Monday, July 21, 2003
(9:59 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Leadership, leadership is what I long for
"Leadership" is part of the sickness of our nation. Within a decade, fully 75% of our population will be made up of leaders. I am tired of hearing about leadership, and I am disgusted by the sheer number of venues in which it is being "taught." I hope never to be a leader.
If we can afford to have so many "leaders," it must mean that we're fairly confident that we all know where to go and just need people equipped to get us there. It is part of the closing down of possibilities that is continuously taking place in America. We know that America and capitalism and all that have failed to live up to their promises, and now we're assembling comforting excuses and training "leaders" to mouth the words to us.
We are living, as Baudrillard instructs us, in a "thoroughly hopeless situation." The only recent opportunity for a genuine turn-around, a real rethinking of what the hell we're doing here, was the series of senselessly brutal events on September 11, 2001, and we let it pass us by completely. Even worse, we're using it as yet another excuse to do more of the same, under one of the most capable "leaders" in the history of our nation.
And so let us pray: Glory be to America, and to Capital, and to the Republican Party. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Alleluia.
