[ POLL ] Donald Trump & Negative Selection.

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Negative Selection

Negative selection, in politics, is a process that occurs in rigid hierarchies, most notably dictatorships.

The person on the top of the hierarchy, wishing to remain in power forever, chooses his associates with the prime criterion of incompetence -- they must not be competent enough to remove him from power. The associates do the same with those below them in the hierarchy, and the hierarchy is progressively filled with more increasingly incompetent people as the hierarchy declines in rank.

If the dictator sees that he is threatened nonetheless, he will remove those that threaten him from their positions -- "purge" the hierarchy. Emptied positions in the hierarchy are normally filled with people from below -- those who were less competent than their previous masters. So, over the course of time, the hierarchy becomes less and less effective. As this happens relatively often, once the dictator dies, or is removed by some external influence, what remains is a grossly ineffective hierarchy.

Does President Donald J. Trump practice Negative Selection?

(Give the question some serious thinking before you answer. Thank you.)

He does hire competent people frequently...but he wants them to be his acolyte. The possible exceptions are his press secretaries.

This is not tenable.

That's the problem with Trump. He can't have his cake and eat it, too.

I don't feel he practices "negative selection." It's simpler than that. He wants to be the "boss of bosses." He doesn't want incompetent people. He just wants people who kowtow to him.

I think kraftiekortie is right. Trump would need a realistic assessment of his own lack of competence to do practice negative selection effectively. His narcissism prevents that. He selects based on loyalty. That he ends up with an unusually high proportion of grifters and incompetents is a consequence of who would proclaim loyalty to a grifter.

You may be on to something. His emphasis on loyalty may be making his negative selection merely a "comorbid" of the process.

Still, I can't see how much longer Mr. Trump can last. Eventually, the only people left will be abject sycophants who have a Pavlovian response of affirmation to everything he says. No one will be left to speak reason to authority, at which point we're all doomed.

kakistocracy noun
kak·​is·​toc·​ra·​cy | \ ˌkakə̇ˈstäkrəsē\
: government by the worst people

Ivanka Trump, Kushner, Pruitt, DeVos, Bannon, Bolton, Perry, Carson, Giuliani, et al.; Spanky certainly does not hire "all the best people"; to the contrary, he's assembled such an appalling confederacy of dunces so shockingly incompetent, unqualified, and destructive that the FBI felt compelled to launch a counterintelligence operation to determine if it is by design; is the President of the United States acting as an agent of a hostile foreign government to undermine ours. Rather than competency, Trump values groveling, obsequious sycophancy; he opens Cabinet meetings by giving everyone an opportunity to express just how wonderful he is and how grateful they are to be in his service. Furthermore, he doesn't care. His clear preference is autocracy; as far as he's concerned, he's "the only one who matters."

I think Trump's incompetence is an aggravating factor. If he were the stable genius he claims to be, then competent and ideologically compatible people would be happy to follow him. I am not sure that competence would be better. The destruction of the EPA is quite competently done. Anyway, I think this is relevant:



For as long as the Entitled think they can get something out of him. That might be a tax cut for the rich, the destruction of regulations and regulatory agencies, or performative cruelty. From an article on furloughed federal workers in a region that voted for Trump:

Good things = hurting people, just not herself. Then it doesn't matter how much competent cruelty contributed to ICE not keeping track of which asylum seeking children belong to which parents, compared to cruel incompetence.