Asymmetrical Information

[THE EDITORS WISH TO EXPRESS THEIR COMPLETE DISGUST AT THE SENTIMENTS IN THIS COMMENT. THEY IN NO WAY REPRESENT OUR OPINION - 'Mindles & Jane']

"cruel, corrupt dictator with a pair of sadistic sons"
ridiculous

What the Iraqi people need is absence of american and english mercenarys & soildiers.
They should immediately leave & go home to their
shitpiles & stay there.
There should be an international deathpenalty for americans & englishmen leaving their countrys.

I salute everytime one is wasted by Iraqi freedomfighters.

Yeesh Mindles... You should call Terminex. I see some troll droppings which indicates a possible infestation.

The Media's been fawning all over this blowhard since "The Apprentice" and he has now selected his Milquetoast. Are we done?

No. There's an "Apprentice 2" coming later this year.

Sigh.

Mr. Trump is paraphrasing a theory that was presented to me as a truism in my college poly sci courses: "Ultimately, people get the government they deserve."

Can anybody name the author of this remark?

There is some truth to this, you know. People must participate and play by the rules if they want democracy to succeed.

hmm,
i wonder if the historical precedent of claudius and his behaviour around caesar has anything to say to us here? after all, if i am ambitious, have read the boss correctly, and see that he will not take someone who CLEARLY aims to supplant him, maybe i to would appear to be an "organizational man 2004." claudius turned out to be pretty effective in the end.

further, if this possible explanation of strategy is incorrect, let us try an alternative: why can't we view ceo's in more than one light? i guess consensus builders who get the job done are, by definition, ineffecdtual compared to the likes of jack welch. his is the only model that works?

this by the way is not meant to necessarily deny the possibility (reality?) that trump himself is a "blowhard" or less than a stellar business person/ judge of character...

apologies: that should be nero, rather than the more vague term "caaser"

If I can go off-topic for a bit -- what's the status of the CNBC appearance? Still on for today between 4:30 and 5:00, or bumped again?

Back on topic, Bill really seems to have his act together, I'm actually kinda surprised that he'd want to go from being his own boss to being just another suit in Trump's hierarchy.

My only disagreement with this post is your mention of time frame. The media has fawning over Trump a lot longer than you say. Remember when he was going to run for President?

I thought everyone would catch on when the female contestants showed up for the underware shoot. Sorry guys. There is a reason that your girl friend does not look like that. She is not an actress. She does not spend two hours a day in a gym. etc. etc. There are plenty of women in business, and they have just as much flab as the men, because they spend their time working not working out.

Next place you see any of these bright young things will be General Hospital, not Goldman Sachs.

... or at one of the companies for which I currently am working.

Trump's claim appears to be that it is hard to maintain order in Iraq without being able and willing to kill lots of people. You may not agree but to date the US occupation has done nothing to disprove this.

this by the way is not meant to necessarily deny the possibility (reality?) that trump himself is a "blowhard" or less than a stellar business person/ judge of character...

Possibility? POSSIBILITY??? Do ya think?

Was it his lip prints on the mirror that tipped you off?

There's a possibility he's got the world's worst comb-over...but only a possibility.

I was hoping that the network would relent and take that clown off the air, just on humanitarian grounds, so now I'm really depressed.

Usually a conservatives memory goes back exactly as far as the beginning of the Reagan administration.

Here it seems to fade sharply prior in the years before 1992.

Someone give this guy his fucking kool aid so he will shut the fuck up!!!!!!

Trump's claim appears to be that it is hard to maintain order in Iraq without being able and willing to kill lots of people. You may not agree but to date the US occupation has done nothing to disprove this.

Under terms that inspecific and vague, what could possibly be 'proven?' Maybe we could break out Vietnam and start doing some numerical comparisons, but otherwise this sounds suspiciously like the opening line of a pissing contest.

You're right anony-mouse, and of course James' comment is almost as bad as Trump's, save the causality - the 'reason' - he willfully ignores.

But we feed trolls...

By Trump's logic, we should never have tried to make the former Axis powers democratic - they were tyrannical despotisms for a reason, and we had no reason to second-guess that. It's an argument that I heard in poli sci, and never gave much credit. If anything, the former Axis powers seem to prove that so-called "undemocratic cultures" can in fact become democracies.

"Usually there's a reason a country is run a certain way."

This is one of those throwaway philosophical thoughts that sounds really deep, but doesn't mean much. Everything has a "reason" in some sense; frequently the reason(s) aren't good, or no longer apply, or don't stack up against opposing reason(s).

Presumably Trump's combover has a reason behind it... it's just not a very good one. Or perhaps it had a reason once, and it no longer applies.(Not that frivolous comments on Trump's appearance are going to get us anywhere, but Dean brought it up...)

Back on topic, you have to wonder if the reason behind the current Russian government is the same as the one behind the Soviet government, behind Stalin's government, and behind the czars.

And wouldn't this reasoning apply to companies, too: "There's usually a reason a company is run the way it is." So I guess all takeovers and other attempts to kick out management are ultimately futile?

It does occur to me that, if there is a reason a country is run a certain way, then one way to change how a country is run is to change the reason. Deposing Saddam might be a good case in point.

Stephen, Bartlett's doesn't seem to have heard of the "people deserve the government" phrase. Best I could find was a French quote, from 1811, "Every country has the government it deserves." (Does "mérite" translate as simply "deserves"? Connotations, anyone?) I found a couple of pages that quote the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: EVERY COUNTRY HAS THE GOVERNMENT IT DESERVES - "'Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite.' "Lettres et Opuscules Inédits," (1851) vol. I, letter 53 (15 August 1811.) Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), French writer and diplomat.

Thomas Carlyle wrote in his book Past and Present, "In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government." The book came out in 1843, but apparently was a collection of essays. I suppose he could have written this statement earlier, but probably not before 1811, since he was born in 1795.

I'm certainly no fan of The Donald, but he has the right of it here.

Iraq is composed of at least 3 ethnic groups that really don't want to share power. Saddam was a brutal guy, but the history of Iraq teaches that you pretty much have to be in order to rule the whole country.

You could probably split it into 3 countries, (or possibly 3 relatively independant 'states'), but short of that, you either have to have a brutal leader or a level of cooperation and trust among the various factions that has never been seen in Iraq in recorded history.

Which makes your seering about his comment look pretty out of touch, doesn't it?

RE: Mr X and Ha ha; "What we need hewre is an aggwessive pwogram of fumigation". Bonus points if you can name the source of this reference.

The "Apprentice" is so contrived, from the actors and actresses pretending to be "real" people, to the obviousness of Donald Trump shilling for Donald Trump. I mean, "The Donald"? Please.

If you want to watch a real reality tv series, go watch "Jamie's Kitchen" on the Food Network and see him try to hire 15 kids (early 20's and unemployed) to staff a new restaurant.

Bones - there is simply a world of difference between pointing out the tribal and/or ethnic differences that make peaceful governance difficult and saying that such differences necessitate a brutal dictator.

Trump's been pulling this same routine for 27 freakin' years now, since he got all that publicity in New York for rebuilding the Grand Hyatt Hotel at 42nd and Lex as part of the Grand Central Terminal restoration project. He was hailed as A Man Who Got Things Done (well, compared to the New York City bureaucrats, anyway -- Ed Koch allowed him to restore Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park because the city was too incompetent to do so in the late 1970s) and he used that media spin to self-promote himself into an image as the city's biggest private sector mover and shaker.

In actuallity, The Donald is the Al Shapton of the business world -- a publicity-seeking BS artist who often doesn't pay his bills. His current $1.8 billion Atlantic City casino debt is the second time his Jersey casnio holdings have been in danger of going under, but he generates so much good will within the tabloid and TV media for being willing to play the game their way, that his failures and shady deals get only the most cursory of attention except in business publications.

The greater part of Trump's "empire" could collapse and leave unlucky investors holding the bag, a la Enron, WorldCom or Global Crossing, and he would never get the villification a Ken Lay or Bernie Ebbers got, because unlike them, he's good copy -- too good for many in the media to want hounded into a prison cell. Martha Stewart should watch and learn for future reference...

On the topic of "governments that they deserve", Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article that touched on that theme just recently. It's available at: http://victorhanson.com/Articles/Private%20Papers/Mirror_of_Fallujah.html (you may have to cut and paste it).

Relevant quote: 'But at some point the world is asking: “Is Mr. Assad or Hussein, the Saudi Royal Family, or a Khadafy really an aberration—all rogues who hijacked Arab countries—or are they the logical expression of a tribal patriarchal society whose frequent tolerance of barbarism is in fact reflected in its leadership? Are the citizens of Fallujah the victims of Saddam, or did folk like this find their natural identity expressed in Saddam? Postcolonial theory and victimology argue that European colonialism, Zionism, and petrodollars wrecked the Middle East. But to believe that one must see India in shambles, Latin America under blanket autocracy, and an array of suicide bombers pouring out of Mexico or Nigeria. South Korea was a moonscape of war when oil began gushing out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia; why is it now exporting cars while the latter are exporting death? Apartheid was far worse than the Shah’s modernization program; yet why did South Africa renounce nuclear weapons while the Mullahs cheated on every UN protocol they could?"'

You can't run a maximum security prison with the same comparatively mild measures which suffice for a minimum security prison. The reason for this is the difference in the nature of the inmate populations. Collectively the maximum security prison population requires more brutal measures to maintain order (even though some individual inmates may not). This is particularly true when the guards are understaffed and the inmate population is full of factions which fear and hate each other.

This does not mean you should appoint a brutal sadist as warden but it does mean you should not overestimate the improvement possible by replacing such a warden.

Iraqi society and culture is much more tolerant of violence, much less submissive to authority and much less civic minded than most. This means maintaining order requires harsher measures than in other countries regardless of who is running the place.

Hussein was a brutal thug but much of the violence he directed was not irrational but required to maintain order in Iraq. His biggest errors were the wars he started with Iran and Kuwait. These achieved nothing and were very costly for the Iraqi people, not just directly in the form of military losses but indirectly in the futile rebellions they triggered.

The American effort in Iraq has been hindered by costly delusions about the Iraqi population. Richard Feynman said "For a sucessful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.". The same applies for Iraqi policy.

Right, Trump. And all Germans should have stayed Nazis.

You know, it's sad to see the al-Sadr/Fallujah activity bring all the "leave 'em in chains" people out of the shadows.

You know, I think Trump (and James B. Shearer) are on to something. Sure, Sadaam was a tough guy, but weren't you all relieved when he took power and the horrible Shi'ite vs Sunni vs Kurd bloodshed disappeared from our front pages?

Oh, wait....

In a similar vein, there's my favorite Mencken quote(mostly correct, though I'm constructing it from memory): "Democracy is the theory of government that says the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Rumor has it that Trump is getting into show business because his other businesses are in deep trouble.

Does "mérite" translate as simply "deserves"? Connotations, anyone?

You can translate it as either "deserves" or "earns."

—Katherine, who finally got that French MA four months ago (much good may it ever do her)

Katherine, congrats on the MA.

My years of Latin in high school, and my History degree, have made me a lifelong ponderer of glib translations (especially in languages I don't know, like French).

I can see how 'Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite.' could be translated "All nations have the government which [they] merit." What did the word "nation" mean in 1811? In French?

Even your two synonyms aren't quite equivalent in English. "Deserves" brings to mind phrases like "just deserts", and implies that the government is the perhaps-sudden, perhaps-surprising result of earlier actions (by the nation, presumably). "Earns", on the other hand, suggests a gradual process where the nation performs actions which bring the government into being. It's hard to see how you could "earn" something unexpected.

Both "earn" and "deserve" have positive connotations in American English; "earn" moreso, I think, tho not as positive as "merit". (Which makes you wonder why you can not only "deserve" a punishment, but also "earn" a punishment, and even "merit" a punishment.)

Thanks, PJ.

What did the word "nation" mean in 1811? In French?

The place to go for that answer is the searchable full-text database at the ARTFL project. But it's subscription-only. If I were still at a major research university, I'd run a search on "nation" limited to 1800-1820 and see what kind of contexts I came up with. Unfortunately (fortunately??) I'm not.

Even your two synonyms aren't quite equivalent in English.

Oops... didn't mean to imply they were. To me, you earn things through your actions, but you can deserve things just because of who you are. "She earned his respect" is pretty different from "she deserved his respect." Mériter is used in both those contexts (although in this case, you'd use two different tenses of the verb to make it clear which meaning you were aiming at).

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