Rajvik has identified several threads of discussion that are important here. One, the election of Trump was largely about social class, not economics. Americans like to pretend that we don't have social class outside of wealth, but that's ridiculous. He's also realized the original meaning of the word "meritocracy", where it's rule by the people who have received merits. Finally, he's gotten that people who are of high social class are really bad at talking to people of a lower class, and assert their own superiority as justification for why their opinions are right and others are wrong. I hear "these people don't know what's good for them" a lot.
Trump is perhaps bad at governing because he is lower class, though -- he doesn't know how to code switch effectively enough. International relations is a game that's always been played by the upper class, and because Trump is willing to break all of the rules, all of the time, he's not playing the same game as everyone else. Not checkers and chess, though -- no value judgements here. They're playing polo, while Trump is playing Calvinball. So it's not so much polo is a great game, it's just that him just being on the field is unhelpful to all of the other players. You can't change the rules to polo, or win at it, if you're not even trying to play it.
That said, if I back up a topic, I'm a software developer. It's pretty much you can write your own ticket if you're any good at it. Jobs are easy to find. A friend of mine had 3 months notice that he was going to be out of a job -- he started working at my company only 2 months later. It's a job that is definitely not for everyone, and we're kidding ourselves if we think putting programming boot camps out in coal country is going to help 55 year olds who are out of work. Less than 10% of them, I'm sure. The same goes for many other skilled labor jobs. (The only non-skilled job that seems to be growing rapidly is medical assistant, and I continue to marvel at how non-skilled they are.)
Our schools are designed to train manufacturing workers. You're punished if you can't keep a schedule, you're expected to do standard work, there's a daily cycle. Creativity and specialization are not encouraged. As a Democratic party official, I am definitely not going to say anything malicious about teacher unions, for teachers are the backbone of our educational system. But I can't help but say that we are preparing students nationwide for a future that simply does not exist. People say that university is necessary for a good job now, and that's generally true, but that's only because secondary education in the U.S. is simply not designed to produce workers for the jobs that are needed. Not for working with your hands or your head. The merit of the diploma is bullshit, sure, but people hire them anyway because they need assurance that the employee can think outside the high school model.
Trump is perhaps bad at governing because he is lower class, though -- he doesn't know how to code switch effectively enough. International relations is a game that's always been played by the upper class, and because Trump is willing to break all of the rules, all of the time, he's not playing the same game as everyone else. Not checkers and chess, though -- no value judgements here. They're playing polo, while Trump is playing Calvinball. So it's not so much polo is a great game, it's just that him just being on the field is unhelpful to all of the other players. You can't change the rules to polo, or win at it, if you're not even trying to play it.
That said, if I back up a topic, I'm a software developer. It's pretty much you can write your own ticket if you're any good at it. Jobs are easy to find. A friend of mine had 3 months notice that he was going to be out of a job -- he started working at my company only 2 months later. It's a job that is definitely not for everyone, and we're kidding ourselves if we think putting programming boot camps out in coal country is going to help 55 year olds who are out of work. Less than 10% of them, I'm sure. The same goes for many other skilled labor jobs. (The only non-skilled job that seems to be growing rapidly is medical assistant, and I continue to marvel at how non-skilled they are.)
Our schools are designed to train manufacturing workers. You're punished if you can't keep a schedule, you're expected to do standard work, there's a daily cycle. Creativity and specialization are not encouraged. As a Democratic party official, I am definitely not going to say anything malicious about teacher unions, for teachers are the backbone of our educational system. But I can't help but say that we are preparing students nationwide for a future that simply does not exist. People say that university is necessary for a good job now, and that's generally true, but that's only because secondary education in the U.S. is simply not designed to produce workers for the jobs that are needed. Not for working with your hands or your head. The merit of the diploma is bullshit, sure, but people hire them anyway because they need assurance that the employee can think outside the high school model.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto