Is Donald Trump Really a Great Businessman?

Of course, he’ll say so.  But one can fairly question that assessment.  A good businessman knows his business.  Because he does his homework and has the experience necessary to the exercise of sound judgment.  These become habits of life:  be prepared and think before acting.

The fact that Trump has not displayed either attribute during his campaign would belie the belief that he employs them in his activities (or would be guided by such qualities as president).

Donald Trump, foremost, is a real estate developer.  The essence of that business is speculation.   Buy property, develop it by building shopping centers, office buildings, houses, etc.  A successful businessman sells the result for more than the investment of time and money costs.  The unsuccessful project owner often ends up in bankruptcy which has been Donald Trump’s lot on four separate occasions. 

The Sensible Conservative’s observations:  It is disingenuous for Trump to defend this record by noting that his companies filed for bankruptcy, not him personally.  That’s a distinction of legal liability, not business responsibility.  Trump does business through corporate entities to avoid personal liability for a business’s debts.  That is a sound practice commonly used by most commercial enterprises.  There is nothing wrong or unethical in Trump having done so.  But that doesn’t change the fact that at least four businesses headed by Donald Trump were failures.  That record hardly recommends him for the presidency.  

Common Sense Upended – What’s Wrong With Confining The Use Of Ladies Rooms To Females?

North Carolina has stirred anger and threatened boycotts from the left by formalizing the right of businesses and local governments to require that males and females use appropriately designated “bathrooms”.  Males use one, females the other and both may enter a room set aside for families.

So what’s the problem?  On its face, common sense causes the answer to be:  “Huh?  You’re kidding about that, right?”

Alas, no. 

People who are transgender (wishing to be a different sex and usually dressing accordingly) apparently want the right to enter the room which matches their clothing not their anatomy. 

But what about the rights, for instance, of women to privacy?  And to be free of the leering attention – and perhaps worse – of men who dress up like women to indulge in their perverted desires?  Does the left mean to ease the lot of peeping toms who would no longer need to skulk about – just put on a dress?

Louis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was supposed to be a political satire, not a prescient tract.

Weighing the Risks of Terror

The risk of being a terror victim underlies the fact that most Americans consider terrorism to be the number one threat facing the country.

San Bernardino catapulted what had been a general, somewhat vague worry into an intense concern.  Fear of another terror attack reached poll numbers not seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11.  Yet, on a risk scale, the chances of an American becoming a terror victim remain infinitesimally small.  Yes, fourteen people were killed by radical islamist terrorists in California.  But we live in a land of three hundred thirty million.  The chances of dying in an accident caused by a drunk driver, for instance, are much greater.  The number dying from such a cause was 10,076 in 2013.

Those statistical realities undoubtedly had a role in what was viewed as the White House’s tardy recognition of the widespread alarm across America about the San Bernardino massacre.

 

Plainly – no surprise here – President Obama doesn’t understand human nature.  Human kind is genetically programmed to exaggerate threats to existence.  Maybe that’s why our species, unlike dinosaurs, still populates the earth.  This is not merely informal speculation.  Modern studies make this aspect of human behavior undeniable (an excellent summary is found in David Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, a readable, present day classic on human psychology).

Statistics don’t matter to most people when viewing a risk to survival.  But that doesn’t mean their fears should be dismissed as being illogical or unfounded.  They are not.

 

Fatal accidents are, and always have been, a fact of life.  Most of us ignore them, whether riding in a car or airplane.  But acts of intentional harm are another matter.  From a practical perspective, that risk cannot be avoided.  We can choose to stay out of dangerous neighborhoods, but do we need to fear a party at work in a middle class area, with the evil doers looking for us?  Now we do.

So we fear the terrorist more than the drunk driver.  It’s a human reaction.

Voter Responsibilities and Self Rule

In 1787, the architects of our Constitution created a system designed to filter, and control, the passions of the broad public that had upended previous efforts at self-government (with Greece and Rome as examples).

The Founders of the United States of America established a republican form of government with checks and balances, state authority distinct from national, voters casting ballots for Representatives, not direct policy.

Bluntly put, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, in particular, and members of the Constitutional Convention as a whole, were loath to grant ‘the people’ unbridled authority for self-rule.

Does the wide voter support generated by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders validate the Founders’ worries?

It’s hard to fairly dispute that Trump is out of his depth as a presidential candidate or that Sanders’ socialist prescriptions would be a disaster for the country.  Yet millions of Americans support them.  That is simply irresponsible.

 

Obviously, the people’s vulnerability to the siren calls of the demagogue or the radical were anticipated in the terms of the U.S. Constitution.  But in more than two centuries, obstacles to the direct influence of the American public on politics have been weakened or removed (primary voting and direct election of U.S. senators, for instance).

The Sensible Conservative is not suggesting that the increased ability of the public to select its leaders or shape national policy is necessarily bad.  It is not. 

However, with increased potential for influence comes, I do suggest, greater responsibility.

If people are to exercise their right to rule themselves, they have a concomitant obligation to do so responsibly.  The greater the right, the greater the duty to use it seriously.  Viewing the support being garnered by Trump and Sanders, it is hard not to share the skepticism – and fear – held by The Founding Fathers.