“Dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy”: Jared Kushner and the glass floor

The glass floor is a term for the support systems that keep talentless rich people from failing (more here): they keep getting multiple chances when they fall on their face, they get legacy admissions into top college, they have rich friends and family who can finance their business ventures or give them jobs. Case in point, Jared Kushner: merely by being Trump’s son-in-law he’s now heading the White House pandemic response despite a complete lack of qualifications and a conviction he’s smarter than the experts. As Michelle Goldberg puts it, “Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.” (her column provides the quote in this post title).

But that’s not how Jared sees it: when he was in real estate, he became a master of multi-tasking who could take a call in the middle of college class, send a plumber to fix the problem and never break a sweat. Wow, that’s what we need for fighting COVID-19 (as someone notes at the link, if the guy running a $10 million portfolio has to be the one calling the plumbers when a toilet breaks, that’s a sign of mismanagement, not talent). And providing us with deep insight such as “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile … It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.” (the linked article says yes, it actually is).

But he’s not the only dimwit who distinguished themselves last week. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia insists he only just learned that seemingly healthy people can be COVID-19 carriers. As this has been discussed in the news for a couple of months, either Kemp’s really stupid or he’s trying to CYA his inept responses. Or maybe both, because as a CYA this is pretty stupid. Heck, he got into office by voter suppression, maybe he figures he doesn’t have to be competent.

Smarter, but equally odious conservatives are working on using the current crisis to get state funding for churches (a liberal pastor protests) and to create a de factor national abortion ban.

Not so smart: reporters who continue writing that Trump is becoming a great leader at last. Jared’s his pandemic point man, remember? And Trump’s response to criticism is still misogynistic bile (some detailed examples here).

And lets not forget the Republicans who continue to enable Trump’s stupidity and narcissism.

So was Sen. Kelly Loeffler just incredibly lucky that her investment managers sold off stocks in businesses that tanked after the pandemic hit? While I’m skeptical, the article at the link points out some of the sales (Facebook stock for instance) don’t seem to take advantage of what Loeffler knew was coming.

And while he’s not COVID-19 relevant, I’ll just mention law school professor Adrian Vermeule. He’s a conservative Catholic (adult convert) whose deep thoughts include that atheists who swear oaths cannot be trusted because, you know, they don’t believe in God. And he thinks it’s time to ditch individual rights and freedom in favor of a nice authoritarian government that will dictate to us for our own good. The government’s “subjects” will soon learn to thank them!