For at least 20 years the right has been trying to sell the “CEO president” scam. I have always found the idea of a CEO president an incredibly BAD idea. Government isn’t business, nor should it be. Considering the frequent use of our bankruptcy laws, and high numbers of yearly business failures, business isn’t a great model for governance, not to mention too many businesses survive because they’re basically scams.
Donald Trump is the perfect “I told you so,” for all of us who have been warning others for so long.
A CEO’s job is more like Saddam, or Pinochet, or Stalin than one who heads one of three branches of the government but is the servant of ALL the people: not just those who agree with him. A sole proprietor is even more like a dictator: king over his own kingdom. Trump isn’t really a CEO. He just plays off that fav right wing concept: a CEO president. He’s more like the role he played for so long: a really bad sole proprietor. A proprietor who believes everyone serves him. A proprietor who believes being in business means it should be perfectly legal for him to do what you, and I, can’t without prison time. To our head oligarch wannabe America’s purpose is serve as a piggybank and source of profit for King Trump in all senses of the word ‘profit.’
I’m sure you’ve heard, “Government should be run like a business.”
Absolutely NOT.
We should have learned during “our first (failed) CEO president:” Bush II… the sequel a lot of us never wanted. The sequel Jeb, Katherine and the Supremes insisted we must have. Apparently “equal protection” is only for privileged son Republican presidential contenders.
Trump is an even better example of why a businessman as president is an old Electrolux of an idea on full suck. Bush, Junior, at least had been in government: as limited as that experience was, and his father, his cohorts, had plenty of experience. But like any scam artist fixing the intel, using Curveball and ruining those actually trying to do a good job by serving the customer (us), are just part of doing “just business.” Who cares who gets killed? Who cares what sources are kacked by Saddam or whomever because it’s more important to ruin a husband and wife because the husband challenged a lie about yellow cake?
It’s just business: like telling lies about the competition to put them out of business.
”Just business” is an excuse used to do what’s morally, what’s ethically, wrong. (I use “ethical” as in what we do, not just what we claim we believe.) The W. administration used things like “we know where the WMD is” like CEOs use rosy reports to corporate boards that gloss over serious corporate problems.
A immoral, unethical CEO or sole proprietor will do anything to put out of business anyone who competes with them honestly, ethically. Example: back before he got into politics Trump found out the Mohawk Indians wanted to start their own casino in the Catskills. As an owner of a casino he openly advocated for New York State not to allow that. No matter what you or I think, he had that right. However he also funded fake advocacy organizations supposedly NOT connected to him claiming Indians were dirty, rapists, selling drugs, would bring in crime… that is illegal. He only escaped prison time by paying one hell of a fine.
Sound familiar?
One might claim Trump has a ‘board’ and ‘stockholders:’ but with all the firings, all the election fraud tactics and terrorizing those he appoints he’s packing the board with ass kissers and goosesteppers, eliminating the voting rights of those ‘stockholders’ who challenge his self serving vision. Being conned into not counting all the votes in 2000 is what headed us in this direction: counting became less important than the CEO.
The problem with this presidential CEO or sole proprietor concept should have been obvious long before Trump. Government’s job, and therefore a president’s, in a free society is not the same as a CEO and the opposite of a sole proprietor even when they’re honest, try to be as ethical as they morally should be.
Yes, we should have learned from W and Cheney how bad this idea was. Instead we went deeper down the corporate president rabbit hole. Where are we headed? We’re heading towards those whose idea of governance is throwing those who disagree out of planes, disappearing journalists, or hacking them to pieces.
A bad sole proprietor like Trump is not unlike a vampire. Once upon a time he was just a bad business man sucking the sustenance out of failed business to failed business with the help of his father and our bankruptcy laws. He left behind him the economically drained ‘corpses’ of former employees, vendors and customers who trusted him. Then he got his kicks, fame and riches from humiliating people on TV and being, well there’s no other way to put it: an asshole. Now he has the power of both business and government: sinking his teeth deeper into the public aorta than non-presidential bad businessmen. Our taxes, our deficit, serves to enrich Trump, inc. Public figures staying in his hotels, getting more business deals…
A legal stake through his economic heart would be way too good for him. What was it they did to Mussolini?
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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