Something has happened relatively recently with the concept of leadership, and it isn’t good. It might have started with the pandemic, or maybe a little bit before that with the Disney Star Wars movies. Someone takes over something; they announce with great fanfare their guiding principles, which may be “woke,” but there may be something else wrong with them. And right off the bat they have their critics and they have their defenders, with most of the earnest enthusiasm “enjoyed” by the former as it’s already easy to see what’s going to go wrong.

There’s lots of bluster about “I’m large and in charge” or whatever, but no responsibility taken for bad results. The response to the criticism that should be expected, is a gritty determination to keep on making the same mistakes — and there’s nothing you can do about it! And, to call the critics sexists or racists. Name-calling and intransigence. That’s the rebuttal to the criticism, any & all criticism.

It’s as if the entire “civilized” world woke up one morning and decided: Leadership is nothing but being obstinate and pushy.

Meanwhile, the despair felt far and wide, from having someone “in charge” who won’t listen to anybody else, won’t self-correct or learn from mistakes, and won’t take responsibility for the mistakes made — is palpable. It thickens month by month, year by year, to the point you can almost cut it with the metaphorical knife. It metastasizes into a depression, which the “leadership” notices, and usually blames on someone else.

It wasn’t like this just a short time ago. What happened? How do we fix it?

Maybe we can hold a contest. They do seem to be competing with each other to see who can come up with the worst ideas, the fastest, or implement them with the most intense of misplaced enthusiasm, or show the greatest agility in dodging responsibility. Or, to display the most intractable resolve to maintain the bad policy in response to reasoned criticism.

Within arts and fiction, the clear winner would be Kathleen Kennedy. Whoever is the runner-up, isn’t worth mentioning because the gap between the two is so broad, it isn’t even close. It’s just embarrassing to listen to her anymore. People have entirely given up on her company, and on the industry as a whole. She’s literally destroyed movies.

Out here in the real world of public policy, it might be Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, maybe Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. This weird new brand of leadership that consists of just being stubborn, learning nothing, regretting nothing, conceding no points to their opposition no matter how valid the criticism may be, is commonly illustrated to us as women finally finding their voice. This is unfair to women, for it isn’t only women doing this. Gavin Newsom of California has come up with just as many bad ideas as anybody, done at least as much damage as anyone else, and certainly takes the cake in avoiding responsibility. Or, responding to valid criticism with that now-familiar gritty determination to change exactly nothing and keep-on keeping-on. Should I list examples? It’s hard to know where to begin. Criminal justice reform, battling the “homeless” problem, taxation, environmental — he sucks at all of it and will admit to no errors, concede no points to his critics, change nothing.

It’s like the public at large is a wild animal, and “leadership” in both arts and politics is engaged in a long, drawn out maneuver that does nothing but wound and then corner the animal, giving it nowhere to go. This doesn’t seem smart, to me anyway. Looks like just asking for something bad to happen.
It wasn’t always like this. Leadership used to listen. Maybe show a bit of lethargy in admitting to mistakes, I guess that’s to be expected. But time was, they’d eventually either admit to the mistakes, or quietly change strategy.

I guess, now that we have “social media,” the spoken word enjoys greater currency and greater agility. The criticism flows easily, but the rebuttal to the criticism flows even more easily. The rebuttal, unlike the criticism, doesn’t have to make sense. Just a theory I have to explain it. I’m not sure.
But it’s obvious, lately, when there is valid criticism and then rebuttal to the criticism, the rebuttal consistently wins. Someone is expecting it to go that way. And, it is going that way.

This does not portend good things. We know smaller problems that ought to get fixed, today, and don’t get fixed, grow into larger problems that arise tomorrow. We know cornering a wounded beast is never a smart idea.

And it’s been awhile by now since I’ve seen quality leadership. By which I mean, don’t make good decisions all the time necessarily, but at least admit it and change things in the aftermath of having made some bad ones. I haven’t seen that in a very long time. We seem to be getting quite comfortable with bad leaders making bad decisions and then showing a bad intransigence in keepin’-on the same way. It’s quickly becoming the default strategy of leadership, and everywhere. I’m really not sure what we can do about this.

The narrative is that men are replaceable. I say “the narrative is” because the desire to believe it came first. People act like the evidence came first and after awhile, someone noticed it out loud. That would be legitimate. But it wouldn’t be accurate. The desire to believe came first and we’re waiting on the evidence; that’s essentially what a narrative is.

Reasonable discussions can be had about whether the evidence has emerged, or whether we’re still waiting on it, or whether it never will emerge because it isn’t true. But that is not the point I wish to inspect. I want to look into the desire to believe that men are devoid of unique purpose and could be easily replaced. It’s everywhere, and it’s intense. From whence does it come? Seems rather useless to me. Are we all supposed to be going somewhere?

This is not an offshoot of women’s lib. It is ancient. It goes back to the days when the woman’s father reserved all the agency in screening out her suitors. “You can do better than him.” It has always run in one direction. Men did not talk about whether they or their sons could do better than the current wife, girlfriend or…obsession. They acted on it, and that’s philandering, or infidelity. Men have been at that for quite awhile. But this has always been a quiet pastime. They acted on it but didn’t speak of it. They didn’t huddle together in these groups to figure out for sure, or make dinner table conversation out of, Is it time to dispose of and replace the wife. But “she can do better than him” hangs around extended family frameworks, across years, even decades, like a bad smell. It’s common. And it isn’t quiet.

This asymmetry is reflected in our fiction, as well as in our truth. The ready made family, joining up with a stepdad. You’ll notice throughout the years, as the female head-of-household has become more and more normalized, the backstory has gone entirely missing. She has kids? You still need a man to come up with those. Where’s the bio-dad? Alive or dead? You may as well be asking where a cow got her calves. “Not in the picture” is a good enough answer, assuming the question is ever asked at all. And it usually isn’t.

This isn’t true of fictional exploits in which a stepmom integrates with a single dad and his kids. When that happens, there has to be a backstory. Where’s the mom? Usually dead. But you have to say what happened to her. Moms are not so easily replaced. A story that even weakly suggests they might be, will surely end up on the cutting room floor before anyone sees it.

“Women can do anything men can do” is a commentary on men being disposable. It’s false. “Men can do anything women can do” would be equally false, but we don’t need to worry about that because no one says it.

We accept — correctly — that women are not replaceable. We men can’t do what they do. Where they are present, and then disappear, they leave a hole. No one bothers to pretend any different.

“Your husband or boyfriend could do better than you” has always been just plain rude. Like asking a woman what she weighs, or how old she is. It just isn’t done. It’s one of those double standards feminism was built to confront, in its pursuit of “equality” — and once they confronted this one, they left it alone because they liked it. It’s always been part of western civilized society that women, and whoever cares about them, should wonder constantly if they can do better than him, but men are not supposed to wonder if they can do better than her.

Ann Landers put the pedal to the metal: “Are you better off with him, or without him?”

There are three reasons for this.

Men are protectors. It is fitting, when you have a protector, to wonder if you can somehow get hold of a better protector. But we can’t have our protectors wondering if there’s someone else somewhere more worthy of their protection. That wouldn’t be a very suitable protector.

Women are shoppers. Men don’t shop much, and when they do they shop like their pants are on fire and they can’t put it out until they’re done shopping. In-and-out. So for centuries, women have monopolized the experience of shopping, and the natural sharpening and honing of skills that comes with engaging the activity. It’s natural for a shopper to wonder if she’s acquired the correct product in the correct quantity, and then wonder about it some more. Even after the sale is closed, the question remains open. But we can’t very well have our merchandise wondering if the shopper is good enough.

And, eyelash-politics. Men just aren’t as cute. You have an opportunity to climb the social ladder when you reinforce a woman’s questions, or inspire her to start pondering the questions, about whether her current mate is good enough for her. Women have longer eyelashes and they’re easier on the eyes. People relate to women. You don’t slog your way up the food chain by looking out for a man’s interests. We pretend men run the world and have been running it throughout the centuries, like the men have been on top. Men have actually been on the bottom this whole time. It’s true in the animal kingdom as well: You work your way up through the social hierarchy, not by looking out for a man’s interests or defending his status in his household or in the tribe, but rather by challenging it.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Modern society wonders aloud if it can do without men, or if it has to have men, how interchangeable they are. As this question has intensified, the men have been wondering more and more if they can do without society. That is a turn of events entirely unanticipated by those with the most strident opinions, the ones who insist that since men are so replaceable, it’s up to each man to work continuously on improving himself, to make himself the best, so that no one will think of replacing him — even though they could, on a lark. Men are responding to this with a pointed question about why they should bother, with the criteria for keeping versus replacing being so arbitrary, and the decision to replace being more and more a fait accompli.

Perhaps I’m biased, but it seems to me that this fad of man-ejecting and man-swapping, or of casually thinking about doing it, where it was destined to bring some positive deliverables to society at large, has already brought them. That we’ve crossed the point of diminishing returns. I think we crossed it when men started to hesitate to sacrifice things to build up their careers, which could come to an end on someone’s arbitrary say-so. And were no longer being relied-upon to feed, clothe and provide for others.
We have been building advanced “societies” for many thousands of years by now, and in doing so we’ve lost our innocence, lost our excuse for having not learned some rather plain lessons. We know now that a society has to value the people in it, all of them. All of the people who contribute constructively to it, anyway. If it doesn’t, then those people will not value the society, and society loses value overall. Then everything becomes a little bit less functional than it was before.

There’s no advantage in asking if a specific demographic is disposable, or replaceable. By all means, feel free to ask that of individual people, based on their individual acts. But don’t ask that of groups based on their immutable characteristics. That’s bigotry and it doesn’t help anybody.

Kamala Harris could still emerge victorious in this thing, but she’s not doing quite as well as she’d like, I think. There’s no one single misstep to point to for the bulk of the blame. I perceive that the American public is belatedly catching on to what’s long been obvious to just some of us: Liberalism is not about solving problems, or even about making anything better. It is rainbow-chasing and complaining. It is just like a rainbow in fact. Most coherent, definable and relatable when distant, losing any semblance of structure upon the observer’s approach.

Every single issue follows the same pattern. The liberal agitator states the case for reform, and it isn’t tiny-step reform, it requires societal overhaul: Oppressors are oppressing victims. The victim’s situation is this, and that, and this and that, and such and such and so and so. “And we think that’s wrong!!!” Stating this case, they capture all they want to capture. Hearts, minds, votes, emotions. And then there’s some kind of incursion, involving some combination of force and guile. The movement becomes an actual movement, with the good guys making good-guy movement into bad-guy territory. Like the Trojan horse into the city’s gates. Activists, and their sympathizers, go to where the problem is, where the slope-foreheads occupy, those undesirables who have yet to be enlightened.

And then…?

Confront the problem-people. And…?

Convert them? Isolate them? Banish them? Obliterate them? What are we doing now?

Each single individual curled up in the belly of the great wooden beast, might have a good solid understanding of next steps. But a consensus has yet to emerge. And it won’t. If such a consensus were necessary, it would, but it isn’t. And that’s the embarrassment right there. In the end, it turns out to be all about the bitching. And the incursion. The posing of an inconvenience onto others. That’s all.

Just the tiniest sampling of available issues confirms this…

America is a racist nation! Easy to say. But then the position is…no wall at the border. Everybody is seeking asylum. From what? Uh, something, so okay. Remain here. Everyone ought to be able to get in, and stay, and “path to citizenship,” and vote, and we will mock and ridicule you if you so much as suggest it shouldn’t happen, or that some further case evaluation has to be done even on an individual level, that some of these might be terrorists. That’s racist! They all have to be here! Well if America is a racist nation, why are we doing this? You won’t let us take a closer look at these people, because if we want to do that we’re racists, even though it’s confirmed we’re that already, and the people we want to study are brown, so you want to be nice to the brown people and keep them in a racist nation. The logic falls apart.

Next issue. Patriarchy! Put a woman in the White House! Okay. But we already have woman governors and legislators. We’ve actually had quite a few of those, and for quite a while. Have we gotten rid of patriarchy? Dissenters and reform sympathizers alike would agree, no we have not. Wasn’t so long ago we were going to get rid of racism by electing a black President. That guy is term-limited out now, and following His eight years, have we cured racism? It’s noticeable how far backward we’ve regressed, and how quickly. There’s more bitching about it in the aftermath of His presidency than there was before. Race relations have noticeably deteriorated. That administration was lots of things, but the resolution to any sort of a problem was not one of the things.

Next issue. Capitalism! How terrible it is! It exacerbates inequality! Exploits the masses! Alright…so what do we do? Once again, liberalism turns out to be all about putting the horse inside the gates, going to the hated-thing and — what? Take it over? The liberals have invaded corporate America through the “human resources departments,” forcing the diversity-equity-inclusion nonsense upon the businesses. And? C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y.: “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet”…forever. Again, we do not solve the problem. We don’t even chip away at it. And, again, that’s after giving the liberal reformers every little thing they want, no exceptions. Everything they want plus a few things.

It’s rainbow chasing. They approach the goal, and as they get closer, the goal loses composition and deteriorates. Every time.

What they lack in problem solving, they more than make up for in reducing and berating. They’ve got men apologizing for being men and they’ve got white people apologizing for being white. Then what? When the white guy appears before you offering his regrets and his atonement for being white, what do you do then? Forgive him? Welcome him into the fold? Execute him? Certainly, you hold him up as an example of what other white people should do, but after that? Nobody seems to know. Or, to be precise about it, I suppose I should say: A few individuals “know,” but nobody seems to agree.

Like a small child, they’re excited by the approach. The junction point between rainbow and ground, is fixated on a tiny spot, over there! Half an acre, maybe less. Maybe I’m already familiar with that place, how exciting! It’s practically riveted to that spot, over by the tree stump!

And…we approach. Everything changes. It’s not supposed to happen that way, but it does.

Because things change upon approach, the “overhaul” becomes all about the incursion. It becomes purely binary: We go into the bad people’s territory, that’s good. They make an incursion into ours, that’s super duper duper bad. The college kids protesting when a conservative speaker comes to talk, confirm this direction-sensitive passion. It’s quite intense.

The longer I watch conservatives and liberals go at it, the more it looks to me like we’re having a fundamental disagreement about the nature of problem solving. Conservatives are into presuming the worst, so as to engage preventative plans while those plans can still be effective and preventative in nature, thus less invasive and less costly. But they’re also into learning from experience, and experience suggests the conservatives don’t have it completely right either; it consistently shows the liberals are invested in putting the horse inside the city gates and then just sitting there, divided among themselves about what to do next. An argument could be made that this infighting is so all-consuming, that perhaps the horse isn’t a threat after all, and the problem is limited to an object simply being where it doesn’t belong. So the great conflict is about stopping the horse from entering the gates.

As far as what the liberals, and their fresh recruits, need to worry about: It’s a betrayal. The liberals do their complaining about patriarchy or white supremacy, and they pick up the support of those who don’t care too much about ideology and just want to be compassionate. People who want the problem solved. Once the recruitment is done, the rainbow chasing begins. The liberals don’t solve the problem. They don’t even get to the part where they eliminate people, subjugate people or convert people. They just do a lot of bitching. You know. The fun part.

They don’t catch the rainbow. They don’t get to the massacre. If they were so disorganized as to remain completely ineffective, the rest of us could just ignore it all. But along the way, they govern ineptly, and do a lot of damage.

Among those who have figured this out, if only partially, there seems to be a myth that has become entrenched — that the worst betrayal the liberals can inflict, once empowered, is to do nothing. But just look at the large, dense cities laboring away under their tutelage. The poverty, the blight, the vices, the dereliction among living things and inanimate objects. The common theme permeates, achieving a consistency up to and past the point of monotony. Dozens of examples, surely hundreds, maybe thousands. All those cities, run by liberals, looking the same. You don’t stay still with their kind in charge. You lose. Their leadership is toxic. It makes the problems worse.