believe him, I'm saying it's reasonable to think there could be some truth to it.
Oh, sure. But I think there's some truth to that for anyone. I'm not one of those people who think he's
trying to destroy anything or hates America. I'm willing to assume mostly good intentions. But he's a grown man, and grown people are responsible for whether they behave in a way that makes their goals possible. If somebody just
wants to help but indulges all their worst habits and petty grievances, and it gets in the way, then that's on them. You don't really "want" something if you're not willing to change and sacrifice to get it.
Trump is on the record many, many times responding to questions by simply talking about whether someone was "nice" or "mean" to him. It's demonstrably how he orients around pretty much everything, unfortunately. That makes him less comically evil than a lot of critics suggest, but it also isn't at all consistent with selflessness.
Fair enough when it comes to our conversation.
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