Fool-Creating System

We have an overabundance, a surfeit, a plethora--yea, verily!--a veritable cornucopia of Fools. Now whose fault is that? Ours for electing them, as I keep pointing out? But what if Our choices are limited to Fool A, Fool B, Mega-Fool C and Damn Fool D? Is it Our fault then?

Sadly, that's what We have every time an election period squats in Our calendar. It seems obvious, but somebody has to say it: What We have is Fool-creating system.

And it's working perfectly.

Here's the rub: To participate in the Fool-creating system--the political election process--one can either be above-average, average or below-average. Or as I like to call it, a potential leader, a potential bureaucrat or a potential felon.

If you're a potential leader, an above-average person or an average person with true passion, the whole Fool-making process is anathema to you, like pouring fish guts into your morning coffee. There will come a time when the whole torpid stupidity of the process--either at the election level or when you inhabit Foolsville--drives you out of the Fool-creation system. You have to leave: The whole system is contemptibly beneath you.

If you're below-average, you see the Fool-creation process as Easy Street. Having no either real capacity, you will try to make it Easy Street and eventually (We hope) you will get caught and either be forced out or dragged out, supposedly to jail but more likely to a higher-paying "consultant" job. The trick, of course, is to avoid that nasty jail term thingy that the really stupid ones get slapped with.

So what's left? A herd of barely-average folks "at the top"--elected Fools--leading a herd of below-average folks--government careerists--who are too aware of their own limitations to go where competence is a requirement. And a smaller pack of below-average Fools who haven't been caught yet.

Is this a formula for leadership? Weed out the best players--through sheer inertia, innuendo, debasement and threats, if need be--and encourage thick-skinned, dim-witted bench players to take the field and play positions they can't handle? While leaving the door open for cheaters to roam the sidelines and stands?

Yeah, there's a system aimed at success. So come November, Our choices are, inevitably, Fools. There simply isn't anything else to vote for.

So is it Our fault? Yes. We have allowed the system to evolve, by supporting a media more intent on gossip than facts, by supporting a party symbol rather than evaluating leadership, by focusing on ideology rather than progress, by being largely indifferent to reality and focusing obsessively on opinion, by letting the below-average not only get away with their weaseling, but by actually making many of them heroes...simply because they're "My" weasel.

Can We change the Fool-creating system? Not immediately. This kind of lumbering, doddering, sewage-spewing clunker isn't fixed by tinkering or by slapping paint on the whole thing. Nope. What will probably do the job is smashing it so hard it breaks, to literally rip the system apart by overwhelming force and imposing--either through will or the exigencies of urgency--a new system.

Yeah, that sounds suspiciously like a revolution, like some sort of uprising that storms the walls and takes no prisoners. Sounds like it. Sounds ugly, too.

But then again, We gotta do what We gotta do.


The Jenius Has Spoken