30 My 2¢ April 2024 This type of incompetence also runs rampant across corporate boards. In the post-Trump era there are individual truths and general truths. Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard University, made this clear by calling her damaging Congressional testimony “my truth,” thereby implying that the truth doesn’t exist. After all, even in science truths can vary. For example, water freezes at 0°C (32°F) and boils at 100°C (212°F), but that’s not true at high altitudes. The Trump era began during Donald Trump’s presidency (2017-2021), but it continues even in the present time. In my opinion, there is confusion between “truth” and “competence,” and the ax falls upon the latter. In a 1941 TV game show titled Truth or Consequences, which became popular in the U.S. in 1961 with host Bob Barker, when a contestant answered a question correctly, the host would say that the same question actually had multiple truths. After failing to name all those truths, the contestant had to face consequences such as performing embarrassing stunts. Today, a day doesn’t go by without reading about company executives unable to answer questions about simple truths, and who then twist themselves into pretzels in order to attempt to answer said questions. For example, we can cite the disastrous business practices of Boeing, an aircraft manufacturer that devolved into a simple assembly line by outsourcing components to a range of suppliers, and in the process sold defective airplanes. But this type of incompetence also runs rampant across corporate boards. Companies fire people during downturns, then have difficulties rehiring them for peak demands and are forced to engage in talent bidding wars, only to once again fire them later on without having a long-term plan in place. This is an accordion-style strategy called right-sizing, then downsizing. We have studios that discarded profitable syndication and broadcast television businesses to focus on losing streaming services. And when they inevitably found themselves in trouble, they went on to instigate damaging talent strikes. And what about car manufacturers that bet their bottom dollars on electrical vehicles despite warning signs not to do so. Car rental places don’t even want them. And what about freight companies that tried to eliminate the middlemen and in the process went bust? Then there are those U.S. companies that saw immediate gains by moving their manufacturing plants to China or Hungary and now are left with incendiary and authoritarian state partners. And how about companies that want to discover water on Mars yet ignore the health hazards of pollutants in the water of the earth’s oceans? Do we want to talk about the incompetence of regulators who are not even able to push for standardizing recharging devices for different models of telephones and computers made by the same brand? As we can see, incompetence and too many truths can cause indigestion, so it’d probably be better to follow Dr. Gay’s dictum and stick with each one’s own truth to justify incompetence and be well! Dom Serafini Incompetence masquerading as personal truth might be beneficial to one’s health. Too many truths, however, could cause agita.
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