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Has America Been Invaded by Ferangis?

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Several years ago, I read a Letter to the Editor in the St. Petersburg Times (now called the Tampa Bay Times). I copied the letter and saved it in my computer, forgetting about it until I accidentally ran across it recently. As I reread the letter, I realized that the writer (whose name I am keeping private to protect the innocent*) was possibly correct.

The letter was about Rick Scott, who had recently been elected Governor of Florida in 2011. He started his own healthcare company many years earlier and had become quite wealthy. He was ousted as CEO after his company was convicted of Medicare fraud. The company had to pay the largest fine in Medicare history. Part of the settlement was that he no longer be CEO of his own company. He was not personally convicted. He also walked away with $200 million dollars. He then went into politics as a Republican. During his years as Governor, he heavily promoted business interests and was opposed to any free healthcare. He was against the Obama Affordable Care Act. After two terms as Florida’s governor, he successfully ran for the Senate, where he resides today. He has always voted with his fellow Republicans every time they tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

Here is the text of the Letter to the Editor about Scott:

Some people have joked that Governor Rick Scott, based on his appearance, is an alien. I think he might be a Ferangi. This species from Star Trek has no motivation beyond business. Their religion is business, and their god is profit.

Their culture and philosophy are defined by the rules of acquisition. These rules make no provision for supporting the common good, or those less fortunate. A Ferangi doesn’t hesitate to cheat, lie, or steal to complete a business deal. He will betray his family and allies for profit. The only dishonor a Ferangi knows is to fail to get the advantage in a business deal. They regard other species as inferior, and their females have no power or rights.

The reason this letter seems appropriate today is because I am convinced that both Donald Trump and Elon Musk—just to name a few—are most likely all Farangis. People might say that Star Trek is a fictitious TV series, but there are many who believe that it was a documentary. It takes place around the year 2150 and maybe time travel was possible. After all, the current Republican Party supports both Trump and Musk, and they act like they are all cut from the same Ferangi cloth—or at the very least they bow down to it.

 

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* If the letter writer wishes to contact me for any reason, please do so at: [email protected] . I kept the name of the writer and you can identify yourself by giving me that name and the municipality you noted in the letter signifying where you were from, so that I have the correct person.

 

 

 

Elon Musk, Trump, DEI & the God of Efficiency

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Trump & Musk Chainsaw

photo of Trump and Elon Musk holding chainsaw

During my over 50 years of being an employer and an employee in the American economy, there is one type of personality that I ran into all the time. And that is someone who’s new to a company who comes in with the idea that they are going to change and fix everything. They are generally pretty young, but always have this feeling that they are superior to others. The other employees who see this new person realize that he’s just another jerk who thinks that they are all inefficient and worthless employees and this guy’s going to fix it.

I was even one of those in my early days until I realized that I’m not superior to these others, and I can’t go in and fix everything because I learned over time that certain practices and habits are there for a reason, and those reasons have often come down over decades and centuries. What I learned was called humility.

Humility is something that Elon Musk needs badly. His money has gone to his head and now he has a God complex. He’s like Trump, who also has a God complex. Trump also thinks that he’s going to come in and fix everything in the world—and that he is superior to everyone else—that only he can fix it.

Someone needs to tell Elon—and Trump, for that matter—that efficiency is not the goal of everything. In fact, efficiency can almost be the bane of human existence.

Efficiency is Not the Main Goal in Life

And this thing with DEI. We need to have a society that’s diverse, equitable and inclusive of all types of people. DEI hiring is often bringing in people who live on the fringes of society because the majority of society, or maybe a large group, doesn’t like them, often because these people are of a different race, religion, sex—or have some other unpopular trait. In other words, they’re prejudiced against them, and they don’t want to deal with them, so these people just fall by the wayside because society doesn’t engage with them. And engagement means that they aren’t as efficient. But efficiency, again, is not the main goal in life, nor should it be in government and society.

What good government and a good society should be has yet to be determined; It’s a work in progress, although there are a lot of people who are convinced that they know exactly what it should be and they want to force that on everyone else—except the idea of democracy, which is only defined as rule by the people—and is also a work in progress—stands in their way.

Elon should understand all this. After all, he grew up in South Africa, a place where the majority of the people who were black were once ruled by the minority of the people, who were white. And the white people weren’t kind to the black people. The white people just didn’t like the black people. They thought they were superior to the blacks. Democracy came along and changed all that. And that is still a work in progress. But Elon, who is white, left. Maybe it wasn’t efficient enough for him.

 

image of the word democracy in dictionary
Democracy in the dictionary is defined as “rule by the people”