The case of Fred illustrates for us, in living color, just exactly how far superior ideas go in the 21st century: They’re not worth much without an infrastructure to back them up.
In fact, as much as we want to believe otherwise, the man with the inferior ideas and superior infrastructure wins, and this pisses us off, it supremely offends our sensibilities.
This is one of the better observations of the situation out there that I’ve seen. Read the whole thing. There’s a lot of analogies that can be drawn between politics and the workplace, because the workplace is really a microcosm of how people react to each other in a society. Fred was the manager everyone likes, has great ideas, but who could never get any of them done. We all have seen executive types with the power suit and nice hair who lie, cheat and backstab their way to the top (Romney), and the quirky engineer who spends his days in his office wasting his time on crackpot designs that he always claims will save the company (Paul). Then there’s the folks that just bully their way to the top by sheer force of personality (McCain), and who drive everyone batty because they don’t think they can do any wrong.