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Tim Walz says he and Harris were too ‘safe’ during 2024 presidential campaign
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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There are no guarantees. This testing was supposed to be unnecessary because the people were supposed to have a good enough BS detector to reject people like trump before they got to power. But look what happened. Or should I say, happened again. We know similar terrible humans have been elected in other places and times.
We could say 'oh, but trump was probably treated badly by his mummy so we should show him empathy' or we could be sensible and say that we fucked up by allowing him to get near to being in power. He should never have gotten on the ballot.
So how do we fix that fuck up? Who knows, it will probably be violence at this point.
But how do we handle this issue in future? By making sure this can never happen again. There's so much obviously wrong with him being a leader that its easy to see that he would be rejected by testing, even by a simple IQ test requirement of 110 or greater. Yes I'm aware of the issues with IQ as a concept etc, but its useful as a blunt tool.
I am aware of the criticisms of the mental health systems and testing - I'm one of those who criticises it.
I think you're missing the point in all this. Just like some roles eg astronauts are tested to the max - for safety - the highest authority in the land should also be subject to the maximum safety requirements. You don't agree? We should send someone into space who can't handle it and will freak out and cause their own deaths and maybe others too? Just because it's not fair to people struggling with any mental illness or whatever to not be able to do that job?
Anything can be subverted but that doesn't mean its a bad idea (so can democracy, elections etc), just that we have to make sure that protections are built into the system and learn from the past. Which is exactly what I'm advocating for.
Disabled people aren't a monolith, any pragmatic person would agree that not all disabled people are fit for any job, no matter what the accommodations and what I'm saying isn't intended to dump on disabled people. I do have empathy for all of the mentally ill/neurodivergent, even serial killers and paedophiles - they are choosing their actions, yes, but in an extremely unfair system, where they got fucked by genetics/environment. I still wouldn't let them around kids.
I'm not making blanket statements about mentally ill/ND being useless, untrustworthy or even bad leaders in all ways. There are some roles which are incompatible with the abilities and traits of certain people and from my experience cluster B's/traits in particular are not suited to power. Other mental illnesses/ND may be fine and a lot of this depends on the role, stress level etc.
We need to make it clear that we demand the utmost from our leaders/potential leaders in terms of morality and human values. This should be enshrined in law and not just tested as a barrier for entry but constantly judged.