[nautilius]

Turchin is, of course, free to think whatever he wants (I haven't studied his ideas). However, I can't see how my statement applies in any way to either Bannon or Trump.

Trump is unsuspicious of having advanced education and qualifications, but instead was born into a millionaire family which allowed him to pursue whatever he wanted. If anything, he would be the person blocking a position from someone qualified but not well connected. He even ended up being president, in case someone forgot.

Bannon apparently served in the Navy, got a Harvard MBA, worked at Goldman Sachs. His wiki page starts "Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker, who served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump". I'd say by most standards one would say he reached quite a number of things he set his mind to that most people don't. Again, hardly an example of someone who failed in his career because he was blocked by someone less qualified.

[justanotherguy0]

Also it might be helpful for you to engage with the source text re:Turchin if you want to have conversations about his ideas.

[nautilius]

I am not interested in Turchin, I am not interested in a scholarly evaluation of Turchin's catalogue, I am not interested in studying 'Turchin's ideas' (all of which may be super interesting, but I have more pressing matters to attend to). I am instead interested in the ideas mentioned in another comment; I replied and added another one.

[justanotherguy0]

I never claimed to be perfectly aligned with your opinion. I just agreed that the person you were responding to was off, in that the issue isn't whether or not people are "good enough."

Trump circumvented the traditional process for becoming president by aligning with the underclass...

The elites made fun of him relentlessly. Bannon ran Breitbart out of a random townhouse basement and was denied press credentials by those empowered in the national association.

The elite tried to block both of them, and they were circumvented by interclass alliance. That's the entire idea of elite overproduction, which is what we are talking about.

Elite overproduction is basically when more people have the resources to grab power than the power structure allows to hold power.

Not arguing that trump is a victim, just saying he has been considered gauche and passé for a long while. Gauche and passé ends up just meaning "not elite."

If you make a million dollars a year running a plumbing business, you are rich, but you aren't elite. If you make 400k at Skadden, you are closer to being elite.

[nautilius]

Again, completely different scenario than what I meant and discussed.

You can leave it to me to know what I meant when I threw "advanced-educated-and-good-enough-but-not-connected-enough-so-they’re-stuck-behind -someone-who-is-less-qualified" into the discussion, I don't really need an explanation of what I meant from someone else.