Monkeys and madmen make bad leaders

When a man, a business corporation or an entire society is approaching bankruptcy, there are two courses that those involved can follow: they can evade the reality of their situation and act on a frantic, blind, rage-of-the-moment expediency---not daring to look ahead, wishing no one would name the truth, yet desperately hoping that something will save them somehow---or they can identify the situation, check their premises, discover their hidden assets and start rebuilding.

America, at present, is following the first course. The grayness, the stale cynicism, the noncommittal cautiousness, the guilty evasiveness of our public voices suggest the attitude of the courtiers in the story The Emperor's New Clothes...Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked---or that America is culturally bankrupt.

Believe it or not the above is not recent commentary. Call it prophetic or acute clear-eyedness but this cultural forecast was announced over forty years ago by Ayn Rand in The New Intellectual.

"America at present" is America at present. Scary, isn't it?

Societal mores are vacuous, fleeting, star struck, short sighted, profit-minded. When 9/11 struck, our leaders did not wait long in urging us to, not simplify hurried lifestyles, seek spiritual counseling, re-evaluate one's resources but, rather, to spend more on material goods. The possible bankruptcy of the economy was---is---more prescient than the inevitable moral hemorrhaging---hopelessness, desperation, revived xenophobia, racism, paranoia, distrust in government and neighbors. In no uncertain terms we were encouraged to compensate our fears and pain with shopping.

Then-NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani was most vocal in telling people to crank up the consumerism; shop downtown, keep buying, keep buying as usual, he urged New Yorkers and tourists. In effect citizens were told they and their problems were less pressing than the System's which is dependent on them.

John Q. Public is still convinced of this.

The Bush Administration sees the approaching bankruptcy and, as if on cue in a demolition movie, passionately evades reality through concocted truths and blind, headstrong missteps into one costly or stupid or embarrassing mission after another "hoping that something will save them somehow" while the rest of you cozy deeper into debt in trying to buy happiness and a pre-September eleventh reality, when in reality we were more blind then than we are today.

(view independent music clip).

Before, we were content with noncommittal principles and reserving judgment because, hey, everyone else drooled over the primate's Prada man purse but now---uncovered domestic spying, prison torture scandals, governmental leaks, lies against Iraq and Iran, lies for Saudi Arabia and China; soaring gas prices, soaring soldier casualties, dwindling $USD, dwindling global respect, dwindling domestic confidence, a losing war strategy; no WMDs, no capture of Bin Laden, no peace talks in sight, no end to President Bush's incompetence and deceit---now that we see the primate is not only not sporting Prada but is not wearing anything at all we stutter and shuffle.

We are seeing the primate naked and for what he represents: spoiled arrogance, foolishness, destruction, deceit; and we are discontent with Reality---because we are fearful. And we should be.