There are certain things which are required of those who wish to serve in the Trump Administration. None of those things happen to be intelligence.
Covfefe
In her case, T&A don’t stand for talent and ability.
Training and approachability?
The term meritocracy was originally created as a satirical joke. It was never meant to actually be taken seriously
I dont see the reason why it shouldnt be used. Merit - earned, cracy - to rule. Seems like its self described well. Imo its a useful word and don’t see why we shouldnt use it just because it was meant to be satirical. Art imitates life and life imitates art.
It is worth understanding why it was considered satirical.
Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term “meritocracy” is relatively new. It was first used pejoratively by sociologist Alan Fox in 1956, and then by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy.Young’s essay pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin “merit” (from “mereō” meaning “earn”) and the Ancient Greek suffix “-cracy” (meaning “power”, “rule”). The purely Greek word is axiocracy (αξιοκρατία), from axios (αξιος, worthy) + “-cracy” (-κρατία, power).
In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group. The essay, written in the first person by a fictional historical narrator in 2034, interweaves history from the politics of pre- and post-war Britain with those of fictional future events in the short (1960 onward) and long term (2020 onward).
The essay was based upon the tendency of the then-current governments, in their striving toward intelligence, to ignore shortcomings and upon the failure of education systems to utilize correctly the gifted and talented members within their societies.
Young’s fictional narrator explains that, on the one hand, the greatest contributor to society is not the “stolid mass” or majority, but the “creative minority” or members of the “restless elite”. On the other hand, he claims that there are casualties of progress whose influence is underestimated and that, from such stolid adherence to natural science and intelligence, arises arrogance and complacency. This problem is encapsulated in the phrase “Every selection of one is a rejection of many”.
It was also used by Hannah Arendt in her essay “Crisis in Education”, which was written in 1958 and refers to the use of meritocracy in the English educational system. She too uses the term pejoratively. It was not until 1972 that Daniel Bell used the term positively. M. Young’s formula to describe meritocracy is: m = IQ + E. The formula of L. Ieva instead is: m = f (IQ, Cut, ex) + E. That is, for Young, meritocracy is the sum of intelligence and energy; while, for Ieva it is represented by the function between intelligence, culture and experience, to which energy is then added.
I get that it feels cool when you think about it, but it falls off shortly after, same as Communism :P
But “Meritocracy Has Never Been Tried!” is not something liberals constantly repeat to one another cynically.
The issue is how do you “meassure” merit? How do you decide who has earned what they have and who hasn’t?
If you are a conservative it’s very easy, the status quo defines merit. Those who have are those who deserve because the system is working as expected. So rich people ruling is meritocracy for them.
If you are a racist/xenophobe/etc then it’s also very easy, those who are in the “good” (read white in the USA) group are the ones with merit, so they are the ones that should rule.
A few years back, when college degrees where just for rich people with connections, merit was having a college degree because that proved you where educated and hard working jajajaja. Now that a lot more people can get college degrees it no longer means that for some reason jajajaja.
Etc, etc. In general, people use meritocracy to justify their own biases and the decisions they make based on those biases. The USA is of course the current poster child of this, but by no means it’s exclusive to them.
The reality is that when you think about it there is no such thing as merit in the general sense. For example, I get paid well by working as a programmer. And I’m the first one to say that I’m very good at it and deserve my pay. Yet, if my toilet is broken I need to call a plumber and defer to them. So, who says I deserve to earn more than a plumber? I do say so because it greatly benefits me of course jajajaja. But if push come to shove I would absolutely prefer to have a society without programmers than a society without plumbers. So who has more merit?
The simple truth is that we are all valuable in our own context and we should try to build a society where we all can participate and contribute as needed. Ideas like meritocracy are used by right wing people to justify the existence of hierarchies and social classes. If there are better people (with more merit) then of course they should be in charge and everyone else must obey. But the more you dig into the idea, the less it makes sense. Meritocracy is just a very easy trap to fall into because it’s the kind of idea that sounds good to people until you really think about it, but in practice it’s just a useless idea if you want to make rational decisions.
Absolutely. Words change, and it’s not an unhelpful term, but we already had a word for ‘ruled by the best’, aristocracy. Over time it became very apparent that aristocracies did not promote leaders who were objectively ‘best’ or often even ‘adequate’, so it began to mean a small group of privileged people who used their power to keep that privilege for themselves and their peers.
So although meritocracy started as a joke, it could be used sincerely. But unless it’s pretty clear how ‘merit’ is assessed its hard to take it more seriously.
Seems like its self described well.
In theory. But in practice what you’re describing tends to be the licensure of corruption. Rather than paying off a guy for a no-show job, you pay a school for a degree to show the guy (getting kickbacks from the school) that gives you the no-show job.
Great example of this was Bob Jones, Liberty, and the assorted christian conservative schools injecting whole graduating classes into the '00s Bush Administration.
When your “meritocratic” institution really starts to pay off is when it looks more and more like an MLM. The modern Ivy League/Federalist Society-based judicial system looks a lot like this. You need to be a member of a school who joined a club to get access to the clerkship that qualifies you to join a firm that will fast-track you into the appellate judiciary. So these “elite” institutions get swarmed with applicants, and now you need to go to a particular prep school or join a certain social group to get into the school/club. Now those schools/groups get flooded. So you need to join a partisan organization or work your way into a country club hierarchy to get access to the prep school / social group, and they start assigning ranks for members and fees to climb the ranks.
Now “meritocracy” is just a massive web of patronage, with access to the inner layer predicated on outclassing all your peers in the outer layer. Whole industries exist to prove “merit” either through cheating explicitly (straight up buying accreditation) or implicitly (paying for study guides that contain the exact questions to be asked) and get you special access to the people doing manual selection of applicants. Its almost exclusively pay-to-play and a lot of it is scams.
So was"The Donald" subreddit.
see: Daylight Savings
Maybe sarcastic people should stop inventing shit ideas ironically for a minute while we clean up this mess.
I’m really starting to feel that way lmao
Yeah
Power in a state should be based on how good you are at not being sarcastic and caught saying something sarcastic should be given the death penalty
What? You mean you don’t want a Tournament Nexus?
Sarcasm and parody were tools used against corrupt oppressors for centuries. The problem is, it requires education, context, and the capacity for abstract thought to process and understand. If everyone requires we put “/s” after everything, then they are just taking everything at face value without any attempt at critical thinking or reading between the lines. Which I guess is why we are where we are today.
I quite agree, and I tend to resent and resist the tag unless the sarcasm would otherwise rely on tone or delivery, in which case why write it at all.
I think the internet has spawned a nascent global culture, and while that is still taking shape we are often left feeling as if we share insufficient context with one another to form an understanding. We’ll grow together as a global culture in time I hope and trust, but in the meantime I think it’s an error to rely on low-context modes of communication. It is a crutch, and it only perpetuates the distance between us.
But they aren’t in a position of power to change anything. Maybe if we lived in a sarcastocracy though
Wasn’t it the Greeks?
We should totally go back to “I’m in charge because my daddy built me a goon squad”.
/s
Local radio fired their news department and brought in cheap new talent.
Last night they mispromounced Potomac and i shook my head.
But a few weeks ago when the news reader mispronounced Orwellian, a canary died somewhere.
This is unpresidented!
As a second language learner of English, I used to stress over getting my English right and would spend time double checking my spelling and grammar, checking the dictionary to make sure I am using the word correctly, even when posting on forums and comment sections. Once Trump became president and I saw the numerous mistakes he made, I stopped caring.
deleted by creator
Idk there’s a wide margin. Trump is demented, rambling, and can’t spell, but Obama is one of the best orators alive. Bush and Clinton are fine at it
deleted by creator
I used to get everything perfect at work no matter how many hours it took. When Donald took office in 2016 I realized skills and effort weren’t really that important. I focused more on talking to the right people and getting good reviews. Life got a lot easier. Less work and more money. Now that he’s back in office I’m finding it really hard to even check my work once before pushing it out. People keep forgiving mistakes though.
I miss the days when competence was expected.
Topanga?
Vivek absolutely maldin’ right now.
<Al Pacino’s voice>
“Uh-oh… we’ve got a moron.”
She didn’t get her job by knowing how to spell or read
Go on…
It was probably by being racist.
A certain age range of men have a Topanga fetish. Or maybe that’s just me.
Same
Boy meets inevitability. She has a special place in my heart.
What even is a Meritocracy
It’s when you replace an Army four star general with a major from the national guard.
The reason they keep saying the word merit is to convince their base they have any. Many of them do not. No offense to any retired majors out there, but do any of you think you are more qualified than a 4 star general to fill the position of Secretary of Defense?
Well I would ask what they’ve done in addition to being a Major. Just in case it’s something that qualifies them to run an organization with over a million people and a budget that’s nearly a trillion dollars. You know like being a news reporter for a biased organization. (Ugh)
A way to justify letting an aristocracy form while calling it something else.
“Merit” it a vague and nebulous term, so you can set the rubric however you want to justify the merit of any mouth breather with their head so far up their own ass they can see their own tonsils.
Traditionally promotions to leadership positions could only be selected from a small pool of men: wealthy, with good pedigree and with some kind of connections to the current top leader(s). Any top leadership positions had to be filled with people from this small pool: the aristocracy. They could be incompetent or corrupt, but that was usually not that important, as long as they had the right parents and kissed the right ass(es), they were the right person for the job.
Meritocracy is when people are selected for promotions based on something other than social standing or wealth. Merit for the job can be: getting a top score on an anonymous uniform exam, having a good track record in similar roles, having a solid plan to solve the problem at hand, … Any positive qualification that is not based on social standing or wealth. And all candidates for the job have to be weighted based on the same qualifiers.
As I understand it, the usa federal administration used to have a meritocratic system until right under the top departemental positions, who were politically appointed (appointed based on loyalty, not merit). But while those top positions were political appointees, they were usually selected from the top meritorious people, so those people were usually qualified for the job.
Trump has politized the promotions much deeper into the administrations, basically doing away with meritocracy and replacing it with a system based on personal loyalty and a willingness to break laws when asked to.
Trump and his administration might say that his appointments are based on merit, but that’s just Trump speaking, his words have no meaning.
If the US was actually a meritocracy, I’d be rich. I built my career in comp sci and UXD from nothing. I left school in 9th grade, then taught myself programming in multiple languages – BASIC then Perl, Java, C, and on to C++, C#, ObjC, JavaScript, and markup languages, – and UXD including related important fields (psychology, sociology, philosophy), and worked my way from a delivery driver to cook, to assistant mgr in retail and restaurant to manager (to make ends meet whilst learning) to programmer, to assistant lead, to PM assistant, to project manager, to designer, to lead designer at a company where I had more than 10 million users and was submitted for an Apple design award for my design.
Then I got sick with a genetic disease for which there’s no treatment or cure. Now I can no longer work and as a result, I had to leave the career I loved and had worked so hard for – and lose the health insurance that came with that. Now I am destitute, my savings are gone, and I have nothing but social security and Medicare, and Medicare is horribly broken. I can’t afford housing, and have to choose between medicine and food.
This is in the US, obviously. I have plenty more to contribute – my mind still works fine – but I can’t contribute in this system because I can’t reliably work.
I am fucked. I can’t afford to live anymore and, regardless of what I could contribute in a system that might allow me to, I am stuck doing nothing and slowly dying because this system is designed to fuck me as hard as possible.
This is not a meritocracy. If it was, I would not be in the position of choosing whether to eat or buy medicine.
e2: and we wouldn’t have a complete moron making billions by stealing the work of others (people like me) then just casting them aside like they’re nothing. Yes, I mean that absolute shitbag poser, you all know his name.
Sorry for all the edits, this pisses me off.
late e3, because changes keep being tossed around lately with an apparent near-total lack of even the scope of a single project they’re heading and executing, and that’s quite alarming in this context:
Social security and Medicare both try hard to spend as little money as possible, often under pressure from congress, and Medicare is worse. Medicare is so much worse than people think it is, I cringed every time I’d hear someone shout ‘Medicare for all!’ – especially when they’d go on to prove their notions of Medicare were vague. Congress has been beating the shit out of it whilst big money pretends to tend to its wounds for a long time. It’s nearly functionally useless by comparison to what all but the worst insurance companies and scammers do. It’s so bad, in fact, it’s just generally known that you must buy what’s called ‘gap’ insurance so they can slather their slime into the chasms left in Medicare’s wake.
Gap insurance is private insurance. Poor people living on Social Security cannot afford gap insurance (please read my last 4 words as though spoken with the complete inability to keep the disbelief from my voice. I’ve no idea how to annotate that.)
Been on a tear lately because people are currently worshipping a moronic, childish, nepo-baby who didn’t work for what he has, didn’t invent anything, clearly didn’t learn anything except how to use other people most effectively, perhaps designed that laughable abomination of a truck… it really does boggle my mind.
e: I also wrote a scifi novel that I can’t market because I’ve been too sick. Because I’m so desperate, I’m going to mention it here – I could use a couple of reviews. Based on current reviews, it’s not bad: Blue Are the Hills by Lilly Piper on Amazon, if you’re into dystopian fiction. I’ve tried to market myself as much as I can, but it’s hard. That’s why my Lemmy icon is my face – not because I’m a boomer, but because it’s my branding.
I resonate quite a bit with this, I just had to take a demotion because of a long term medical condition renders me unable to return to office 3 days a week. I was doing a great job as a Solutions Architect, but since they feel that the role is only good in person and not over technology I had to step down to a senior developer role. Hopefully I overcome this condition but it is lifelong but can be managed, but this feels like the first gate I’ve been hit with since starting to ascend as an IT Professional. RTO is dumb, especially with potential pandemics on the horizon. My wife is complete and total disabled and barely makes it out of our room, so I’m on the hook to bring home the money to keep everything running. It is frightening times in this shit show.
Private contract work maybe? Or maybe try teaching or tutoring? Something you can arrange around an appointment shedule that can accomodate your needs. I feel you man. I’m disabled and living on welfare and no one wants to hire a legally blind epileptic that can’t drive, it’s just to much of a liability issue for them.
Thanks, but I’m too disabled even for that now, because everyone requires some amount of office time – even if it’s absolutely unnecessary.
Even my doctors are now requiring yearly in-person visits, though they never did before, and even though I’m 100% medically homebound. I’m currently trying to square a circle to get my heart meds refilled. Back in 2021 it was no problem, but now they’re saying insurance post-Covid requires a yearly in-person visit regardless of circumstance, because people were abusing it, so no tolerance.
I don’t expect it to change. I’ve had a chronic pain condition for a long time but can’t get pain meds either (per insurance) because people have abused that. So I just take enough OTC Tylenol to ruin my liver and cry.
Insurance rules fuck people with chronic conditions, all the time.
I hope it works out, I hope you keep going as best a you can. I’ve been stuck in a health crisis for years and everytime I think I’m almost out I remember that recovery is for the rest of my life. I don’t know why our society discards people who desperately WANT to be of use and I saw it a lot in retail too, there’s a lot of people I kept around in the backroom working just because I can’t imagine looking at someone in a part time minimum wage dead end job and saying ‘‘This isn’t working out, please leave’’ that’s already the bottom. I’m not telling people to start living in their car.
Also, looking past that spelling mistake, what the hell is a War Room White House? Is that meant to refer to the situation room? The briefing room? Is it that she’s in two places at once, the White House and a virtual War Room of whatever media organisation she represents?
Or is it, as I may be forced to suspect, a perpetual state of mind, a designation not in conflict of course with any of the above, but indicative of someone who not only cannot spell their job but is just there to, as the phrase goes, perpetually and obsequiously stir shit?
Looks to me like the bigger reason she’s not the smartest isn’t because of spelling, which english is crap at, but that she doesn’t understand word order, which is much more concrete.
“White House War Room Correspondent” would make way more sense
War Room is a podcast of Steve Bannon. So she’s the White House correspondent for that podcast.
White House correspondent for a fucking podcast. Look where we’ve arrived at.
Yep Trump new press sectary said thsy would go beyond legacy media and allow influencer and podcast in on all briefing…
I am sure it meant only the right wing Podcaster and influencers though. No left wingers will be allowed.
So this lady and whoever Joe Rogen sends etc.
I think you might be right. She may be one of Eris’s representatives in the current administration.
I mean, all hail Discordia, but this isn’t how I imagined it.
These are the agents of strife incarnate. Sure, I too love to act as an agent of chaos and oddity and to challenge all that we know, but these are the people who dedicate their lives to causing problems on purpose. These are the people who revel in the confusion and pain of all around them. They argue not to find truth but to argue. They fight not to make a world they think is better but to find another fight.
IDK if this helps, but at least in IT a “war room” is usually a dedicated and specialized support team temporarily put in place when large changes or updates are rolled out.
It would make sense for the incoming administration to set up a war room to handle questions, exceptions and comments about both the administration change, and the sweeping (probably illegal) XOs issued by the President.
Edit: I just looked her up. She is not related to an internal “War Room” but is actually affiliated with Bannon’s stupid podcast.
Camachos’ secretary of state was hotter.
Pic?
They do this intentionally, it’s part of Trump’s populist cult, White house messages under his last admin had intentional spelling and grammar errors and when asked staffers said they did it intentionally to match Trump’s ‘style’ breaking norms is a big part of populist cults of personally.
We need to stop being in shock and awe at how stupid these people are and start understanding that they are our enemies. They work in direct opposition to the welfare of average Americans. They’re also stupid. But more importantly, they are our enemies, and we need to start framing it as such.
Here here.
Hear*
Intelligence and Cunning are two different things.
If I’m walking through the woods and I’m being stalked by a predator the fact that it cant do long division doesnt matter for shit.
Enemies? I disagree. It’s more like watching a toddler playing with a loaded gun.
Toddlers murder a wild number of people.
This is exactly a toddler with a gun.
Edit for numbers:
Some might assume that toddlers and young children may not be strong enough to pull a trigger, but that is not the case, experts said. At least 895 children aged 5 and under have managed to find a gun and unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else from 2015 to 2022, according to Everytown.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/children-fire-guns-toddlers-unintentional-shootings/
Remember, children cannot purchase guns in the USA. Many also lack the hand strength to fire.
I apologize for the source.
We’ve been doing that for years, but people just chanted “genocide” at Kamala and let this happen.
BLUEMAGA never stops whining. Go bitch at Biden and Harris for not doing the thing Trump did before he even got in office. It was on the table for like 8 months and those monsters said “nah”.
lol wut?
Don’t bother. They’re just trying to distract and redirect by telling us we should be mad at those not directly responsible instead of those directly responsible.
Like those who said we should blame Democrats when Republicans overturned Roe v Wade.
Generally speaking, ignore anyone that uses the term “BLUEMAGA”. It’s a term trending with idiots right now.
deleted by creator
Going for some Ivanka resemblance, perhaps?
This journalist is going to have the nuclear codes in the tabloids before long.
Looks nothing like her though? Ivanka is middle aged and looks the part.
Thin white woman, long blonde hair, lots of eye makeup, full lips, etc. It’s not that they’re twins, it’s that they’re a similar type.
And it doesn’t matter what we think. The president is the one that wants to fuck her, lol.
