Nations are supposedly led by the Best and the Brightest. In the well-known words of the Duke of Wellington, "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton," the natural aristocrats. In a stable civilization with established values, the superior man is often manifestly obvious.
But in a changing world, society's betters sometimes turn out to be the inferiors. If the Best and the Brightest was about the geniuses who unexpectedly flubbed the Vietnam War the phrase "lions led by donkeys" was used by a once-confident Britain to describe how senior commanders of the army sent the lions to their deaths by incompetence. Were they always donkeys or were they once lions who turned into donkeys or were they always jackasses?
Today the "Best and the Brightest" is no longer used except ironically to describe leaders in government. Recent events suggest that the highest position in the Free World, the presidency of the United States, might be a contest between sub-normals. In a recent investigation into the mishandling of classified documents by Joe Biden, "special counsel Robert Hur said his probe had found a president with such reduced mental capacities that he could not remember the dates of his vice presidency under Barack Obama and the death of his son Beau to cancer in 2015."
It cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing in his storing of the classified documents, which he'd used while vice president under Barack Obama, at his private home and a former office. ... Hur unleashed a political bombshell, just nine months from the election, by saying the 81-year-old Democrat came across as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Given Biden's reduced mental acuity, Hur said, a jury would not in any case have found him guilty on documents charges.
Such a man, Hur concluded, could not be blamed by reason of incapacity. But the bar is now so low that Biden can take it as a compliment. Back in 2017, a number of psychiatrists opined that Trump was crazy. Since by contrast, Biden is only a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," in these circumstances, the voter might prefer the candidate who is only in the decline over his rival who is in the full flood of his demonic powers.
This race to the bottom is reminiscent of the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election between Democratic Edwin Edwards and Republican David Duke. Faced with the supposedly KKK David Duke, many Louisianans who thought Edwards corrupt now saw him as the lesser evil. "Vote For The Crook: It's Important."
Something might seem terribly wrong when a political system offers only defectives as candidates. How can a person be qualified for president who would not make the cut in an ordinary job? Yet that is not unusual. Psychologists have long known that people in leadership positions are three to four times more likely to be psychopaths than members of the general public.
Psychopaths are by definition individuals who are shameless, lacking in empathy, and willing to lie to get their way. Not surprisingly Washington, D.C., has the most psychopaths per capita of any place in the United States, according to a study by Ryan Murphy, assistant professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Every day, right across the board, from Trudeau to Sinwar to Putin, the global elite remind us by their behavior that they are not like a random name from the phonebook. To paraphrase Jay Gatsby: “The very powerful are different from you and me." Their standards are not pedestrian norms. Powerful people are from a different distribution.
Once it is understood that donkeys and lions are different, it is easier to understand why political leaders don't have to be competent in the normal sense, just suitable to their special purpose. Joe Biden can be more valuable as an empty vessel that political interests can readily fill without polluting it with too many ideas of his own, perhaps none too bright. Donald Trump, whose speech often seems unduly inflammatory and provocative, is precisely the mad destroyer that disaffected voters hope will bring down the temple, even if they know in their hearts that even Trump can but slightly crack that granite establishment mountain.
If the strange contest between seemingly abnormal candidates for POTUS is a reflection of the strangeness of the coming election, we must perceive lions and donkeys accordingly. The world of 2024 is a collection of crisis tribes waiting for a sign, with everyone convinced something big is coming. Will it be the next pandemic, climate change, a flood of migration, artificial intelligence, global war — or something nobody knows?
The madness of this leadership contest is the chaos at the End of History as glimpsed in the mirror. Perhaps we have lost our common origin story as a civilization and are waiting even at the cost of great tribulation for reality to show us the way. On the day of the Big Reveal, who do you prefer in the Oval Office?
