Political content could pay...

[GordonJ]

Originally Posted by Dien Rice

Hi Gordon,

I dunno... Certainly some things are relevant...

I thought this was a good article, which is also relevant to business... I felt it was the most insightful article I've read in a while (it's from Forbes magazine)...

"Donald Trump didn't get rich building businesses, despite years of brand-burnishing via The Apprentice and millions of votes from people who craved exactly that experience. Instead, his forte lies in transactions—buying and selling and cutting deals that assure him a win regardless of the outcome for others. The nuance is essential. Entrepreneurs and businesspeople create and run entities that have any number of interested parties—shareholders and customers and employees and partners and hometowns—that in theory all share in success. Under Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Apple has helped early shareholders multiply their investments nearly 400-fold, turned thousands of options-wielding employees into millionaires (swelling the local tax base), performed similar wonders for Taiwanese supplier Foxconn and made customers so deliriously happy that they wait all night to fork over hundreds of dollars for products that will be obsolete two years later.

"Dealmakers rarely seek that kind of win-win-win-win-win. Whether it's a stock trade, a swap of middle relievers or optioning a real estate parcel, a deal tends to involve just two parties and generally results in one coming out ahead of the other (so much so that a "win-win" is considered a noteworthy aberration). "Man is the most vicious of all animals," Trump told People in 1981 (and it merited a mention the first time he appeared in Forbes , a year later). "Life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat." It's a mentality that remains hard-wired in President Trump.

"Nearly a year after the most stunning Election Day in many decades, pundits still profess to find themselves continually shocked by President Trump. They shouldn't be: His worldview has been incredibly consistent. Rather than as an opportunity to turn ideology into policy, he views governing the way he does business—as an endless string of deals, to be won or lost, both at the negotiating table and in the court of public opinion. Look at his first year through this prism, and it makes sense. And it offers clues for the next three years—or seven."

Inside Trump’s Head: An Exclusive Interview With the President, And The Single Theory That Explains Everything
https://www.forbes.com/donald-trump/.../#10677e80bdec

It's the difference between a "win/win" type of mindset, and an "I win/everybody else loses" mindset...

And this is from Forbes magazine... One of the leading business publications...

Best wishes,

Dien

...The ultimate Win/Lose is when any religious fanatic says, "I'm going to heaven, you to hell." I'd have to believe that is the ultimate, I WIN-You Lose scenario.

And so, if we agree with the Forbes assessment of the man, are we winning or losing?

So today, politics and religion are deeply intertwined, and so we can discuss them both.

GordonJ