You should probably mute me now. This is going to be a rambling thread.
I’m not sure if it’s possible to blame Thatcher for this, but I think it happened on her watch.... whats worrying me is a kind of cultural/social ‘way of seeing’ that could actually sit behind....

...a majority of our problems -social and political... even our mental health. It’s what we might usefully term the ‘Doctrine of Excellence’. The basic idea is that your aim and target in everything you do is to be the best, that striving for the exceptional is the only path.

It appears most egregiously in the language of business... the kind of ‘Always Be Closing’ ‘Lunch is For Losers’ ‘Greed is good’ narrative that Trump articulated in his own ‘Mein Kampf’ The ‘art’ of the deal. It finds the intellectual scaffolding it requires in the ...

... entirely bankrupt notion of ‘Trickle Down’ economics.
But it didn’t necessarily start in business. Business ‘thinkers’ love to co-opt the language of sport... the constant metaphors for winning, losing, competing with passion and the devastation of failure...

But it probably didn’t start there either. Sports people use metaphors of battle. Death or glory. Winning no matter what the sacrifice.
Now... and I suppose this is where Thatcher and Regan come in... its the language of politics. There is no diplomacy, only winning.