"Incredibly smart" often just means "was very good at exploiting the system for his own benefit." This is true for all sorts of things--not just government.
Exactly, most people notice loopholes and back doors to various things in life and take a moment to consider the ethics of taking advantage. Pricks like Kissinger see it and don't pause because they're incapable. Psychopathic people may "get things done", but they're so narrow sighted that they don't think of the costs, and if you point it out to them, they seem to believe the way out of it is to do another thing that causes a problem further down the road and doesn't solve the core issue.
A lot of human history is taken up by normal people cleaning up after these dumbasses.
I mean, Kissinger did become one of the foremost experts on a whole bunch of things related to weapons proliferation and missile systems seemingly weeks faster than anyone else in that administration, so I don't know if I just want to put it down to "exploited the system". Obviously Kissinger used said expertise to further his own goals and do everything humanly possible to prevent other people from attaining theirs, so it's not an endorsement of his procedures when I refer to him as intelligent.
If I were to give Kissinger some type of credit, he didn't seem to consider black people / other minorities in America to be his direct enemies, unlike Nixon. But being slightly less racist than Richard Nixon isn't exactly a high bar to clear.
"Incredibly smart" often just means "was very good at exploiting the system for his own benefit." This is true for all sorts of things--not just government.
Exactly, most people notice loopholes and back doors to various things in life and take a moment to consider the ethics of taking advantage. Pricks like Kissinger see it and don't pause because they're incapable. Psychopathic people may "get things done", but they're so narrow sighted that they don't think of the costs, and if you point it out to them, they seem to believe the way out of it is to do another thing that causes a problem further down the road and doesn't solve the core issue. A lot of human history is taken up by normal people cleaning up after these dumbasses.
I mean, Kissinger did become one of the foremost experts on a whole bunch of things related to weapons proliferation and missile systems seemingly weeks faster than anyone else in that administration, so I don't know if I just want to put it down to "exploited the system". Obviously Kissinger used said expertise to further his own goals and do everything humanly possible to prevent other people from attaining theirs, so it's not an endorsement of his procedures when I refer to him as intelligent.
If I were to give Kissinger some type of credit, he didn't seem to consider black people / other minorities in America to be his direct enemies, unlike Nixon. But being slightly less racist than Richard Nixon isn't exactly a high bar to clear.