The First Law of Holes

Image Credit: Mike Kiev, follow him here.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging - The First Law of Holes. 

A quote most apt when it comes to the far right and the sheer incompetence people like Trump, Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson exhibit regarding all things related to governance. This incompetency extends to others, particularly when adhering to the Peter Principle, an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence.

The cover of The Peter Principle (1970 Pan Books edition)

Think Musk and Twitter as Example No. 1

Twitter’s dying, in case you haven’t heard. The World’s Richest Man bought it — and the press showered him with adulation. A genius! Surely, a visionary! And yet here we are, a few scant months later. And this “business visionary” has just…had to…put in place…viewing limits…for a platform…he’s trying to sell…ads on. LOL.

Imagine having to walk into a boardroom. And even if you can bat away the question, “So, what are you going to do about my Mega Brand being right next to a crackpot who thinks vaccines don’t work and Hitler was a pretty good dude, like, for example, ‘Moms for Liberty?’ — even if you can somehow answer that, what are you going to say when the next question is: “What’s the point of me spending Big Bucks on ads…when you’re limiting people to viewing a few minutes worth of tweets per day?”

Example No. 2

Let me give you a couple of examples more before we come back to Twitter’s sudden cardiac arrest. A story from…Finland…recently swept the globe, dropping jaws. Finland — the last place you’d expect, a mature social democracy — went far right, and put in place a fanatical party called, LOL, the “True Finns,” who’ve now changed their name to “Finns Party” because I guess “True Finns” was a bit too obvious. What happened next, almost as soon as they took power?

The Economy Minister was forced to resign. Why? Take a deep breath. After a Hitler salute, he was found to have said that the answer to climate change is…for African babies…to be…aborted. Whew. How ugly is that? To most thoughtful and sane people, that’s repellent, stomach churning, even, perhaps. But that’s not even really the point. The point is that…this is the level of competence…delivered by an Economy Minister. His answer to climate change is Heil Hitler and let’s just get rid of African babies. Think about that for a second. It’s not just repugnant, it’s also bizarre, absurd, and idiotic.

Blowback, the law of unforeseen consequences, looms.

blow·back

/ˈblōbak/

noun

1. 1. 

   a process in which gases expand or travel in a direction opposite to the usual one, especially through escape of pressure or delayed combustion.

1. the unintended adverse results of a political action or situation.

   "this is the blowback from all those aggressive public health campaigns"

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