In Defense of Trump

A lot of people seem to like Trump, despite or in spite of the seemingly idiotic stuff he says. As I try to explain this to my friends abroad, it has more to do with the general disgust most sane people have for the media and for the climate of political correctness that is slowly crushing our ability to say anything negative about truly insane stuff that is going on.

Here is the thing with Trump – he is direct, he is visceral, he is everything you need to actually succeed in business dominated by lawyers, committees, boards and people put in place to keep things from moving forward. We’ve all had those clients.

I don’t find Trump to be mean spirited. Someone with that much power and that much money wouldn’t stay in business or in the media long, who wants to fight all that backlash when you can buy an island?

I recently had a conversation with a friend about relating to Trump and how being an asshole is not a bad thing people always make it out to be.

Not being an asshole, not being critical, not being able to raise your head above group think is perhaps the worst thing you can do when you realize that far too many politically correct super networkers around you are perfectly polite but also working their own agenda that is actually damaging and actually mean spirited. Folks that are really out in complete self interest and screwing others do not want to have difficult things discussed because it sheds light on their behavior.

I can relate – here is a personal story without naming names. I feel like the biggest problem MSPs (who are a decent size of my client base) face today is lack of education. So I get invited to donate my time to a non-profit to help design stuff for folks to get a better handle on the cloud and how to do so profitably. Sounds like a win win right? But when that non-profit is generating 50 million a year in a certificate business and decides to waste the groups time on generating one more worthless commercial certification track who is the asshole there – the guy who doesn’t have the time for that or the guy that is pushing for it with both hands and suddenly ends up with a part time job with the non-profit?

When activity like that goes without comment and without criticism, many people get actually hurt. Not in sense of hurt feelings, which people get over with quickly, but actual value destruction. And folks like that want an environment where nobody ever says anything stupid or offensive or critical – because negativity is a bad thing and we need to focus on good and positive and forward and up (and let them get away with it)? Bullshit.

This is why guys like Trump are always called out for the stupid, ignorant, negative and critical stuff they say – somewhat because it’s easy to get the people to think you’re an asshole with snippets and sound bites and be angry about it (so you tune in more often) – and it’s far more difficult to get the people to rationally consider all the fuckery and swindling going on. People overreact when they are confronted by such crude or honest behavior because they have become disaffected and sterilized by the cordial, polite and friendly interactions that they deep down know do nothing but screw them. And it’s easy to point to it and say “My god, what is wrong with them!!!” because that shifts the conversation away from the ACTUAL problem. 

So every now and then I work with people who after a while feel comfortable saying “Man, I heard you’re such an asshole” and I look at them wondering why they thought that was such a bad thing. Sometimes being an asshole is a good thing, particularly when the “normal” is the insanity we’ve given up to take for granted because that’s just the way things are.

For the record, as many of you may have been offended by this blog (and if you haven’t been yet, stick around), keep in mind that none of it was mean spirited to tear something down. Visceral as it may be, you can probably count on your fingers the number of folks that have been hurt by me – wish I could say the same for those that live to criticize it as they fail from one job to the next.