27 Comments
May 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

Great piece. When we are talking about what is happening globally here and now, I have never subscribed to the idea that leaders have made (obvious) mistakes and are simply loathe to admit it. I've instead believed that there is a long-term agenda here that is to be achieved come hell or high water--so that "policy" mistakes, etc. aren't so much embarrassing as they are irrelevant: "Who cares if we we're wrong? We're not trying to gain respect or acceptance, we're just obliterating the process to implement the new world order. You can suck it."

I could be wrong, because in either case, those mea culpas don't come. But it just feels different now. Like they just don't give a fuck what anyone thinks of them.

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May 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

Good thought provoking piece.

The qualifier of "effective, leadership" is what may deny the fruition of your dream. Or, until we as a people realize, and more importantly enforce, the understanding that we are the adults (not the talking heads populating various telescreens), and must be in charge (as well as realize when WE have made mistakes, and freely admit them).

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May 4, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

Did you just call us nut cutlets?

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May 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

Ruddy great text! Are you sure you're not a sociology major? It sure sounds like sociology and behaviouristics paired with anthropology is where your instincts ring true (I've met people at uni who struggles to grasp what you sum up here, and I mean people who work with stuff like this).

I'd argue though that social credit is not sex/gender dependent at all, but is expressed differently, due to the hierarchy being different in male groups as compared to female groups (mixed in with age, class, culture etc).

I've noticed several times that all-female (practically so) groups tend to have the oldest become the natural leader. If not the oldest, then the most dominant. If no one is dominant then the most garrulous and spiteful. Of course, that's me talking as a former teacher in a work environment where 85%+ of the cadre is female, so the roles available for men aren't that many.

For men, it's the one who ranks highest given context: when hunting, Hunter Steve who is the typical pencil necked boffin and low on the rungs takes charge since he's been hunting for 50 years. When putting a drainage ditch in the right place, George the Hydro-Geologist is leader since it's his turf, but Burt who runs the ditch digger makes the calls when it comes to the machinery.

All of which makes a bad male leader obvious: it's either the bully with the peckerhead knowitall sidekick, or the sleazy pleaser (the worst kind in my very emotional opinion) trying to be equal and friendly and chummy with everyone and then just follows his own mind anyway, making a mockery of the whole thing.

And our social system is, due to what you describe re: culpability, responsibility and apologies self-selecting for those who will not or can not act the right way. Because those who can sort of removes themselves by the very act of contrition you talk about.

Gordium's knot was way easier.

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May 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

Not to pick on fathermouth, since he's done no harm, but was he a mise-en-abyme, illustrating the very discussion of admission? That made me laugh out loud.

My ex used to use mixed metaphors: "Give it a wing, golden spooner, by any stretch of the means." He said that's how people said things in Whitefish. Drove me crazy.

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May 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth

The true “problem”: E-G-O (the cause of nearly every problem in the world)

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Interesting the dynamics of how men and women project "power" and the advent of modern information technology. Social media, and the internet in general, seems almost perfectly tailored to destroy the minds of girls.

While we continue to produce ideological academics who pretend only masculinity can be "toxic" I suspect this will never be properly studied.

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Societal cost: "Eventually, the consequences of unaddressed errors compound, impunity leads to more errors, and the whole thing falls apart."

When a leader runs out of "social capital" or political capital there is nothing left in the tank and change must come. Or, that leader can fight like a cornered animal and systematically institutionalize authority well beyond benefits to society. It becomes all cost and no benefit.

Someone like PM Trudeau has rushed to his limit and got there faster than any Canadian PM in our history, and yet he remains in the PM Office, flawless in his own mind.

Disaster awaits.

Well, more and bigger disaster awaits.

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May 4, 2022·edited May 8, 2022

There just seems to be a real deficit of leadership in the "West" and I'm not just talking about the US. The whole Ukranian situation seems to be entirely a Democrat project, with the Biden's firmly in the centre, but there's absolutely no push back. Republicans seem fully onboard, which looks to be a typical GOP "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" and, worse of all, nothing from Europe. We expect that from the UK (as America's stooge) but the lack of any political courage from France and Germany has been astonishing.

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deletedMay 3, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
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