Donald Trump wins, why?

After the sucess of UKIP and Brexit in the United Kingdom, the success of Donald Trump was surely no surprise?

Millions of American blue collar workers yesterday voted against an establishment that is simply oblivious to working class people. There have been decades of industrial decline, the export of jobs, the destruction of any hope that blue collar people might still aspire to the American dream. The gap between the richest and the poorest has grown wider and wider, corporate America has acquired previously unimaginable wealth while working people have worked longer and longer hours for low wages. The financial crisis forced the country to struggle with debts caused by rich bankers. Hillary Clinton, being part of the establishment, offered no radical analysis of the economy Is it any surprise that Donald Trump was able to win the support of all those angry people?

As the UKIP voters were derided, as the Brexit voters were derided, so the Trump voters have met a similar wave of abuse, “Dumb” and “stupid” being the most frequent terms. Perhaps those who are dumb and stupid are those who for more than a decade have ignored the growing sense of alienation, those who preferred to think that the anger would simply fade away. If liberal values are to be preserved, then it will need a reformed persuasive political analysis that re-connects with lost communities.

Someday

Mein Wunsch! (Smile) 

For example to reference U2 once again there’s the enigmatic “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce,” which some fans view as a cryptic scripture reference – If you know how to find your way around in the Bible, look up the first testament (uno), the second book (dos), the third chapter (tres) and the 14thverse (catorce).
Specially for you, Reg!

Hillary and Donald

I’m just a little bemused over the whole Donald Trump thing. 

But perhaps it’s none of my business. I'm Irish but live in Germany. As a member of the EU I think free movement of people and goods are both good and beneficial things, I want to work and play across the continent without encountering unnecessary bureaucratic barriers, I like my DAK European Health Insurance because I think the idea is very civilised, I like the protections granted to the people by an international regulatory body that reigns in the worst ideas of each new government, and provides welcome oversight of our leaders because I don’t trust any of them and prefer that they exist as small fish in a big pond, not big dictatorial fish in a small pond. And, finally, as a student of history I appreciate the fact that Europe has been quite peaceful all these years and that closer union between the member states helped that peace prevail. 

Hillary is a text-book politician of the kind we’ve had in Ireland and Europe for some time now. She lies, she manoeuvres, she cheats but so what? It’s modern politics. We in Old Europe don’t have the luxury of voting for people who are pure in word and deed. We don’t even subscribe to such fallacies any more. We deal with the situation as it is and make the best choice we can, with our eyes open and few illusions about the messy business called governance. We do not demand that our politicians be pure, we just hope that they are competent.

I mean no disrespect to the USA. Many of Mr. Trump’s “mistakes” have turned out to serve him well. Hillary’s interests appear to be mainly concentrated on personal gain. We’ll just have to see. 

Vision or Goal?

Almost everyone knows the importance of vision for a leader. The problem is most leaders don’t properly articulate a vision. “Unity,” “growth,” or “a brighter future” are not visions. Nor is some financial target to be delivered by the year 2020. The latter is a goal, the former is nothing more than nice words and will not inspire action.

A true vision paints a clear picture of what the future could look like if everything goes well. It is an ideal. And for it to inspire people to act, that vision has to describe a future that would benefit an outside population. It is not simply a reflection of a company’s aspirations (“to be the biggest,” “the best” or “the most respected,” for example).

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs talked about The Revolution, a time in which individuals would have the power to stand up to The Corporation. The personal computer was the tool to advance towards that vision. It was a vision for the people, the future users.

Too many leaders think the plan is more important than the vision. The reality however, is the complete opposite. A plan is uncertain, changeable and sometimes flawed. It is the vision that must be immovable, fixed and inspiring.

When the fire goes out

In Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman, Jack McNulty, protagonist and narrator of the story, sits in a house in newly-independent Ghana and writes a memoir of his life. It is not a happy tale, there are more regrets than happinesses, there are chances lost forever, moments that will never be redeemed, hurts that cannot be healed, but McNulty never drifts for long from a mood of optimism:

Our greatest trouble and our saving grace is that we have a soul. Time may seem like a great flood dragging with it all the debris of the past and catching you at last running through your own fields. Where there was once a great fire may seem only an ember now in the palm of your hand. But the ember is the soul and nothing on earth can rescind it.
-Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman

Our greatest trouble? That sense that life can never be entirely abandoned, that our failures and wrongdoings remain with us?
Our saving grace? That opportunity remains for failures to be corrected, for wrongs to be righted?

And indeed that we have a soul. (She too, I would hope.)

Without Jack McNulty’s ember, without a soul that cannot be rescinded we live lives of very little meaning and hope.

Not writing

Last Friday it was twenty-eight degrees in the shade, or thirty degrees, if one was to believe the car thermometer, but it always exaggerates. Rewe was an attractive place around which to meander for an hour or so, not to buy much, but to enjoy the air conditioning. Browsing DVD's and car cleaning kits, neither of which would normally be of much interest, passed some minutes. Then I saw the large book selection.

It is over forty years since I developed an aspiration to become a writer, not a famous writer, not a wealthy writer, it would be enough to be able to write bad novels, making just enough to get by. A regular money flow that would enable the purchase of a small cottage somewhere, a place within walking distance of a village which had a bread shop and a cafe. 

The flaw in the plan was the inability to write in any way that might earn an income; writing commercially is an extraordinary skill, to be able to write the sort of fiction that people might buy really is a rare talent. Of course, there have been ideas for plots and characters, some storylines that might have been developed, it’s just that when the words are typed, they fall apart, sentences become badly formed, paragraphs have to be forced into shape, there has never been a complete page. Bad novels required considerably more ability than anticipated by someone who would have casually dismissed such literary efforts.

Perhaps the attractions would quickly have paled, perhaps one winter would have been enough. Anyway, without the freedom a writer’s life might have offered, a life in the countryside never became a possibility, though one can still dream.

What Programmers really mean...

“It’s a non-trivial amount of work” = I won’t be able to copy and paste
“This is a temporary solution” = This is a permanent solution
“I’ll be finished by Monday” = I won’t tell you which Monday
“Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?” = It will be neither
“Just report a bug” = I have no idea what you’re saying right now
“We can’t test that” = We can but we won’t
“I fixed the bug” = It started working again and I have no idea why
“I can’t realistically estimate that” = I don’t know how estimates work
“I don’t think users will care about that” = I have dinner reservations at 8
“This is an Alpha release” = It doesn’t work
-Thanks to Murphy.