I. economy
II. foreign policy
III. environment
IV. conspiracy theories
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all the emotions and personal feud due to politics is really stupid. it blows my mind when supposedly amazing people ruin precious relationships because of politics. the president is less of a factor than what people want to believe. the success of a president is mostly just luck.
it's not like political candidates or parties are that different. in america, there is just one party - business party (https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2017/09/united-states-of-libertarians.html). where it matters the most, such as putting food on the table, the democrats and republicans have very similar policies. they just differ in symbolic and emotional issues such as abortion and gay marriage. unlike in europe where there is a labor party and even communist parties. the philippines is worse where the major political parties all agree on core economic and social principles or ideologies. the disagreement on extra judicial killings of drug dealers is overblown - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2017/04/rare-perspectives-on-extra-judicial-killings.html
I. economy
politics is so luxurious. if an economy does well under the president you support, you have the luxury to attribute the success to your awesome president. if you don't like the president, you just say - the economy was booming despite the president.
what did clinton do that any president would not have done to cause the economic boom? my supposedly brilliant colleagues in silicon valley who were strong clinton supporters can't even answer the question. i don't think clinton inspired bill gates and the folks at intel, oracle, and cisco to invent and innovate the products that changed the world. also, what did bush jr do that any president would not have done that caused the economic collapse? my coworkers who were bush haters also didn't have an answer. note that although the iraq war was a colossal financial, strategic and moral blunder, it did not cause the economic collapse. it was the housing bust. in fact if bush prevented the housing crisis he would have been crucified for preventing poor people from owning a home. also, what did obama do that any president would not have done that caused the economic recovery?
when it comes to the economy, the president is not some kind of architect or mastermind. there are too many factors involved out of the president's control. however, there are things the president can do for political gain at the expense of the economy. maybe give too much handouts or subsidies that benefit their base. to discourage this, i support the american tradition of voting out a party or president if the economy is tanking. otherwise our defense budget will double if we have a republican president and our education budget will double if we have a democratic president.
the economy is too complicated. no one really knows the exact thing to do. even the smartest economists get it wrong. school children picking stocks can easily outperform economists with phd's. the economic models are really not that useful because many of the variables depend on human behavior or psychology that is difficult to measure and quantify. the irony is that most economists and intellectuals live in a bubble insulated from what really is going on in the real world and how people are behaving. this is how kids picking apple (iphone) and disney stocks can possibly outperform the economists with phds. this phenomenon became evident to me when the smartest intellectual in the world named chomsky was questioned about the common perception that socialism is incompatible with human nature. he replied, "do you have science to back it up?". well, you don't need science to observe kids love the iphone and disneyland either.
this means having a book smart or intellectual president is not that useful. many of the critical decisions the president has to make depends more on instinct and observation rather than science and facts. the more experience a president has in the real world, the better. human nature is thinly studied because it's unethical to do direct experiments on humans. even centralized planned economies of china, soviet union and venezuela collapsed. even with the advantage of the state imposing certain behaviors on it's people. even with all the experts, economists, and scientists in the central planning committee. they depended too much on science and facts.
this explains the phenomenon that people who performed poorly in school become hugely successful in business while honor students tend to live a more simple life. our valedictorian in high school, robin barangan, is "just" a public school teacher. i'm talking from an economic perspective so i used the word "just". but from a purely moral perspective of course he is admirable. but i would not want robin to be my president or influencing the policies. however, i would want him to marry my sister and be the teacher to my kids. i fear living in a society without leftists because they are great teachers, artists, musicians and scientists. but i equally fear living in a society where leftists are the leaders.
i think a good president needs both IQ and EQ. but we tend to ignore EQ. that's why the liberals and the left went berserk with the relatively low IQ of george bush jr. i think he had a very high EQ. besides, a president's job is not to find a cure for cancer or design a rocket to mars. on the other hand, a harvard professor is obviously smarter than bush jr but check out this funny article where a harvard professor goes insane over $4 - http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/09/harvard-business-school-professor-goes-war-over-worth-chinese-food/KfMaEhab6uUY1COCnTbrXP/story.html?s_campaign=bcom%3Asocialflow%3Afacebook.
II. foreign policy
chomsky is like robin barangan. anyone who has not read chomsky is misinformed. if you are a low intellect like me who has very poor reading skills, i suggest you watch his youtube videos to learn about the US atrocities in asia, middle east and latin america. chomsky gives super amazing knowledge bombs not even the washington post or new york times will publish. chomsky is like a god who knows all the facts and his straightforward and simple opinions are from a purely moral perspective. i saw that movie about the heroism of washington post for revealing the truths about the vietnam war. but i realized americans were dying in vietnam so the anti vietnam activists and those who revealed the pentagon papers were just heroes from the american perspective. if no americans were dying, just naked children running away from napalm explosions, i'm sure the post wouldn't have bothered revealing those truths. only roy moore would have bothered looking at the pictures. below is a more recent picture of that famous naked napalm girl. so morality did not really win the day for the anti-war movement. in the real world, morality hardly ever wins. it was still self interest that won the day.
there is no world police that can put a criminal country in prison so it's better to be the criminal than the victim. unless there is reward and punishment in the after life, it's dangerous to have a president who makes decisions based on a purely moral perspective. that is why i still have very high respect for american presidents even if they are technically war criminals - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/04/deconstructing-us-imperialism.html
III. environment
people forget that even evil republicans don't want to live in a city that is overwhelmed with toxic smog. if you pour hazardous chemicals into the rivers or lakes, the republicans will be the first ones to hang you. republicans do try to balance economic benefits with environmental destruction. democrats give higher priority to the environment. if democrats are wrong, we become poor. if republicans are wrong, we are dead. but again, it's not that simple because there are extremely smart people in the republican party who loves their children too. in fact the republican mayor of san diego is the only mayor to pledge that his/her city would run totally on renewables by 2035.
IV. conspiracy theories.
i was having lunch with my genius coworkers in silicon valley. they were saying bush was a moron. i asked them - do you think bush decided one day we should go to iraq and figured out a plan to trick the nation into supporting the war?. they said - yes. so i told them - bush is not stupid then. it takes a very smart person to orchestrate such fabrication because it involves so many people and it just takes one whistle blower for bush to follow in the footsteps of nixon. i said maybe we did not go to iraq because of bush. maybe bush was made president because the oligarchs decided we needed to go to iraq. they were impressed at my conspiracy theory.
if bush stopped the 9/11 hijackers and detained them before carrying out the attacks, there would have been worldwide outcry calling bush a racist and islamophobe for detaining innocent arab students who were just learning to fly airplanes. the left would have crucified bush even if he just averted the worst attack ever on american soil ever since our founding fathers decimated the native indians.
i just realized that if bush sr. beat bill clinton there is no way bush jr would have become president. so losing to clinton gave his family 20 years instead of just 16 years in the white house. and to think philippines was like a banana republic because marcos was president for 20 years. this is probably why bush jr. and bill clinton are close friends. although it should have been bush sr. and bill clinton who were closer buddies because they both liked big butts.
i also don't think the death of JFK jr. was an accident. it's too much of a coincidence that anytime someone in their family becomes a shoe in for president they mysteriously die.
you also have to wonder why, when ronald reagan became so popular, all of a sudden there was a national security leak in one of his meetings with his top 5 most trusted staff - vice president, secretary of state, etc ... which made reagan so angry he wanted all his staff to go through a lie detector test. it was a signal to reagan from the true powers of the world. a reminder that a president is just their tool, a symbol. (youtube makes morons like me sound like chomsky)
and we have to wonder why how, in spite of our highly sophisticated intelligence infrastructure, a bunch of muslim students managed to crash planes into the world trade center. and what's mind blowing is the owner of the flight school warned the FBI that there are middle eastern students learning to fly airplanes but did not bother to learn how to land them. the warnings were ignored even in the midst of waves of terrorist strikes by bin laden around the world. it's also mind blowing that the terrorists chose the united states as the place to learn to fly planes.
(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)
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