America is Dying

Retired General James Mattis, President Trump's former Secretary of Defense responded to The Atlantic (June 6th, 2020), on the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis: "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people - does not even pretend to try. Instead Retried to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequence of three years without mature leadership".

"Leadership" is the key word to analyses in order to understand the leaders of the era in which we live in.

Three basic qualities are required from a true leader. First, he must have a charismatic personality. Charisma is a born trait of leadership and personal charm that generates great popular support. A trait that manifests the idea of "I will follow that person through hell". The second quality required from a leader is wisdom, in the sense of the ability consider and decide, level headedly, what is the wheat and what is the chaff, what are the right priorities, what is the right thing to do and more than that, what not to do, in order not to cross the border between courage and stupidity. The third quality required from a leader is to be a human being. They must set a personal example, project reliability, be sensitive to the problems of those who serve under him and behave not just as a ruler but also as an educator.

The leader's supreme responsibility is all inclusive and cannot be divided, whether the leader executes a vision or idea, moves people into action, or carries out a mission. He is the source, the innovator and the developer. He has the longest and widest view. He asks what and how, not why and when. He does the right thing not things right. He strives to expand his scope of responsibilities.

Unfortunately, the era of the truly great leaders has ended. Roosevelt, Eisenhauer, Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, Mau, Ben Gurion, Gandhi and Nehru - we don't have leaders like these today. This day and age, the first test we, as citizens, put our leaders through is whether in their speech and actions they unite or divide us. I wholeheartedly agree with Gen. Mattis' above statement. I can attest that my own prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his speech and actions, divides and not unites. The question is why do divisive leaders do that? what is their motive? I can think of a few reasons.

The first would be their wishes to preserve their rule. If they can convince their political base that the opposition, the media, Deep State, law enforcement and justice system are guilty of everything that is going wrong in the country they have a reason to ask that base to give them the mandate, extend their term in office so that they can rectify all the wrongs that supposedly they bear no responsibility for.

The second reason I would call the "strong leader" syndrome (instead of the enlightened leader). In the world of fake news, the entire values set we grew up on went hay wire. Lies are Alternative Truths and everything that in the past was illegitimate has become legitimate. In a photo where we saw President Obama eulogizes slain children we saw him choking on his tears' mid speech. President Trump communicates via the cold and alienated Twitter. Obama walks down the street, hand in hand with the people. Trump walks down the street surrounded by bodyguards, disengaged from his citizens. Obama's speech is inclusive, Trump's threatening. The Police's job is to maintain law and order and protect the citizens. The National Guard's job is to step in during civilian emergencies. The military's job is to fight enemies, beyond the borders of the country. Trump insists on deploying the military against his citizens as his first priority. It is clear he is power drunk. The message he sends to the American people is whatever we can't solve with force we will solve with more force!. Unfortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu suffers the same syndrome. The product of the above equation between the ruler and his citizens is therefore not unity, equality and solidarity but rather one of rulers and natives alienated to one another.

When officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to George Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 43 seconds! While the later was lying on the road next to his police cruiser he was likely convinced that he was following his president's messages.

A president that needs to unite families who have lost 110,000 relatives to COVID-19, solve unemployment for tens of millions, contend with civil protests that spread all over the country and is fueled the "lava" of millions of African American citizens suffering from blatant racism and others who protest against it, that president finds time to go to Florida for the weekend to watch the launch of the first American private sector spaceship, an endeavor that the president had nothing to do with but provided him with a powerful photo op!

When one sees that in Manhattan, the capital of the world, refrigerated tractor trailers parked every couple of blocks and loading corpses of COVID-19 victims, Fifth Ave. is boarded up to fend off rampant vandalism, one cannot but whisper to one's self: this is the number one superpower in the world, a superpower that significantly contributed to the world in every field is now dying. How sad!