Case in point

[BikerDude]

Like the recent thread about corporate CEO's.
This illustrates the very odd bubble that seems to surround CEO's.
Carly Fiorina is announcing as a republican candidate for President.
The fact that she can actually do that with a straight face is an illustration of the world of illusion that these people seem to occupy.

When Carly Fiorina launches her campaign for president this week, her message to the world will be emphatic: what she did for HP, she can do for America.

From spaghetti dinners in New Hampshire to startup conferences in New York, the former head of Hewlett-Packard is expected to keep staking her claim as a pioneering executive prodigy: ?It is only in the United States of America that a young woman can start as a secretary and become CEO of the largest technology company in the world,? she recently posted on Facebook, next to a low rating from a pro-choice group that she called ?a badge of honor?.

Fiorina, 60, has never held public office. A 2010 run for US senate collapsed amid images of private jets and million-dollar yachts. Now, she hopes the revived record of a dot-com businesswoman will vault her over the otherwise all-male Republican field of mostly professional politicians ? or at least lead to a spot as one of their vice-presidential running mates to face Hillary Clinton head-on.

?We went from a market laggard to market leader,? Fiorina has said of her six years running the computer giant. ?Unlike Hillary, I have actually accomplished something.?

Don't take my criticism as support for Hillary. Good God no!
But working in IT at that time I do remember what an uproar there was about her as a CEO. She was thrown out by the board of directors and was generally regarded as an absolute disaster. And the near demise of HP under her is testimony to it.
What others have and had to say about her.

But those who watched what Fiorina did to HP ? mishandling the $25bn acquisition of Compaq, getting ousted by the board in 2005 with a $21m golden parachute, repeatedly being named one of the worst CEOs in American corporate history ? say those supposed accomplishments are already coming back to ?haunt? her run for the White House.

?She put herself ahead of the interests of the company and I fear she would do the same as president,? Jason Burnett, a grandson of the late HP co-founder David Packard and a member of the Packard Foundation board of trustees, told the Guardian. ?I don?t want her to do harm to this country.?

HP?s longtime director of corporate communications, Roy Verley, said his ex-boss alienated colleagues with a ?cult of Carly? that put self-promotion first.

?She didn?t know what she was doing and couldn?t deliver on her promises,? said Verley, who left HP in 2000.

The notion of a successful Fiorina reign at HP, he said, was ?fantasy?.

I find it continually amazing that the "CEO animal" seems so consistently to be divorced from reality. They just cheerfully keep doing speeches and acting like a big shot while Rome burns. It's almost funny.
And sadly they are mining this American myth of the "super CEO".
You can almost here Walter "If you will it, it is no dream".

Hillary or Carly? Good God! There is no hope.

[jgiffin]

This is what you get with identity politics. They need a female VP candidate to counter the appeal of a Hillary/Warren presidency. She checks that box. Qualifications, competence, and integrity aren't prerequisites in the new game. (See, e.g., current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., DC 20500).

[BikerDude]

This is what you get with identity politics. They need a female VP candidate to counter the appeal of a Hillary/Warren presidency. She checks that box. Qualifications, competence, and integrity aren't prerequisites in the new game. (See, e.g., current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., DC 20500).

Yes this is true.
But there is some sort of phenomenon that seems to go deeper.
People seem to be increasingly unable to separate perception from reality.
It's as if the the concept of a flat earth could get a high enough score on twitter that it would somehow be more true.

[jgiffin]

Your reference to twitter and implication of social media in general is well placed. The modern world, while more connected and integrated in many senses, is nonetheless more fractured, disjointed, specialized, and compartmentalized than ever. There is no commonality of experience.

Some people get all their "news" from social media, others only watch Fox News or CNN, some watch only reality-TV. Many of us live, work, and communicate primarily with people of like minds. We've indoctrinated generations into relativism, encouraged them into narcissism, and taught them to avoid thinking too deeply about certain very important things.

Create an image, push a message, and stonewall the truth until everyone's attention is attracted by the next shiny object on the sidewalk.

[BikerDude]

Your reference to twitter and implication of social media in general is well placed. The modern world, while more connected and integrated in many senses, is nonetheless more fractured, disjointed, specialized, and compartmentalized than ever. There is no commonality of experience.

Some people get all their "news" from social media, others only watch Fox News or CNN, some watch only reality-TV. Many of us live, work, and communicate primarily with people of like minds. We've indoctrinated generations into relativism, encouraged them into narcissism, and taught them to avoid thinking too deeply about certain very important things.

Create an image, push a message, and stonewall the truth until everyone's attention is attracted by the next shiny object on the sidewalk.

Yes. People are offered "confirmation bias" because it sells.

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.