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Have you ever really considered why the world has so many persistent problems? Is the average person so different from any other person in any other culture or nation? Do we really fail to understand one another or is there some other dynamic at work that has always caused conflict and confusion? These are interesting questions for which the answers seem relatively simple. We are not all that different from one another (I mean the average Joe). The common folk all just want a chance and to be able to exist in peace, so it would seem that all the world’s problems remain a dynamic for some other reason.

Top-Down Failure
I have a theory – well it is actually fact – but we can call it a theory for the purpose of this discourse. We shall call it “Top-Down Failure” for lack of a better term. Actually, the simplicity and clarity of this “groundbreaking” theoretical (factual) explanation for the world being FUBAR is obvious. The reasons for historical world changing events throughout history can be placed firmly on the shoulders of one group – the leaders. We have essentially been the unwitting “victims” of terrible leaders for centuries. Of course some would argue that “this or that leader” connected with their individual or collective relative prosperity was FANTASTIC! However, a bad leader here, the death of Alexander the Great, hasty decisions, nationalistic pride and madness and a host of other “Top Down” events have molded our destiny.

Bred Mediocrity
Without going into a history lesson, it is fairly easy to see that even our most adored leaders failed us and the world miserably in the last Century. In the U.S. we were taught that WWI was the absolute fault of Austro-Hungary and Germany, when the actual truth rests more on the shoulders of the Czar, the Habsburgs, the Kaiser and of course King George V. Woodrow Wilson and several other world leaders were not actually superstar representatives of the common man in this catastrophe either. In the end this calamity was a family feud over Imperialist possessions desired not by the masses but coveted by leaders siding with one another in a mirage of alliances and treaties. What a model for ruling the salt of the Earth towards even greater disasters.

The Treaty of Versailles
In war countries go broke, the common man dies, and corporations get rich - to the winners go the spoils. In the case of WW1 Great Britain basically extended and solidified their Imperial territories (providing a model for other nations like Japan) and the allies essentially carved up most of the world. Germany and Russia essentially ended up with the bill and a revolution respectively and not much else. I expect everyone in the allied countries thought these leaders were the “pick of the litter” given the nationalistic hoopla and relative (but short lived) prosperity that followed. Meanwhile the seeds of hatred and extreme nationalism were carelessly sewn.

WW2 to Bush 1
I wonder if anyone thinks about who was sitting on their thumbs as Fascism and Nationalism were festering all about the globe prior to WW2. Japan had take to heart the British way of being an Island to itself as Stalin, FDR and others convinced the masses that their’s was the way. Somehow I doubt that anyone in the heartland of America or farming the rich soil of Alsace Lorraine was worried about killing the other, or anything but their crops and families at the advent of war. Leaders create these grandiose ideas and sell them to the needy masses. Corporations (owned by the oligarchs) have made astounding profits in every war ever waged. When it is not war, it is the economy and some socialistic dogma to further confuse and mobilize the “sheep” into one action or other.

The military industrial complex, that Eisenhower warned of in his farewell speech, took a firm hold some time after the Kennedy assassination and has not let up since. On a worldwide scale, one mediocre or crooked leader after another has goofed (or machinated) their way into the minds and hearts of their countrymen. Allies become enemies at the drop of the hat.
Take Iraq for example; in 1983 Donald Rumsfeld (as special envoy for Ronald Reagan) visited Saddam Hussein and again in 1984 on the same day the UN announced Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran in that war. Given out posture against Iran at the time – hell we probably supplied them. Think about the ramifications of this for a second, maybe we were convinced Saddam had MSD’s because we gave them to him! Now we roughly control Iraq again and are poised to strike against at Iran.

Bush – The Final Frontier
What better example of pure breeding of mediocrity than the current leader of the free world. We bought into this one lock stock and barrel (oil that is). From the faulty intelligence of 911, to the media feeding frenzy of “shock and awe” – this moron continues to make one-bad-decision-after-another. The irony of Rumsfeld appearing like some super hero of the Iraq war after having supported the same regime just demonized and overthrown is something out of a Stephen King novel.

In all my years I have never witnessed such arrogance and stupidity in a President of the United States. We establish a department for homeland security, yet millions of illegal immigrants cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico – unnoticed! Hell, an armored division could have moved through Texas and not have left such a swath. A category 5 hurricane is beating down on New Orleans and no one is prepared – thousands left suffering and waiting in the most industrialized country in the history of mankind. The fascinating thing to me is that no matter what happens, no matter how bad the news is – this idiot just utters the same tagline: “It’s hard work people!”

Failed – From the Top Down
I did not intend to write “War and Peace” here, but I am so astonished at how the vast majority of people in the world have been sold out or led to a lesser state of existence by the people charged with supporting them. The butcher on the corner does not want to see someone in China starve, nor does the factory worker in the Ukraine care to steal the land from someone in Afghanistan – it is the leaders who set these agendas. I think the sooner people around the world recognize just how miserably some of these people have performed, then the sooner many of our problems will be solved. Our only fault in any of this is our tacit approval of these leaders. Every single conflict, each hungry child, any economic strife anyone in the world suffers is dynamically proportionate to either the Machiavellian pursuits of the ruling elite or the machinations of pitifully inept leaders. That is all I have to say about that – but power to the people.