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We like to think of our leaders as all-powerful. Unfortunately, so do they.
Progressives are comfortable — and comforted by — ridiculing the delusions of the far right in America, from the Big Lie about the 2020 election to the various conspiracy theories incubated by Q Anon and Fox News. But these are only the latest delusions to take root in the public square and rupture the sidewalks. Some of the most enduring and toxic of these misguided notions are held as firmly by progressives as by people of other persuasions.
In America right now, the worst and most pervasive notion is that someone is in charge. The U.S. president, for example, “manages” the economy, using his magical powers to “create” jobs, supercharge the stock market and set the prices of everything from gasoline to carrots. This hogwash has colored the attitude of people toward their leaders for a very long time. In antiquity, kings and emperors were often ushered to their thrones because they took credit for good weather and plentiful crops, then were tossed into the nearest volcano when the weather, as it always does, turned bad.
But the attitude is not universal. The European colonizers of America were driven to distraction trying to make deals with the native inhabitants, because the tribes recognized no individual as their “leader,” and made every important decision together, in councils, and the decision was not made until it was unanimous. (The notion of an Indian “chief” as the wise decider for his people is a European myth, although the tribes did when necessary appoint war chiefs to command in combat.) British authorities trying to execute land grabs became so frustrated by the Iroquois they were dealing with that they appointed a friendly native to be the “king” of his people, held a lavish coronation, and announced that henceforth they would deal only with him. The Iroquois paid no attention.
In our culture, the urge to believe that someone, somewhere is directing everything is pervasive. It may have been the urge that drove early man to invent a Higher Power in his image, vested with a multitude of superpowers, to then be implored for help.
The fact is that communities, countries, economies, and wars, are far too complex to be fully understood, let alone managed, by any individual. Believing that someone is in charge is not a belief, really, it’s a way of avoiding the hard work of achieving situational awareness and taking responsibility for our own actions. When fuel prices are going down, we buy enormous pickup trucks and Humvees and drive, baby, drive. When gas prices go up and climate change looms, do we sell the gas guzzler and buy a gas-sipper? Hell no, we curse the president. Lots easier.
You may be thinking that top-down command can’t be so bad when it works so well in the military. Please review again the performance of the vaunted Russian military in executing — by which I mean murdering in cold blood — its plan to invade Ukraine over a long weekend. Or read a history of the Vietnam War. (One of the first things I learned about the U.S. Army when I was in it was that it cannot count; I was in a fort headquarters company of about 250 people, of which a large number of people [including me, before very long] were living off base and holding down part time jobs, contrary to army regulations. The commanders of the company knew it — knew for months that I, specifically, was doing it — and never caught any of us.
Against all evidence, the myth of omnipotent and omniscient commander runs deep in us, largely because it lets us off so many hooks. But it’s just a myth, and we hold onto it at our peril.
To those true believers who think the POTUS should manage the economy, create jobs and set prices, I say “how long have you been a communist for?
That type of interference negates any “free market”. At this point you can hear their gears grind as they try to square that circle.
Sorry kids – there is no free market & 95% of econ 101 is BS.
“Please review again the performance of the vaunted Russian military in executing — by which I mean murdering in cold blood — its plan to invade Ukraine over a long weekend.”
It is hard to review the performance of the vaunted Russian military, Tom, because it removed itself almost entirely from this theater of war in early April. Outside of Russian regulars that have been standing on the defensive in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson sectors since they took them on the march in the first 10 days of this war, 900 of the rest of the 1,100 kilometers that make-up the contact line in Ukraine have been manned by the two Donbass militias, the Wagner Group, and some Chechyens.
Interesting, no? It leads one to ask, as I have now almost daily for 6 months, where the hell, is the vaunted Russian army?
And the same question is being asked on the other side, by the militias themselves of course, who have every right to ask,* but even more so on Russian political TV talk shows, that routinely blast Vladimir Putin for his reluctance to fight, for his cynical use of what up until the “referendums.” that legally folded in the Donbass militias, were nothing more than proxie forces, and for his inability to recognize that if he doesn’t speed this operation up and get it over with, the more time will be alloted to the Americans to nuke the shit out of all the parties involved, including themselves.
Because that is the only war winning option the Americans have, at least according the near unanimous opinion of these diabolical Russian television pundits.
One of them even compared Vlad to our George McClellan (imagine that!), a great parade ground general but as a battle commander, is clearly a man who never a saw fight he didn’t want to run away from.
Fearless reality based journalism, its a helluva thing. I miss it!
Speaking of reality, what do you think of the Russian attack on the Ukraine grid? The number of Russian missiles and drones expended over the past fortnight are staggering, well above 1,000 at this point.
Interested to hear you expert opinion on this Tom, because I believe you know as well anyone, if the Russians want to knock out this grid permanently they can in the span of one hour, with one dedicated, conventional missile salvo.
What’s it all about, this exercise in Underkill if you will? Is it possible the Russians know they can win this war anytime they want and are surgically damaging the grid in such a way that it will be off during their offensives, but can be quickly turned back on once the war is over?
*The Donbass militias have lost 10 to 12 thousand killed so far, while Russian regulars have lost 6 thousand killed, so yeah, they have every right to bitch about how they’ve been used and abused in this war.
And Donetzk continues to be shelled every day as it has for last 9 years, and supposedly, this was one of main purposes, if not THE main purpose, of the Russian SMO, to stop this incessant shelling.
The Russian SMO was clearly a failure, the Russians cannot negotiate their way out of this, that was the mistaken concept at the heart of their initial plan .
What utter and innocent fools they are. Truly. They underestimated the resolve of my country to fight them to the death.
But the SMO is over, it on ended the day of the “referendums.” In this next phase we will see the vaunted Russian army, and so, we will finally find out if it is, all that it is cracked up to be.
Maybe somebody in the Kremlin is thinking about what will happen if they win this war, take over the country, and then have to rebuild everything they destroyed. I don’t think Russia can afford it. But you can’t govern a country in which so many people have no food, water, electricity or shelter.
No doubt. One of the many reasons the Russians have been tip toeing around this theater of war since the beginning, they are privatized, neo-liberal nation-state, and therefore, just like the US, which they’ve long sought to emulate, and become “partners” and “colleagues”* with, they do not have the governmental structures in place to do nation-building..
Only China has those capabilities -although there is a school of thought, led by the one and only Michael Hudson, that believes the Russian Federation, since the killer sanctions of 2014, are being forced, very much against their will,to adopt many aspects of the Chinese economic model, which includes such concepts as autarky, or nation-state self-sufficiency, constant infrastructure build-outs and upgrades, state sponsored entrepreneurship, full employment, equitable wealth distribution, poverty elimination and limits to “capital flight” that includes such things as the death penalty for any oligarch that attempts it.
And above all else, the central bank, or in China’s case, all three dedicated central banks, must work for the country, and never against it.
I was thinking more about the technical aspects of the grid attacks. How delicate they have been in a relative sense,
It seems to me the Russians deserve, if not credit Tom, than at least some recognition, for the tremendous discipline they are showing in a war being fought to the death against a deadly combination of peers and near-peers.
The Russian Federation and its allies have lost 20,000 combat dead, yet civilian deaths in Ukraine still have not exceeded that same number.
A better than a 1:1 ratio. Inconceivable really, for a citizen of country that thinks nothing of achieving 50:1 civilian to serviceman kill ratios, and beyond, when it goes to war.
And yet we mock them Tom, for their martial inadequacies.
*Lavrov slipped the other day and the used the term “colleagues” when discussing the Germans, and their willingness to commit national seppuku rather than live under the yoke of being free to buy Russian natural gas in perpetuity at well below market rates.
It was kinda funny, in a tragicomic sort of way.
Don’t forget about the Washington, D.C. foreign-policy establishment muckety-mucks who have been whacking the hornets’ nest for years, egging the Ukrainians on into a dangerous game of chicken with Russia. This war was entirely avoidable. I recall browsing through the Biden-Harris campaign website during election year 2020, and came across the LONG list of members of the “blob” who lent their support to Biden-Harris in opposition to Trump. I thought to myself, this is going to be more of the same old crap – these are the clowns who got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and boy, that sure turned out great, didn’t it – and some of them at the time were busy getting us into Ukraine. So I voted for the Green Party.
I don’t think that all native New World tribes were as egalitarian as those you pointed out, but certainly the tribal structure would seem more likely to lend itself to the protection of the rank-and-file from an oppressive overlord, than would a larger, more complex society in which the ruler would enjoy some level of safe isolation from the masses; such isolation provided by his ‘middle management’ – a bureaucracy systemically more inclined toward meeting the desires of the boss rather than the needs of the people. Under such circumstances, the very remoteness of the leader could easily create a semi-religious sense of veneration – awe mixed with fear – in the minds of the governed toward the governor. Things often start going downhill when that point is reached.
Historically, true democratic republics have been few and far between, and have not lasted long – a few centuries at best – among civilized societies. The human creature, both individually and in groups, is not designed to live in large-scale societies. I think Robin Dunbar’s 150 theory serves as a pretty good guideline in studying these matters.
Is the photo from a movie? I think I recognize Ben Kingsley.
Sacha Baron Cohen, “The Dictator.”
Got it. I just looked it up. Ben Kingsley is the guy in the back.