Getting ahead / Getting away

Today: Arwa Mahdawi, Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead; and Amy Chu, artist and publisher of Camoot.Journal.

Issue No. 206

How to Get Ahead
Arwa Mahdawi

Candace Chen Needs a Friend: Part 2.5
Amy Chu

How to Get Ahead

by Arwa Mahdawi

Back in my 20s I had a tumultuous relationship with a woman—we’ll call her B—who was extremely ambitious. We were both trainees at a corporate law firm in London, which offered a handful of competitive placements abroad. They’d send you to a partner office in another country; you’d fly business class and get pretty swanky  accommodation paid for by the firm.

B thought that neither of us should apply for the placements. Let’s stay in London together, she said. I was smitten and didn’t need convincing. Then, a few weeks later, B informed me that, actually, she’d secretly applied for a spot, been successful, and was heading to Australia for six months. She was very upset about this. Not because we’d be apart, but because she hadn’t got the placement she really wanted in New York. So that ended our relationship. We’ve lost touch since but do you want to know what she’s doing now? She’s very high up in British politics.

I don’t want you to think I’m still stewing about a slight from a very long time ago. I’d completely forgotten about this incident but it bubbled back up into my consciousness after Trump got elected and started handing out cabinet posts to friends and loyalists. Trump has never been bothered to put a respectable veneer on the way the world works, and his cabinet picks have been another example of this. He’s made it very clear: qualifications don’t matter in Trump’s world. What matters is loyalty to the king. Scheming and lying are rewarded. Integrity is not.

I’m not saying B had the morals of a Trump cabinet pick. But she had understood how the world works early on. She’d figured out how to climb first the corporate and then the political ladder. How to eliminate her competition and do whatever it took to get ahead. From the very beginning, she had her eyes firmly on the prize. As someone who has bumbled through life, I guess I can admire that to some degree. But I also worry that these are the sorts of skills the world rewards.