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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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I'm probably too cynical but I think the President's job is probably a lot like a doctor's job in a hospital: the nurses all know more or less what the patient needs but they need the MD to make decisions. Sure you'd like a brilliant doctor like House for the truly difficult problems but any doctor that just did what the nurses told him to would probably make for an okay hospital.

I wish. Take it from me that's not how it works, there's certainly a lot of rubberstamping involved where you need a Magic Signature™ for medicolegal and regulatory purposes, but a hospital de-facto run by the nurses would be a disaster in short order. It's not like rushing them through a year or two of training to proclaim them Nurse Practitioners with more autonomy particularly helps, the moment things go beyond the obvious and algorithmic, there's trouble.

I'm sure /u/Throwaway05 could say much the same.

Nurses are blue collar construction workers and physicians are architects. Yes one implements the vision of the other and can see patterns in what the other requests, but that doesn't mean they can safely do the planning. They do think they can however.

Not commenting if this has situational parallels lol.

Nurses, unlike construction workers, are usually not actual crackheads. Experienced and not drug addicted construction workers can and often do plan projects on their lonesome.

Yeah nurses can figure out basic things. That's the point. Basic.

Sounds like Harvard and Yale needs to put together a "presidential science" master's program. People in the future will be horrified that politicians without presidential science degrees were allowed to be president.

We’re getting there with the Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) degree in the UK. Explicitly intended as a ‘preparing to govern’ degree.

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-oxford-university-degree-that-rules-britain

Often criticised for being too wide-ranging and shallow, producing an elite who think they understand everything about everything.

Dominic Cummings wrote on his influential blog: “If you are young, smart, and interested in politics, think very hard before studying PPE … It actually causes huge problems as it encourages people like Cameron and Ed Balls to … spread bad ideas with lots of confidence and bluffing.”

Teaching there could become the automatic next job of any new ex-president (as long as he was not removed by impeachment or 25th Amendment), and they would all give a different class.