All Over The World Leaders Are Suffering From a Severe Bout of Infantilism

[callady]

I would except Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro from this as well as a few others. I would also call these so-called "leaders" criminals and puppets of their corporate masters.



All over the globe, our leaders seem to be suffering from a severe bout of infantilism
As someone who has to look at the eviscerated corpses , I can only shake my head in disbelief

Saturday, 29th October 2005, by Robert Fisk

I wonder sometimes if we have not entered a new age of what the French call infantilisme. I admit I am writing these words on the lecture circuit in Paris where pretty much every political statement - including those of Messrs Chirac, Sarkozy, de Villepin et al - might fall under this same title. But the folk I am referring to, of course, are George W Bush, Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara and - a newcomer to the Fisk Hall of Childishness - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

For as someone who has to look at the eviscerated corpses of Palestine and Israel, the murdered bodies in the garbage heaps of Iraq, the young women shot through the head in the Baghdad morgue, I can only shake my head in disbelief at the sheer, unadulterated, lazy bullshit - let’s call a spade a spade - which is currently emerging from our great leaders.

There was a time - yes, I know about o tempora o mores - when the Great and the Good spoke with a voice of authority, albeit mendacious, rather than mediocrity; when too many lies spelled a ministerial resignation or two. But today we seem to live on two levels: reality and myth.

Let’s start with the reality of Iraq. It is, to quote Winston Churchill on Palestine in the late 1940s, a "hell-disaster", a nation of anarchy from Mosul and Irbil down to Basra, where armed insurgents control streets scarcely half a mile from the Baghdad "green zone" wherein American and British diplomats and their democratically elected Iraqi "government" dream up optimism for a country whose people are burning with ferocious resentment against Western occupation. No wonder I’m more sure each day that I want to be away from conflict.

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article11983.html

[tocqueville]

1. Castro is still a dictator and Chavez a populist

but I can agree on the rest even if the French leading politicians are light years from Bush et al. The rest of Europe isn't much better.

They are merely the expression of the wills and moods of the citizens of their respective nations.

Great leaders with a few exceptions arise in times of DEEP crisis. We are not there yet, but it's sure coming...

[callady]

2. We are there

there are just so many distractions and preoccupations that people don't recognize or don't want to acknowledge how deep and widespread the crisis is. it goes way beyond the political morass in DC.

Also, the "leaders" are less the expression of any sort than the tools of the ruling class. As always.


The planet is owned and ruled by the same people; not the heads of State, but the owners of the capital. State governments, if unyielding to the superior power of the capitals, run the risk of becoming figureheads in the claws of the neoliberals. Do what we tell you to do or we will unmask the vacuum behind your façade. Some leaders try courageously to prove their freedom of action, up to a point, but even socialists have turned towards what is to be seen as the new socialism – Gerhard Schröder, or the New Labour – Tony Blair. There is no real ‘left’ any more --anywhere.

<snip>

The heads of state are helpless tools in the claws of the predators since their countries would suffer loss of investment and capital flight in the face of their non-cooperation. The world thus depends on civil society and the strength of the masses of lucid and humane people, the power of the streets, to defeat the colossus that is eagerly devouring the world. Corruption and greed can ultimately be defeated if we the people see the truth and act in accordance with our common sense and human instincts.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_19839...