Trump, 2024, and leadership

It has been something to watch the collective skull of the left burst open like a dead whale carcass over the possibility of Trump running in 2024. I don't think there has been a greater example of someone living rent-free in people's minds than that of Trump over the last five or so years. From the time he won the candidacy up through this weekend, it has been nonstop Trump. Trump the traitor, Trump the insurrectionist, Trump the sore loser, Trump the Russian candidate, and so on. If it weren't so far-fetched, people would probably be claiming that Trump invented covid to wipe out Democrats in major cities like New York.

Trump was a has-been the moment he took office, and that hasn't changed since he left office. Outside of the trademark "Trump scowl" (which I think he ripped off from Ben Stiller in Zoolander), and trying to get exposure on cable news and any other place he can show up and press the flesh (insert your own jokes there), he is becoming completely irrelevant. If he runs on the Republican ticket again in 2024, it will basically mean that the Republicans have adopted the mindset of the dog drinking coffee in the burning building. By now, the Republicans themselves have likely been busy trying to figure out how to purge Trump and his die-hard cultist supporters from the party, which should make the Democrats giddy for 2024 themselves.

Unless, that is, they can't figure out how to throw Biden overboard, and Kamala with him, and run a candidate who actually has charisma and whose politics weren't formed by the "machine" back in the 70s. Outlasting everyone else doesn't mean outstanding brilliance at running a nation. The Democratic party has become a gerontocracy, hence the tensions between "the squad" and the party leadership. Like her or hate her, and whatever you think of her opinions, at least AOC seems like she can connect what she's trying to say to what she's actually saying. I'm not sure that's the case for the rest of the senile citizen leadership in the Democratic party.

Connecting this back to the core idea of this blog, crises in leadership always accompany a civilization in decline. Whatever their moral failings, the "Founding Fathers" of the nation were well-educated and bright people, and put America on a track to a unique status in the world at the time. In the 1800s, the American educational system was maturing and produced many fine and well-educated minds. Postwar, it was clear that the standards were beginning to slip a bit with clowns like McCarthy, and now we're in a free-fall of leadership. Getting that back is going to be difficult or impossible, because the institutions which should be producing leaders are instead producing wokester activists who would rather tear down history than learn from it and improve upon it.

The cycle perpetuates itself, too. Poorer leaders results in worse conditions which in turns leaves fewer resources and interest in educating new leaders. Lack of leadership exacerbates any crisis. The response to 9/11, the financial crash, ISIS, covid, and Afghanistan all show how bad leadership has gotten in recent decades. Bad leadership leads to bad outcomes, and those bad outcomes further cause weaker responses to future crises. The massive spending in response to the economic problems by covid are just going to make it that much harder to find the resources to respond to the next upheaval.

Crawling back out of this hole is possible, but it's not likely. Bad leadership drives out good. The smart and wise people get out of politics because it becomes less functional. Once that happens, it's just a race to the bottom. No wonder the modern world seems so rudderless these days.

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