Trump seems to be the epitome of Mark Twain’s story “Luck,” about a renowned general who grinningly and unwittingly stumbles into magnificent success after success his whole life by making errors (such as winning a battle by mistaking his right hand for his left and thus ordering an attack in the wrong direction, where coincidentally the enemy was most vulnerable.)
I’m not familiar with this story, but it sounds like an apt comparison. Or, I had a thought that trump is kind of like an ‘evil twin’ version of Chauncy Gardiner in the movie “Being There”.
Yes, failing upwards is the term I’m familiar with. There’s even a dictionary definition on Wiktionary.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fail_upwards
Verb
fail upwards (third-person singular simple present fails upwards, present participle failing upwards, simple past and past participle failed upwards)
- to advance in one’s career despite failures
Yes, ‘failed upwards’ is clearly the expression I should have used. Oh well, I think people get the gist, don’t know if it’s worth bothering a mod to change the title.
I beg to differ, Charles the Fifth had more than one relative die to get half of Europe and colonies.
In 1516, his grandfather, Ferdinand the Catholic died and Charles got the throne of Spain. In 1519 his paternal grandfather, Emperor Maximilian of Austria, died and Charles took possession of the Austrian house. In 1526… no relative dies, but Charles married Isabel of Portugal (her cousin) and got then the kingdom of Portugal too.
A saying my grandmother had: “The Devil takes care of his own”.
Your grandma was dark and awesome.
National Lampoon magazine ceased publication in 1998, but Trump would have been a perfect fit for them. A favorite recurring theme of NL was what might be termed “the Teflon Bastard”: a total asshole who by constant cheating, lies and fraud somehow makes his way through the world like an evil Forrest Gump.
One example was their parody of the movie “Harvey”. In the Lampoon version Harvey is a demonic familiar by who’s guidance Elwood P. Dowd plunders the world like a brigand, effortlessly getting away with embezzlement, rape, and manslaughter.
Yeah, I read “failed forward” as lasting impact, which I believe is greater in Reagan’s case than Trump’s. I probably missed the point of the OP. Not a first.
I didn’t mean it to come across as critical of your post, just a conversation on the topic. Tone is hard to convey in text.
I would argue that the former British Empire and current Great Britain has “failed upward” (or “forward”, or however you like) for several centuries now. From incompetent, obtuse, and ultimately inept colonial imperialism to the British computer and automotive industries, Britain has often started with a measurable lead only to fumble and fall behind again and again. As far as I can tell, the British have the lead in exactly three areas; science fiction comedy (Galaxy Quest notwithstanding), jellied eel production, and queens sporting silly hats.
I will admit a bias in this opinion from having had to maintain multiple Triumph and Lotus sports cars in operating condition, which is an sisyphusian exercise in futility. On the other hand, anyone who has worked on British cars will undoubtedly feel the same way.
Stranger
You forgot balconing, Brits have taken this craft to a new level.
Their beer is pretty good too.
Anyway, you may have a point as to which nation has ‘failed upward’ the most in the past several centuries or so, but I was wondering if any one individual in history has failed upward as much as trump has in his lifetime. I mean, looking at his life, he’s had failure after failure, but somehow keeps coming out of each failure not just given new chances, but new opportunities for greater wealth, fame and power.
Britain has an epidemic of people falling off of balconies? What an odd trend.
Well, for that you’re pretty limited to royalty and the children of extreme privilege. Although Trump would like to imagine himself as the former and to a certain extent is the latter, he’s pretty unique in just how far he has gone on so little talent, intelligence, or ability beyond self-promotion to achieve leadership of a major industrial nation.
In the film industry, I’d argue that J.J. Abrams has demonstrably long passed his threshold of competence and yet somehow gets handed franchise after franchise to ruin without apparent consequence. It’s hardly unusual for even bad producers and directors to have long careers of grinding out schlock, but so rare that one gets handed established properties to so thoroughly ruin in serial fashion.
Stranger
No, they jump on purpose, mostly while on holiday in Spain (Magaluf is a favourite - I kid you not, it is in the Island of Mallorca). They usually aim for swimming pools and often miss. You can look it up here:
There are plenty of videos in YouTube, you would not believe if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Just type the word balconing, it is horrifying but real.
I don’t know much about Popes - but are there any that might fit? They’d would have to fail their way up through the ranks of the Church and then once at the top, they would have huge amounts of power. Along with the idea that questioning them is basically questioning God. (in public at least).
(A very quick look says that Benedict IX might be in the same league as Trump.)
Seriously, you’re not going to mention the National Health Service?
Founded in 1948 and funded by taxation, it provides free medical coverage for all.
It also doesn’t have to make the profits that the US system does.
You had to go and ruin a good meme, didn’t you?
Okay, NHS is a resounding success, so much that even Thatcherism didn’t dent it. But I’m still never buying a Rover.
Stranger
We need to understand that Trump’s failures might not have been failures at all. Consider his failed casinos. Trump come in, hires himself and/or his family and cronies at exorbitant salaries, whereby he enriches himself at the price of making the casinos less profitable, whereby all the other lesser stockholders lose money.
This was a popular scam also in the early days of the railroads in the United States, when the major railroad companies hired subcontractors (headed by their own family members) at exorbitant rates, costing the railroads profits, but enriching the subcontractors’ major investors, who were none other than the railroad company principals themselves or their families. It’s an old scam.