Do we like to be lied to and misled?

This is both an interesting and a counter-intuitive question as I thought it should be for sure answered by a resounding “NO!”, but I only base it on my own thinking. 

My research has shown me – to my great surprise – that there are indeed instances where people appear to prefer being lied to or misled, and there are many reasons for these strange reactions. To start with, lies can provide a sense of comfort and security by shielding people from harsh realities or unpleasant truths, creating a false sense of safety and well-being.

When people hold conflicting beliefs or values, lies can help reduce those by providing simpler, more palatable justifications. Lies can also protect people from emotional pain, disappointment, or anxiety, offering a temporary escape from difficult emotions. Socially, “white lies” or social deception prove useful in maintaining social harmony, avoiding conflict, or protecting relationships. 

There’s also all the wishful thinking that is widely used by religions, where untruths, or unproven statements may align with hopes, desires, or preexisting beliefs, even if there’s no hard evidence to support them. Finally, there is the even darker side of manipulation and exploitation in which some bad actors intentionally mislead others for personal gain, power, or control. 

Now, if we had to quantify what percentage of the population falls into the above situation, it’s very hard to answer, as it's difficult to precisely measure. Suffice to say that if we take a concept like the belief in “life after death”, we’re talking about a significant portion of the population, so it’s likely that other categories are also quite significant. When placed under this light, it’s hard not to be surprised or even shocked, isn’t it? 

Tomorrow we’ll explore what can be done about that...

US Politics, numbers and perspectives

In politics, statistics are elements that always get my full attention. I wish Democrats were more attached to these data and able to spin them to their advantage, instead they don’t, and let Republicans get away with all kinds of falsehoods and lies. 

Let's start first with the percentage of registered voters per party. Personally, my wife and I are registered “Independent” while in fact we almost always end up voting Democrat. In the US, as you know, numbers are always breaking down into “Republicans, Independents and Democrats”, each time no one knows which percent of these categories go into our eligible electorate. 

Intuitively, I always thought their numbers broke down respectively into 40%, 20% and 40%. As you’ll see on the table, it’s not at all the reality, as Independents are more than 50% than both of these two main parties. This means that when we’re told that 88% of Republicans approve of Trump, it’s in fact less than25% of the entire voting population!

Another huge misrepresentation is that Trump “got a mandate” in 2024. Wrong! The man got 77million votes while Joe Biden got 81 million four years before! In fact, in 2024, Harris got almost one million more votes than Trump did in 2020.Finally, participation was greater in 2020 than in 2024, with 66% of the eligible voters casting their votes versus only 64% in 2024. 

Democrats who supported Biden in the 2020 election didn’t bother to get out and vote or mail their ballots as they felt their candidate was just too old and his replacement (Harris) wasn’t up to the task and worth voting for. All this to say that only 31.9% of the eligible voters supported Trump in 2024, a far cry for “an overwhelming mandate” as opposed to 33.9% for Biden in the 2020 election, a much stronger mandate! 

Yes, numbers if not discussed and clearly explained can be very deceiving!

Ski collision courses

About 10 years ago, I wrote something about a ski collision I witnessed while skiing Deer Valley. This past Sunday, I happened to see another one in Park City Mountain, in the small waiting area of Super Condor Lift. 

This incident in which no one was hurt, was different from the one I reported in 2015, in that, instead of happening on concentric trajectories, it occurred on tangential paths. 

Let me explain: As shown (Fig. 1), when skiers are engaged in a turn they look into the inside of the radius, very rarely outside, which isn’t the direction they’re headed towards. So now, let’s picture two skiers positioned at similar levels on a slope and coming towards each other, but planning to turn each in opposite directions (Fig 2).

They could see each other, but where they are on the slope, they aren’t in danger of colliding, even less as each one intend to turn away from each other, but no one can guess what their respective intentions are. 

So they engaged their turn apparently away from each other and looked, as we’ve seen before, inside their respective turn. Depending on the size of their turning radius they could now be on a collision course, and that’s exactly what I witnessed that day. 

The male skier didn’t fall, but the lady did, without hurting herself. She was mad at the guy, but he remained the “adult in the room”, stayed composed, apologized and that was the end of the incident, but it stood as an illustration that given the complexities of everyone trajectories on a slope all can happen and sometimes, without being anybody’s fault!

Vail Resorts mid-season assessment

What follows is what I sent to the Park City Mountain management in response to their most recent questionnaire: “The disastrous handling of the Park City Ski Patrol strike remains definitely the low point of the season and both established and confirmed the incompetence of Vail Resorts’ (VR) top management. 

Positive things this season was the “shaving” of wipers and other bushes on Thaynes and between the Crescent chair and Silver King, with much more still untouched elsewhere to be cut. It was also good to see snow-making on “Another word”. 

Aside from that, it seems that VR is dangerously negligent when it comes to maintenance with Crescent currently idled and Pioneer “waiting for a part” since New Year or so, not to mention noisy sheaves on Super Condor for several days in January. 

VR needs to upgrade its antique fixed grip lifts to modern detachable ones. Kazakhstan buys used detachable from France or Austria; maybe the company should consider that if it doesn’t want to excessively deplete its deep cash reserves... 

As I've said many times, the Broomfield management of VR should learn a lot by working for at least 6 week at a Costco store to learn about customer service. Also, by paying its CEO $6.2 M a year, for a company its size, VR is insulting and demoralizing their lowest ranking employees. 

Costco takes great care of its lowly associates and everyone benefits. Treating the base staff well “lifts all boats”, including shareholders' returns. As far as the Epic app is concerned, stats tracking doesn't work reliably and reflects an obvious lack of interest, incompetence or staff availability at fixing the problems. 

The VR Board should seriously evaluate and reconsider its Broomfield upper management and leave more decision-making to each resort manager like Alterra does, instead of VR’s cookie-cutter approach that saves money but angers and disappoints its users.”

Trump’s “Mafia Culture”

Last Friday’s meeting between Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy, reminded me of these mafia meetings that we see in movies, where a victim from organized crime is being intimidated and “shaken up” by two thugs. Based on Trump’s New York origins it’s easy to connect the dots and appreciate the staggering amount of experience he garnered from dealing with, and living alongside the mafia. 

That culture might have begun with Trump’s father or with Roy Cohn, the vicious attorney Trump employed to guide him through the rough-and-tumble world of New York real estate, and could explain why Trump took the plunge into gang culture. 

Several of Cohn's Mafia patrons commanded the building unions in New York, whose approval Trump needed to complete his projects. 

It is said that he used mobster owned companies to build Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza residential complex in Manhattan. This involved purchasing concrete from a business allegedly owned by Mafia bosses Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul Castellano at an exorbitant cost. He told a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in L.A. "You know, mobsters don't like, as they are talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn't play well with them." 

Roy Cohn had married into a Ukrainian family and frequented the ethnic Russian neighborhoods of Brooklyn as a teenager. He bragged to another guest at a friend's wedding that he belonged to the Russian mob. The friend didn't believe it, but Cohen was sent to negotiate a hotel deal for Trump in Moscow. He swung around unscrupulous people and offered Putin a penthouse on the top floor. 

However, he has consistently lied, contradicted himself, and made misleading statements when questioned about his ties to the mob. It appears he has lied about these affiliations outright. Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a former under-boss for the Gambino family, even endorsed him, saying that America "doesn't need a bookworm as president, it needs a mob boss." 

Finally, on David Letterman's late-night show, Trump admitted to having met mobsters "on occasion." "They happen to be very nice people," he said. "You just don't want to owe them money." Now, you know what I’m talking about…

The “Ugly American” is back!

Most people have heard about the negative stereotype depicting the behavior of Americans, especially those traveling abroad. It originates from “The Ugly American”, a 1958 novel about American diplomacy in Southeast Asia. It depicted American citizens exhibiting loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior while abroad, but also at home. 

Although the term is usually associated with, or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to US corporate businesses in the international arena. 

Politics aren’t exempt either of this characterization, in May 2008, the US House sub-committee passed a bill that would allow more foreign fashion models to work in the United States, and was subsequently dubbed the "ugly American bill". 

Because George W. Bush was often referred to as "The Ugly American" because of his stance on foreign policies and his invasion of Iraq. Presidential hopeful John McCain outlined a series of measures to roll back Bush policies and counter the "ugly American" image. 

More recently, many opinion pieces in major newspapers have accused President Donald Trump of behaving in a way that fits the “Ugly American” stereotype. Things like wanting to annex Canada or Greenland, or control the Panama Canal or colonize Gaza, have contributed to reviving that pejorative name. 

Same thing for his VP, JD Vance excoriating the European Union leaders, showing his utmost ignorance in worldly etiquette and in diplomatic relationships or teaming up with Trump to humiliate president Zelensky. Trump’s transactional communication and negotiating style is further confirming that brazen modus operandi and earning him no new friend aside from totalitarian regime heads of state. 

Some folks really never learn!

Trump’s math and his Gold Card

At the end of February Donald Trump proposed a $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency. It would also include a tax loophole in which gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income.“I think it’s going to sell like crazy,” said Trump at his first Cabinet news conference, It’s a bargain.”

 

Dominic Volek who caters to the global rich at Henley & Partners, says he’s already fielded calls from clients wanting to purchase a Trump gold card. He added, approximately 135,000 of the world’s millionaires (worth at least $1 million) are projected to migrate to a new country in 2025. The United Arab Emirates and the US typically top the list of destinations (but not all of them!). 

 

This said, there are just 8.5 million people worldwide who have a net worth over $5 million, obviously not sufficient to buy that $5 million gold card as they wouldn’t have one penny left. One would need, it seems, $10 million to practically do it and there are just 2.8 million of these people in the world. A more “comfortable” net worth threshold would be $20 million, but there are only 250,000 of these rich folks. 

 

That didn’t prevent Trump from gloating that his Gold Card idea could expunge the entire $36 trillion budget deficit, he simply forgot to mention that it would require selling 7.4 million such cards. Good luck!