Rick Salutin speculates this morning that we may be living in a non-leadership moment. Consider what has happened in the United States:
It’s tempting to say Donald Trump is all leader and no ship: no party inclinations in any recognizable forms, nor typical policies, organization, strategy or scripts. It centres on him alone. Except for a literal ship, labelled Trump, that he flies in on and speaks in front of. He likes it so much, he flies it home to New York each night to sleep in his bed — which is kind of touching — then drops in again next day.
In the UK, Jeremy Corbin is Trump's polar opposite:
There’s now a full-blown leadership challenge to him, before he’s fought a single election — after being elected with unprecedented member backing. Why? After one of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, Hilary Benn, was sacked (as they say) for plotting against his leader — being the UK, foes are called regicides — Benn explained, “Jeremy is not a leader.” That’s what they all repeat. He won’t work ferociously, doesn’t build bridges or concoct complex strategies to ally with others and achieve power, utterly lacks charisma, seems uninterested in doing anything he hasn’t done for years. Yet somehow he hoovers up manic support.
His opposition claimed that Justin Trudeau was not a leader -- but he has surprised a lot of people:
Justin Trudeau did it with all the basics of the old formula, though in his own rendition — which is worth keeping in mind. But something else is also going on, especially in the aftermath of the quashed hopes that attended Obama’s coming. Would you rather have a victory for plausible principles or one for leadership itself without believable ideals? Because in the UK at the moment it seems impossible to have both elements.
And that's the real question: Can leadership and ideals coexist?
Image: obrussa.com
14 comments:
Its very hard to lead these days because eveyone is always looking behind the curtian.
There are no wizards, Steve. There is no such person as "the great and powerful Oz."
we all have feet of clay. Thats why science should be our goverment. But who marks the papers?
Science tells us all our religious beliefs are just that. I believe most people in the Western world accept that. If we could get the third world to agree. We would be well on the way to becomming humanity.
May I commend you to this wonderful piece in The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/republican-party-donald-trump-madman-in-his-castle
An excellent piece, Dana.
"Let the word go forth: America has lost its mind! Or maybe dementia serves as a better metaphor, the country shuffling around like a bonkers senior citizen with a Depends on his head and Kleenex boxes for shoes."
Thanks for the link.
The problem with humanity, Steve, is that it has a long way to go.
That's just the point, Steve. In a real democracy, we get to mark the papers.
It doesn't look like a "non-leadership moment." It looks like a non-political party moment. We keep trying to elect Messiahs who inevitably lose their halos. We wind up with despots.
True, Toby. We're fools if we think any one leader will lead us to salvation.
Neoliberalism has made leadership obsolete. Once shackled to multi-national deals that impose shared jurisdiction with an elevated corporate power, the role of government becomes administrative. Leadership is restrained, kept in line, its sense of whom it serves blurred.
Look at Trudeau. He has young kids. Surely he knows what awaits them in the coming decades and yet he's pimping bitumen and pipelines. For Ottawa, the TPP lives or dies based on whether Washington approves. We have outsourced a great deal of our foreign and military policy to collectives. In almost every facet you can identify, national sovereignty has been significantly diminished and, in some aspects, permanently.
All of this was done incrementally, over the course of three decades, with no recognition that the order might run into difficulties demanding nothing less than statesmanship. Look at these nominal leaders who gather at G7 or G20 or G60 meetings to achieve essentially nothing. They're grand photo-ops larded with promises about what future governments might possibly do.
Yet, look close enough and you will see some examples of leadership only today that comes with an increasingly authoritarian face. It has seen liberal democracy laid bare, humbled, diminished and has exploited the inescapable opportunity to push it aside.
We have bought the notion that being a leader means being a strong man (or, in the case of Maggie Thatcher or Angela Merkel) strong woman, Mound. We have forgotten that any dictator will fit that bill.
Mound.
Re
Neoliberalism has made leadership obsolete. Once shackled to multi-national deals that impose shared jurisdiction with an elevated corporate power, the role of government becomes administrative. Leadership is restrained, kept in line, its sense of whom it serves blurred.
Look at Trudeau. He has young kids. Surely he knows what awaits them in the coming decades and yet he's pimping bitumen and pipelines.
Well said, but flawed.
People in Trudeau's circles as with other privileged persons are not effected by the draconian decisions we dislike.
Christy Clark, David Cameron Tony Blair GW Bush show complete disregard for the populace.
They make the decisions they don't have to abide by them or even live with the results; they are above criticism.
At the end of the day when my income or pension fund goes down the tube those of the privileged will remain strong.
When the privileged cross legal boundaries they will beat the charges against them , often at taxpayers expense.
Such is the lopsided world we live in
Re.
.Neoliberalism has made leadership obsolete.
Neoliberalism has given us serfdom and servitude.
Neoliberalism has given us seven year car loans, forty year mortgages pay day loans and no payment until next year.
It's a friggin disaster.
Worse still is that the majority of those around us think it is all perfectly normal!
TB
The Mound worries that we are entering a New Dark Age, T.B. He may well be right. What you describe is a modern version of feudalism.
Post a Comment