{"id":68043,"date":"2024-05-14T13:25:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T18:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68043"},"modified":"2024-05-14T13:25:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T18:25:35","slug":"the-all-important-doorman-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68043","title":{"rendered":"The All-Important Doorman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The All-Important Doorman<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Picture this: A tribal leader from a distant country visits the US. He\u2019s brought to a large apartment building in New York City. When he gets out of the car, he looks up at the great building and is quite impressed. A uniformed doorman exits the foyer and comes out on the sidewalk. The tribesman sees the gold braiding and brass buttons of his coat and immediately decides that this is a very important person. Again he looks up at the building and says to the doorman, \u201cThis is a very great home you have. You must be very important indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, if we were present, we might chuckle at the tribesman\u2019s naivet\u00e9. The owners of such a great building would never greet people at the entrance. They leave such trivial tasks to hired servants, whilst they run the real business without ever needing any direct contact with visitors as they enter the building. And, in addition, doormen come and go \u2013 they are, after all, disposable. The owners \u2013 those who control what happens in the building \u2013 retain their positions over the long term\u2026 and may remain anonymous, if they so choose.<\/p>\n

We find this simple concept easy enough to understand, and yet we chronically have difficulty in understanding that, in most countries, the president, or prime minister, is not by any means the man who makes the big decisions in the running of the country.<\/p>\n

We assume that, because we were allowed to vote for our leader, he must actually\u00a0be\u00a0<\/em>our leader. But, as Mark Twain has at times been credited as saying, \u201cIf voting made any difference, they wouldn\u2019t let us do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The All-Important Doorman Picture this: A tribal leader from a distant country visits the US. He\u2019s brought to a large apartment building in New York City. When he gets out of the car, he looks up at the great building and is quite impressed. A uniformed doorman exits the foyer and comes out on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[199,279,284,6228,11658,827,834],"class_list":["post-68043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-deep-state","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-international-man","tag-jeff-thomas","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68044,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68043\/revisions\/68044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}