A Resolution For 2024… Accountability- Seeking It And Then Accepting It. Heads-Up… This Is Ugly.
Heads-Up… This Is Ugly
A Resolution For 2024… Accountability- Seeking It And Then Accepting It
What I gleaned globally in 2023 from 150+ nights in hotels, in residences, and in other accommodations:
The year was represented by a multi-continent multi-time zone grotesque cholesterol-laden buffet of ugliness at which political leadership and their respective core followers gorged themselves day after day after day.
Political leadership stuffed themselves just prior to the moment of explosion- or every button and zipper reaching its limit, just prior to when gravity prevented the gluttons from arising to again waddle towards the buffet and then cram whatever they can down their throats.
They were not dining on food. They are dining on finely diced morsels and sliced filets of accountability. They weren’t eating with a goal of gaining additional accountability. They were eating to get rid of the evidence.
By digesting accountability, those morsels served as fuel pellets- and prophylactics protecting them from accountability to those who voted for them, those who elected them, those who appointed them and to whom those were supposed to be accountable- to serve and to protect and to nurture.
Leadership was not defined by leading, it was defined by how someone could reach more quickly the Summit of Meanness- cloaking in an overcoat of threats, intimidation, misstatements, obfuscation, and lies. And, if by happenstance there was another person at or near the summit, then their time on the mountain would be brief.
The year 2024 is teed-up to be an ever-repeating cycle of wash-rinse-spin-dry. Some countries (and nations and states) have morphed into coin operated washing machines with their populations stuck inside and political leadership dancing like jesters outside while gleefully feeding coin after coin to keep the voters inside and the washing machine closed so those same voters cannot escape and hold political leadership accountable and significantly have access to competing information.
There is an often-used hamster on a wheel metaphor- the hamster keeps on the wheel, which continues to rotate- but the hamster does not move from the stationary position from which the hamster started the process. Voters feel like that often too.
Most political leaders learn from their mistakes- but increasingly only in terms of how that learning will permit them to carry onward with an abject disregard for their decisions.
The goal is obtaining office, then holding office, then preventing anyone else from taking the office from them.
And then, the time-honored tradition of politicians promoting programs, particularly those relating to budgeting, that are in duration far past their term in office. When their term in office is two years, four years, five years, or six years, they spew nonsense such as “In ten years, my budget will reduce the deficit….”
Compromise? That reinforces weakness. Zero-sum? The preferred outcome- when those defeated must not only publicly concede defeat, but must describe in medical detail how they were bested and increasingly pledge fealty to the victor.
What tool is fancied by the victor? Government-controlled media where opponents have no expectation of fairness. The newly-installed government in the Republic of Poland has it right- placing existing government-controlled media into receivership and shuttering it.
The overwhelming quantity and capability of information delivery tools has not resulted in global comity, but rather global animosity, global distrust, global hatred, and a globally turbocharged courage of ignorance.
Curiosity has become a very dirty word. Tolerance has too. Conformity is a new norm. How scary someone can be is defining leadership.
Think about just these three ongoing hemorrhages of rational thinking:
We try to digest the decisions by the government of the Russian Federation with respect to Ukraine.
We try to digest the decisions by the government of the State of Israel with respect to Gaza and the West Bank.
We try to digest the decisions by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic with respect to its citizens.
Why have these three events not ceased? Because not enough people have died in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, State of Israel, Gaza, and Syrian Arab Republic.
Each head of state and head of government has a number or range of numbers for dead and wounded at which further conflict will no longer be sustainable commercially, economically, financially, militarily, politically, and within the humanitarian context. So, thus far, yes, not enough people died. Digest that for a moment.
Annually, heads of state and heads of government representing the 193 members of the United Nations arrive to New York City each September for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This year the most common theme echoed forcefully by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Turkiye (2014- ), and others was of a broken institution. Not, however, a body irretrievably doomed to be a pile of meaningless decisions.
Fixable, but for the repair to be effective and permanent those with power had to cede it and those without power had to exercise it.
Critically, unless the powerful accepts the collective will of the majority to do what they do not want to do there will never be a global institution that matters- and acts for and by accountability.
When was the last time that the target of a United Nations resolution did what they did not want to do? Governments embrace what they agree with and ignore what they disagree with. Presently, if one of the five permanent members (China, France, United Kingdom, United States, Russian Federation) of the United Nations Security Council vetoes a resolution, it dies- regardless of the wishes of the ten non-permanent members (with two-year terms) of the United Nations Security Council or the 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly.
The United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council will condemn or criticize one country for acts upon another country. The United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council will condemn or criticize one group for acts upon another. Has the government of the Russian Federation ceased its war with the government of Ukraine? No. Has the government of the State of Israel ceased its war with the organization Hamas and some of its affiliates and supporters? No. Has the government of the Syrian Arab Republic ceased its war against its citizens? No.
Returning to the chosen word… Accountability.
This year there are elections in many countries, including our own. Other countries share our challenges- if none-of-the-above were on the ballot, none-of-the-above might win.
Likely winners will increasingly be a result of the depleting gene-pool theory first deployed in the mid 1980’s by a diplomat at the United States Embassy in Moscow, U.S.S.R.
The depleting gene-pool theory is where the lowest common denominators continue to procreate with one another with the repeating result less capable than the previous litter. Generations of politicians become dumb and then progressively dumber and dumber and dumber.
Would an extinction-level event within the halls of the United States Congress be so bad to ponder? Some Spic and Span cleaner, Lysol disinfectant, and select all new members?
The resolution is to be accountable to self and to others while also encouraging others to be accountable to themselves and to others- particularly those for whom they are responsible.
Welcome To A New Year