"There's a big stink in the air, and it's coming from our 'leaders' "

[Carolab]

Syl Jones: There's a big stink in the air, and it's coming from our 'leaders'

Syl Jones

Published August 14, 2005

Can you smell it? There's a deep and abiding stench in the air and those with sensitive olfactory organs had better keep quiet. Because the emperor has no nose and you, loyal subject, are expected to inhale without frowning or mouthing off. There's a war going on. People are dying. Somewhere in a cave, shady people are planning to end civilization as we know it. So shut up, you anti-American pig.

That's the implicit message nearly everywhere we turn. Still, it's hard to ignore the horrible stench of world leadership putrefaction. Not just political leadership, although the moral decay at work in international centers from Afghanistan to Niger to the United States is stunning. Everywhere the paradigm of leadership is breaking down, including the corporate world, where many with authority refuse to accept responsibility.

You see it at the state level, where the people's business has taken a backseat to an ideological imperative expressed by a "no more taxes" mantra. Good leaders would long ago have explained that when a people refuse to pay for what they need, they inevitably get what we're getting: bad schools, inadequate infrastructure, increased crime and generalized despair.

It's obvious too at the very top, when a president of the United States can give the finger to the media without apologizing and the media allow him to get away with it. The vulgarity of this administration has always been clear to me. Using American kids as cannon fodder to prove that Donald Rumsfeld's theory of limited war is right strikes me as criminal, right up there with the glib pronouncement that, "You go to war with the Army you have and not the Army you want."

(more)
http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/story.php?template=print_a&story=5557801

[NVMojo]

1. Good read and it's not just in DC. It's across the land.

[Why Syzygy]

2. Isn't that the TRUTH !

Bunch of bumms. How did we get to this.

[klyon]

3. ooow that smell, that smell of death surrounds you

I smell it.

KL