It seems we all have a deep-seated human need for . . . leadership (or what's a messiah for?).
It seems each of us has examined ourselves and determined that me, myself, and I are a follower. And if I only had a leader, think of the great things that could be achieved.
But this urge/whatever can mislead us and mislead us badly. Ask yourself this question: what is the purpose of the U.S. Constitution? In my mind its clear purpose is to limit leaders. Just as the Magna Carta was designed to limit kings, our document is designed to limit leaders of all stripes up and down the government. Exceed your given powers and expect a lawsuit.
I remember way back when I was involved in the process of hiring a new president of the community college I was working for. My role was as President of the Faculty Senate, so I asked that Senate to compile a list of things that we wanted to achieve for this new president. Try as I might, I failed as a leader. The sentiment amongst my colleagues was to wait until she was hired and see where she wanted to lead us. I argued that this was anti-democratic (although I didn't use that term), that a new constitution doesn't come with a new leader. My colleagues were as well educated as I, or even better, but they wanted to be lead and they didn't seem to care where they were being lead to.
Currently Donald Trump is the only politician portraying himself as a "leader," the German word for such being "Führer." Remember the past in which each of the two main parties had a "platform" which was a statement of where their leadership would lead to. How quaint. Today, nothing Mafia Don intends to do is put into any official party platform. He needs plausible deniability, you know . . . check that, he doesn't. He would just declare anything he didn't like about that platform to be fake news, no matter what was printed or recorded on video tape. Donald J. Trump will lead us to a new reality!
In a recent blog post umair haque defined leadership this way: "Leadership is fundamentally an act of moral agency. It means not just having a moral compass, but orienting the moral compass." Would that that were true. "Wishful thinking that is" . . . shut up, Yoda.
The leadership we crave, apparently, is exercised by one in whom we can believe blindly, without having to think about what is happening. Our religions in this country have prepped us for this behavior. "You only need faith, and you will be saved." We don't ask "What kind of god would demand or even need the faith of beings like us?"
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