The truth is that the cover
models are professional bodybuilders and fitness
models who are getting paid
huge amounts of money
by supplement companies to look that way and for whom that's their only job.
A more accurate
model is: politics is a system that 1) selects against skills needed for rigorous thinking and for qualities such as groupthink and confirmation bias, 2) incentivises a badly selected set of people to consider their career not the public interest, 3) drops them into dysfunctional institutions with no relevant training and poor tools, 4) centralises vast
amounts of power in the hands of these people and institutions in ways we know are bound to cause
huge errors, and 5) provides very weak (and often damaging) feedback so facing reality is rare, learning is practically impossible, and system reform is seen as a hostile act
by political parties and civil services worldwide.