When Your Leadership Causes the Problems

If you are looking for a perfect example of a society that makes its own problems look no further. You are living in one. Being blessed with abundant natural resources, an innovative population, and a tradition of freedom you could expect our success in the basics of life. We have a booming agriculture that feeds other parts of the world as well as ourselves. We have a defense so strong that no other country dare threaten us, and a historical gift of basic principles of governing from our founders. Yet somehow, here in the early 21st century we find ourselves in a shameful and innocent mess of national governance. It has robbed our citizens of their national pride and disgraced the American dream. This situation was not brought on by nature or military invasion, but by the efforts of our elected leadership.


So what happened? If you take a broad view, and don’t get bogged down by all the hot air, it is a pretty clear picture.

The national debt was not caused by the American working population unable to directly supply the services and materials from their own work. The farmers continue to plant crops and the factory workers continue to work and generate real wealth wherever allowed. Over the last 25 years, however, the elite ruling class and their bean counters have focused on moving large amounts of that wealth to themselves through worthless financial ploys. They have now greatly overplayed their hand and killed the golden goose by selling much of the nations real wealth creation capabilities overseas.

So the producing members of the economy, who are the only force that can create new wealth along with the basics of living, are now faced with not only fixing the productivity machine but also with addressing the debt that was carelessly accumulated while they were stealing from us.

What have we got to work with? First we have to understand that the “government” is really two organizations. There is the political half which consists of elected leadership plus the special interests that finance them. Their only qualifications are the ability to sell the voting public that they should be elected. Then there is the operational half which carries out the policies and legislative actions set by the political half. This is made up of workers who are a typical cross section of Americans. Their positions have technical qualifications which must be met by the employee. These people are faced with implementing the changing and inconsistent requirements of the elected and their appointees who are election winners of our two party election process.

It is easy to pinpoint which group is to blame for our sorry state. The elected representatives have severely failed in their obligations to the citizens. Their corruption and incompetence have created the serious problems that we now face. Although the operational workers do sometimes make mistakes they do not have the embedded corruption of the elected elite. It is the elected elite that must be decisively improved. People who rail against “the government” without understanding this distinction are misguided.

The only tools we have for correction are the election process, our numbers, and our thoughtfulness. As we have posted many times we must somehow reintroduce ethics, truth and intelligence into our elections. These traits are not common in either party. It will require much closer attention to the quality of political candidates. The citizen voter must make the difficult effort to sort ethical behavior from dishonesty, truth from lies, and intelligence from stupidity. There is no single ideology to substitute for these basics.

Ethics, Truth and Intelligence: Three Characteristics We Must Have in Those Who Wish to Govern Us

To be specific here are working definitions from the dictionary:

Ethics: the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation.

Truth: the property of being in accord with fact or reality.

Intelligence: the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations

That these characteristics in no way describe much of our current governing elite is to our shame. The founding fathers closely fit this representation but over the 250 years we have allowed its’ deterioration. Some pessimists claim that this is the inevitable progression of a democracy.

It is undeniable that ethics, a respect for truth, and a little intelligence would have prevented a majority of the problems that are haunting us now.

The sub prime financial meltdown and associated recession had the lack of ethics in the financial industry and elected government as its very core. Truth was not even present. To say that intelligence was weak would be an understatement.

Uncontrolled export of manufacturing jobs and associated unemployment and trade deficits shows an inability to deal with new situations, a shortage of practical intelligence plus a lack of ethical behavior toward the American worker.

Transfer of undue government power away from the productive sector to the financial sector has been a disaster based on lack of both ethics and intelligence.

An expensive war based on non existing weapons of mass destruction was a massive mistake based on lack of respect for truth.

Unfortunately it is apparent that if ethics, truth, and intelligence are to become a larger part of the governance of the nation it will have to be forced on new governing elite by the citizens. The existing elite benefit too much from the current confusion. The voters have a very dense fog to cut through.

The two party system we now have makes this is a very difficult task The only ethic of either party is to get elected and keep their goodies. They are therefore very loose with the truth. Their intelligence is focused on manipulating the voters and satisfying their financial supporters. Actions that may be good for the citizens but interfere with winning an election or are against the wishes of their financial supporters are given little attention. We are seeing that this is not a formula for the American dream.

We must vote in a leadership that embodies the three critical characteristics. This will require every voter to put in an extra effort before voting.

If there is any concern about ethics, withhold your vote. Do not vote for an unethical candidate who has a record of favoring special interests in opposition to those of the citizen. A candidate or his/her followers who blatantly lie in the campaign should be rejected regardless of the issue. Attend face to face town hall meeting and ask questions to judge the candidates’ intelligence and ability to think past one minute sound bites.

Hopefully, there will still be some candidates standing.