Following the Big Boys
We have thrown the baby of leadership out with the bathwater of abdicating any responsibility to govern. That splat you here coming from the horizon is the sound of dunderheads colliding with reality.
We have no idea how to get out of Afghanistan. Until then we extend and pretend. Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman were far smarter. Within seventy-two days they’d seen enough and threw the towel in.
Some low flying duster pilot while knocking back a cool one at the local titty bar after a day of crop spraying scrawled his formula for governing on the back of a cocktail napkin. Knots, strangleholds and infinitely regressive feedback loops were doodled on one side of the disposable napkin in the middle an equals sign and on the other in bold caps was spelled out TOTAL LEGISLATIVE GRIDLOCK.
Citizens of Kansas are treated to economic laboratory experiments executed under the misguidance of the the unrepentant failed economist Arthur Laffer. The idea from corn country was if you are going to try something to be sure to try the worst possible ideas in the world and then keep shooting yourself in the foot. Mission accomplished!
Never attempt to do the right thing, or the best thing. You want to do the thing that works for you and your tribe. That’s leadership in a post Fellini’s Satyricon world. Media tycoon and Prime Minister Berlusconi brilliantly pillaged Italy prototyping then perfecting the oligarchic model of bamboozling while cavorting with adolescent hookers. Thanks Silvio!
Leadership isn’t lost so much as unrecognized. Dueling ideologies discredit and delegitimize. Ripe followers are left to rot while lesser well funded minds rush to fill the void. Great ideas are the currency of the realm. Leadership is not happily married to great wealth. We may be having our Ernie and Ethel moment. For the sake of world peace and marital bliss someone needs to pack their bags and go. This indecisiveness, this inability to know when to leave is that un-peaceful, uneasy sucking sound you and the rest of us have been trapped in for a good while now.
The Way Way Out
