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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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politics
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Ok a 50 page memo? That's pretty friggin long. Depends how many of those you get a day.
But:
#ExplainlikeImTrump needs to be a thing
Please no…
I could take about 30 seconds of it, but nothing more.
When /Explainlikeimfive is too complicated.
#ExplainLikeImOrange
No. The President of the United States of America needs to be able to internalize and contextualize the details of the current geopolitical climate over corn flakes. This "only human" bullshit has got to go.
Absolutely agree with you. The point I wanted to make is that there are different ways to summarise, say, in this example, a 50-page memo. The sad thing here is how the official needed to resort to the good versus evil false dichotomy. This oversimplification to have been required because, unfortunately, Trump is stupid.
I guess I'm saying that it's a shame that there are probably a lot of smart people trying to make sense of all the geopolitics, picking things apart, critical thinking... but in the end it was all for nought; they had to appeal to someone - Trump - who never really wanted to, nor was able to, internalise or contextualise it.
Hey. Be nice. Feel free to go back to reddit with that shit attitude.
There's nothing nonsensical about their comment. Long winded? Absolutely. Do you not agree with it? Probably, but just because you don't like it doesn't make it nonsensical.
But even if it did make no sense, there's no excuse for personal attacks. That's just being shitty.
Don't shit this place up like Reddit. It's not welcome here.
LOL
Haha yes I think you're right! I find it difficult. And I'm interested in getting better at it. That's part of the reason why I like discussing stuff on Lemmy. Do you have any tips?
I think my original comment was taken as if I was excusing Trump. That sucks. I wanted to convey the opposite :(
Thanks :) I think I'll follow that advice, especially on political forums! My clumsy wording aiming to criticise Trump was taken the wrong way and generated negativity. Thanks for your time.
Jesus fucking Christ will you both stop? Near as I can tell were all in agreement
Apparently not in total agreement, as one was saying something to warrant being removed by mods!
You should follow your own advice. Just the first half will do.
Yep, it's literally the job (or what it should be).
Yeah I'm a normal human and I have no trouble reading at a highschool level why can't the president do it?
I mean, I know that you are making fun of me, and I would like to point out that I'm speaking about the former president, but yes.
A 50 Page memo is too long. It is relevant for the discussion of the details between the specialised people, so they reach a highly qualified opinion, but the cause and effects of different decision options need to be summarised on a few pages. Of course the president needs to be able to understand what the bullet points entail, but it is literally impossible for a president of a country the size of the US to read up on the details of every decision.
What is the point of a 50 Page Memo that you just skim through, easily overlooking stuff, instead of having a 5 page comprehensive summary?
Any good leader needs to delegate things. If he cant trust people with making summarys and understand these, instead relying on his quick-read-hopefully-not-overlook-something skills, then that is terrible for the country.
Also again, giving your boss something to read expecting he only reads a quarter of, is both a failure of your boss and you, as you are wasting each others time this way.
Ibdon't doubt that stuff had tobbe dumped down forbTrump, but amount of pages is not a good metric and the more pages a memo has, the more it gets questionable if it is an appropriate mean of communication
If they give memos like that to any other president, I would assume it has merit.
I suspect most world leaders would have people who have the necessary expertise to condense that down and just give them the high level overview. Dense and technical. Sit down with those advisors and talk through the pros and cons. Probably pull out the original 50 page document in places to "zoom in" on details.
But following the Trump administration, he got rid of anyone around him who wasn't a sycophant, so that limits his choice of staff somewhat, leaving the guy who'd normally submit a 50 page memo and assume the president read it all (along with dozens of other similar size memos from other departments), to break it down himself, like feeding a toddler by pretending the spoon is an aeroplane.
If the memo was made 100% for the President’s eye, then he should read it in detail. If not, there should be a summary containing only the important bits, because Presidents shouldn’t be skimming through long memos and potentially missing stuff.
Not giving Trump a pass here btw, man’s as stupid as he is evil.
I mean, other Presidents and high level defense officials seem to be handling it just fine. I'd also bet that there are pictures, charts, and supporting information in that 50 pages, and that the actual meat of the document is going to be smaller. I've read plenty of 50 page documents like that. It doesn't take that long and Trump definitely had the time. He spent many mornings live tweeting Fox News
i'm sure that Trump had things dumbed down for him. But what is the point of giving someone 50 pages to just read a few off? And "taking that long" is relative. For these kind of reports or so at work, reading them properly takes at least 2 hours. So if the president gets 5 if these on his desk he calls it a day and gets back to governing the next day, when he is finished reading?
Crossreading is also terrible, as it easily overlooks maybe critical information. Have someone write a comprehensive summary and give the president time to actually think about which decision is best.
We're getting off on a little bit of a tangent about proper memo reading but usually the point of supporting information is that you don't know if the reader is going to need it. You don't have a full picture of what the president knows already and you have no way of knowing how the president's thought process is going to go. They might need more information about something that happened or a decision being made to help inform their decisions or they might not, because it's not really relevant to the direction they want to go. Sure, 50% of it might go unread but you never know what info will fall into that 50%, exclude it and the document is incomplete.
Ultimately, though, the point remains that the memo sizes haven't really been a problem for others. Typically you don't make it that high up without being an extremely effective reader. It's just that this time we wound up with someone unfit and in way over his head.
I'm sure the professionals across the different departments of the government that report directly to the most important person in the country have no idea how to write effective memos. You should go over to DC and educate them with your wisdom.
There is a succinct summary and then there is saying things like "If we don't do this, the bad guys win," which is the level of dumbing down that had to be done.
Jesus fucking Christ man, what the actual fuck?
We had an insentient lump of lard in the oval office.