The Leadership Deficit
America suffers from a critical lack of leadership at every level. The only remedy will come from within ourselves.
This past week has not brought much good news to the world. The second Yom Kippur War has begun and as of this writing both Syria and Lebanon are on the brink of being drawn into the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Here in my adopted hometown, the NYPD is on high alert after Hamas’ leader called for a global ‘day of rage’ from his five-star accommodations in Qatar.
Like I said, not a lot of great news. But we did see at least one headline that brings a glimmer of hope:
I almost never take pleasure when a company falls on hard times, but I will happily make an exception with the Washington Post. Since being bought by Jeff Bezos in 2013, the paper has become a massive purveyor of lies and disinformation, from the ‘Russiagate’ hoax to its suppression of credible sources that conradicted the government’s Pfizer-funded COVID vaccine narrative. Its own tagline, “democracy dies in darkness”, drips with irony when you consider how far the Post’s own editors went to subvert the Trump presidency and influence the 2020 election through an endless barrage of now-debunked and disproven allegations.
The Post has announced that it will trim ten percent of its headcount, mostly in its newsroom. To be fair, that’s not a significant number but it’s a good start. The company is on track to lose $100 million this year, which really must sting when you consider that Bezos paid just $250 million for the entire operation a decade ago.
However, if there is one reason above all to detest the Washington Post it has been their loud and tireless support for Black Lives Matter, a thinly-veiled communist agitator that disguises itself as a racial justice movement. This week BLM sunk to a new low when their Chicago branch posted this on social media:
This image refers to the surprise attack that Hamas conducted against Israel this past weekend, when fighters used ultralights (small motorized aircraft that use parachutes to help maintain altitude) to breach the Gaza wall and murder over 1,000 citizens. Many of the victims were women, children and even babies. This is who BLM stands with now.
Let’s set aside the fact that Chicago has been America’s murder capital for the past eleven years running. In 2022 the city totaled 725 homicides, of which 77% of the victims were African-American. A quick scroll through @BLMChicago’s Twitter feed shows a singular lack of focus on local crime and black lives, as their name suggests, and a more pronounced appetite for rabid anti-semitism and hatred of police while narrated in a manner that can only be described as semi-literate.
Condemnation for BLM’s obvious hate speech has, of course, been universal. So now, organizations like the Washington Post suddenly find themselves in a difficult position. Three years ago, in the wake of the George Floyd riots, every major media outlet fell over themselves to promote BLM. Corporations pledged over $40 billion in donations to BLM and black-related causes. The mayor of Washington DC even painted the group’s name in gigantic letters near the White House.
Of course anyone who would have taken the time to read BLM’s own website could immediately see that this was not just another racial justice organization. BLM’s ‘What We Believe’ page - now since removed but easily viewable on the Wayback Machine - explicitly stated an intent to disrupt and destroy the American family. This goal has always been a central tenet of Marxist theory, which makes sense when BLM’s own founders proudly refer to themselves as ‘avowed Marxists’.
None of what I am sharing here is new information. All of the corporations who fell over themselves to donate to BLM had to have known that the group’s true message was, as the public relations people like to say, “problematic”. Two years later, when the group’s founders were discovered to have siphoned away millions of dollars in donations to buy luxury homes including a $6 million house in Los Angeles, those same corporations kept quiet. Facebook even blocked users from sharing the story.
Increasingly, BLM’s supporters find themselves in an untenable position. Corporate America couldn’t cancel Kanye West fast enough when he produced a ‘White Lives Matter’ t-shirt and made anti-semitic comments last year. As distasteful as those comments might have been, Ye never celebrated Hamas fighters who raped mothers and murdered children.
Adidas dropped its partnership with Ye like a hot potato after he made those comments, costing the artist (and themselves) over a billion dollars in lost revenue. Will Adidas be as quick to condemn BLM in the same manner? Perhaps the company will now resume its trademark dispute with BLM, which it suddenly dropped earlier this year. I won’t hold my breath, though.
A Critical Lack of Leadership
That expectation of hypocrisy is what is on my mind this week. As much as I would like our institutions to cease their support for groups that actively seek the destruction of traditional Western society, even as those groups applaud the wanton killing of women and children, I know that is not going to happen. Today, corporate America suffers from a critical lack of leadership.
That lack of leadership also extends to our learning institutions, as we saw this week when Harvard University beclowned itself on many levels. Within 36 hours of the first Hamas attack, over thirty Harvard student organizations signed a joint statement that opened with this:
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” – Statement from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups
No expression of sorrow was included for the Israeli lives lost, or for their families. These students only wanted the world to know that they held Israel responsible. The national response was exactly as you would expect, with everyone from restaurant CEOs to billionaire hedge fund managers demanding to know the names of the undersigned so they would never hire them.
This would have been a great opportunity for Harvard’s leadership to step in and de-escalate the conflict. The administration could have condemned the terrorist attack while expressing concerns for both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. They could have chastised the student groups for their poor judgment while refusing to cooperate with any witch hunts. Instead, they issued a mealy-mouthed statement that only succeeded in enraging everyone involved.
That statement, which said that Harvard was “heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas that targeted citizens in Israel this weekend, and by the war in Israel and Gaza now under way”, neither condemned Hamas nor the statement by the student groups. It is putting it mildly to say that it lacked moral clarity or courage.
These are just two examples of high-level leadership failures related to the Hamas attacks and their impact here in America. The list grows exhaustively as we expand our view toward the state of our country today. In fact, much of American society seems to be falling apart at the moment, from the top down.
Consider America’s southern border, which is now completely undefended. Current expectations are that over 3 million migrants from over 100 countries will illegally cross this year. These are not just Latinos from Guatemala and Ecuador – CBP (Customs & Border Protection, a hilarious contradiction these days) reports receiving migrants from nearly every country on earth. I don’t know exactly how many Hamas or ISIS terrorists have entered the USA through Mexico, but I can guarantee you that the number is not zero.
A root cause of this systemic failure, like most crises, is a lack of leadership. It is plainly evident that our President is not even slightly concerned that illegal immigrants with unconfirmed intentions are now entering our country by the millions. It doesn’t matter what this president’s motives are (or those who make decisions for him); what matters is that our elected leaders have abandoned their duty to protect this country from foreign threats. In different times this would have been considered criminal and even treasonous. I would argue that it should also apply today.
And this, for America at least, is the most serious issue of all. The Hamas attack presents a serious threat to Israel’s right to exist, and they are now defending that right aggressively. Meanwhile, our borders are even less defended today and yet no one holds our government accountable as they willfully fail to execute their duties to protect the American people. Our undefended border is a serious matter – but our leadership deficit at the national level may very well soon prove to be an existential threat.
What To Do Next
It is easy, and perhaps even right, to worry about America’s future. At no time in our nation’s history have our elected officials acted against the interest of its citizens, or willfully refused to act in our interest as they are now doing. The obvious question that we now ask ourselves, is what can we do about it.
As individuals, our ability to exert influence at the national level is almost zero. We receive an opportunity to cast our vote every four years. Technically, under the electoral college system, we as citizens do not even have a direct vote in the presidential election. Ironically our corporate media has built an entire industry around breathless reporting of national-level politics, which in itself has become a form of entertainment. (I use that term loosely, in case you aren’t ‘entertained’ by watching half a dozen ‘experts’ talk over each other in a three-minute segment. You are almost certainly not being informed.)
I strongly believe, however, that the time has come for all of us to focus on strengthening our local communities. Our ability to drive change increases significantly at the local level, in whatever your community needs. Is your local school board filled with woke Communists who want to let mentally disturbed boys share a bathroom with your daughter? Join the opposition and vote them out, as a group of activist parents just did in Loudoun County, Virginia. (This was an insane story, by the way, and ultimately created a political firestorm that changed the expected outcome of the state governor’s race).
Is your local city council paying for children’s drag queen shows in the park with taxpayer funds? Consider hosting a fundraiser for their political opponents, or perhaps run against them yourself. As the old adage goes, leadership begins at home. And this country desperately needs yours right now.
I think you will be surprised at how much impact your efforts can make at the local level. I have a personal example to share. Earlier this year I wrote an article about a Midwestern company called Summit Carbon Solutions, and how they have been using state-level political connections to acquire eminent domain against thousands of farmers so that they can build a risky carbon capture pipeline that benefits no one but themselves. You can read the article for my explanation of why this deserves to be shut down - for now, my point is that reactions to my article brought the following results:
Part of my article was published as an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s highest-circulation newspaper
I was invited to be a guest speaker on Iowa’s most popular radio talk show
I have been invited to join a grass-roots opposition group that is using citizen journalism to investigate allegations of corruption relating to Summit’s political connections
Since I wrote that article, the state review boards in both North and South Dakota have rejected Summit’s building permit applications. Another carbon pipeline company, Navigator, has paused its application indefinitely. The fight is far from over, and I’m not saying that my input made a significant difference, but I am proud to be doing my part to protect Americans’ property rights. I cannot think of a single right that is more inalienable than this one.
Leadership matters. We aren’t seeing any from our current decrepit excuse for a president, our Congress, or from our largest corporations. It’s time for all of us to begin showing some where it matters most – right here at home.
Do you have an example of local activism or a project that ultimately changed your community for the better? Please consider mentioning it in the comments below so that this online community can hear about it. Thanks!