Putting leadership into perspective
This has been a really cowardly period for leadership.
Political or otherwise, leadership in America, and in the world at-large, as well, these last 7 years or so has been pretty shitty.
It's not George Bush. It's all of us. Our most cowardly and fearful and insecure instincts have led us this period. And those who might lead otherwise have been too scared to take us in a better direction. We have had much cynical politics and very little genuine political leadership during this period. Hillary Clinton represents every worst instinct, in this regard, which is why I am so unenamoured with her. She's avoided the toughest calls, like the war in Iraq, then played victim - "George Bush misled me and the American public about WMD's"; any politician who believes a sitting President that blithely should not hold office - and still, today, panders to public reaction - a speedy withdrawal - with very little vision or leadership offered. She is not alone. And George Bush has been the poster child for this same pandering on the right (What was the last free trade or balanced budget cause that George Bush took up during either of his terms? I bet you could name the last anti-gay rights cause he took up).
In the face of all that cowardice and the cowardice of most people as they have faced very scary issues like terrorism, the greater visibility and occurrence of more shocking crimes like child sex crimes and the spike in violent and other crimes, generally, and a war in Iraq that has taken the lives of many of their family members and neighbors, more genuine and confident leadership has been difficult, but that is also when it is most needed.
And all of the indicators point in bad directions, right now, no matter how much we might try to bullshit otherwise.
The war in Iraq and our military efforts in Afghanistan are both going badly, even as I believe that we owe a commitment to security for Iraqis and Afghanis until they are able to take charge of that responsibility themselves and make clear to us that they are ready for us to leave (which we should do as soon as we have a clear indication that this is what their populations genuinely want and need, I believe). A recent Foreign Policy index of the view of a broad collection of American foreign policy experts reinforces my view that terrorism, generally, has likely been strengthened since 9/11, largely because of the missteps of Americans and more powerful, democratic countries have made in dealing with the Arab and Muslim world which nurtures so much international terrorism and, in my estimation, the more repressive directions that liberal and illiberal countries alike have taken in the last few years which have, generally, both prompted greater resolve amongst terrorist groups and given more public grievances for terrorists to draw upon to rationalize their bloody practices. And crime and violent crime have seen spikes in the last 2 years in the United States, despite tougher and more exacting law enforcement measures.
In the face of all of that, it is really difficult to be honest with people in a way that more honestly faces such failures and mistakes and leads us in a better direction.
People are easily scared, generally. And they have a hard time distinguishing between their fears and their more aggressive reactions to those fears and more realistic accounts of the world and reasonable responses.
That has always been the case. That is the long history of humanity and its foolishness in dealing with almost literally every important moral or political or social issue it has faced. People get afraid. They react aggressively and repressively. Their efforts fail and hurt many people, tragically. And only much later do they face that persistent failure.
And what has always blocked up our ability to discuss and think about and reassess those failures and mistakes that we make as societies is the fear and aggression and repression shutting down the conversation and more reasonable assessments of the threats we face.
It also makes cowards of us and of our political and community leaders. And sadly, in the case of Nazism and Fascism and Soviet or Chinese or Cuban Communism, it makes cowards of a population, so much so that tragedy becomes the norm and courage is all too easily rebutted with force.
Democracies are forever subject to this tendency, as well, sadly. But they allow more space, freedom, choice, and opportunity for criticism, engagement, learning, and correction. That is their saving grace. There is no perfect world. There is only this all-too-real world with its all-too-real failings.
That is why I identify with H.L. Mencken's bitterness with average people, even as I do not share it (or at least I share it for as little time as I possibly can as I work to let it go). And the fact that people eventually come around and the fact that it is a function of their ignorance and their need to learn the important lessons the hard way as much as by their intellect is why I identify more with Mark Twain.
Average people are cowards, is the truth. Even most extraordinary people are cowards, generally, in some respect, I think, given my observations of my own instincts as much as the instincts of those who I have generally admired in a more unqualified way before this political period.
But the truth is that amidst all that fear and aggression and our rallying to cheerlead our more repressive instincts, it is very difficult to offer greater leadership. It is always difficult to offer people leadership that they need but do not want. It is the most difficult fact of being a teacher or a parent. And it involves big stakes for politicians and public servants and civic-minded people alike. Because people are manipulative and coldhearted pricks, much of the time, is the truth. Another name for that tendency is political pressure.
It is always much easier to follow the crowd than it is to think independently. And sometimes it can be somewhat dangerous, or at least offer harsh and often unfair consequences, to do so out loud.
Genuine leadership is difficult to offer when aggression is romanticized and has captured the imagination of people, especially as it has done so for the greatest length of human history, much more than intelligence, by far, even as intelligence has always offered the substantial light out of humanity's troubles for the entirety of its history. More people identify as tough than intelligent, sadly. And thus our romance with our basest and most destructive and self-destructive impulse.
Somehow, we need more room for us to learn how to handle that instinct. It cannot be effectively repressed. And trying to do so only leads to more dishonesty - with ourselves as much as with one another - and more confusion and misunderstanding. We end up constantly exacting our aggression in other ways - like persistently trying to coerce or strong-arm one another, for instance - instead of facing, honestly, its consequences in our lives.
And the fact that we do so in every institution - in schools and universities, in churches, in legislatures, in courtrooms, in museums and libraries; everywhere where respectable people congregate - means that we both try and fail to repress those more honest and innocuous qualities about us that express our truer selves as much as our uglier but more honest qualities and that we alienate the very people that we need to touch with those institutions to effect the kinds of changes we would like to see those institutions effect, namely ourselves. All of us end up lying about who we really are, hiding our truer selves so that we can cover what is unattractive about us and look better than we really are.
And we make so difficult that ability and willingness by people to bring a more honest accounting of life to light because we are constantly reacting and threatening to react in ways that are ugly and mean-spirited.
And no matter how much it ruins things, noone ever takes responsibility for that persistent fact of life.
Ever.
Because the cowards who keep it in place are too cowardly to face its failure. And those who disagree with more repressive measures are too afraid to challenge it openly, for fear of having aggression meted out to them.
So it fails and fails and fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.
And the whole thing, remember, is premised on the idea of people needing to take more responsibility.
And it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.
And then its proponents remind us that they are trying to promote responsibility.
And then it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone takes responsibility.
And I guess that this is the future of humanity, is what I'm told. This is where progress lies. In all that lying and failure and noone taking responsibility. That's the lie that captured the imagination of so much of the world during the 20th century and lead to the deaths and imprisonment and misery for much of the world's population for much of that century.
I don't know why George Orwell and I didn't go into banking. It's more lucrative. And most people don't listen to or read the warnings, anyway. And we certainly never seem to learn the lessons.
Because we're kind of dumb. And cowardly. And we would rather believe a lie that sounds convenient than a truth that is hard to face.
All of us. Great and small.
And, right now, in this particular moment, most of us are small.
Here's to greatness. It's within all of us. Even as most of us choose to be small.
Love,
Ben
