#lucasbean — Public Fediverse posts

#TFG #TrumpsMinions #LucasBean

https://lucasbean.substack.com/p/why-everyone-in-trumps-cabinet-is

How Negative Selection Works in Practice

The mechanism is straightforward once you see it. The leader identifies people who are compromised, disgraced, indebted, or otherwise unable to function outside his protection. He elevates them. He gives them titles, power, and authority they could never have earned on merit. And in doing so, he manufactures a dependency so complete that betrayal becomes structurally impossible.

A person who earned their position through competence can walk away. They have a reputation. They have credentials. They have options. A person who was given their position as a lifeline has none of that. If the leader falls, they fall. Their survival is fused to his survival. That fusion is the point.

This is not a side effect of poor hiring. It is the strategy. The leader does not want people who can leave. He wants people who cannot.

Consider the composition of Trump’s cabinet and inner circle. A disgraced television host overseeing the military. A man implicated in an FBI sting running border enforcement. A nominee who admitted in court that a parasitic worm consumed part of his brain, placed in charge of public health. These are not appointments that make sense if the goal is effective governance. They make perfect sense if the goal is total loyalty manufactured through total dependency.

Each of these people arrived compromised. Each of them was given authority they could never have obtained through normal channels. And each of them now exists in a position where the only thing standing between them and complete professional annihilation is the continued power of the man who elevated them.

#TFG #Envy #MaliciousEnvy #PresidentObama #LivingRentFree
#LucasBean

Why Trump Can't Keep Obama's Name Out Of His Mouth

....In 2009, researcher Niels van de Ven at Tilburg University published a landmark study on envy. His finding was that envy is not one emotion. It is two completely different ones that just happen to share a name.

The first is benign envy. This is the envy that makes you better. When you feel benign envy toward someone, you are motivated to work harder, improve yourself, and close the gap between where you are and where they are. It is painful but productive. It points you forward.

The second is malicious envy. This is the envy that makes you dangerous. When you feel malicious envy toward someone, you are not motivated to improve. You are motivated to destroy. You want to pull them down to your level because you have accepted, somewhere deep inside, that you will never reach theirs.

The difference between the two comes down to one thing. Whether you believe the gap can be closed.

Benign envy says the gap is closable. Keep going.

Malicious envy says the gap is permanent. Burn it down.

https://lucasbean.substack.com/p/why-trump-cant-keep-obamas-name-out