By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ I would like to respond to Artem’s well-conceived article called “The Strength Paradox.” While acknowledging the dramatic galvanizing prowess of the Man with the Plan, Artem opines that the inherent danger lurking in the brain of the unchained game-changer is the possibility, ever-looming, that it will all go to his head. The inspiring revolutionary becomes the tyrant; the religious messiah morphs into the brutal and lascivious cult leader. I have seen it many times in my own lifetime; history is full of such examples, and Artem accurately calls attention to them.
Was Caesar’s ‘crossing the rubicon’ the act of a brilliant man of destiny willing to roll the dice? Surely it was, but why was he butchered in the Roman Senate by his own colleagues? Did Napoleon seize control and build a magnificent army because he was gifted beyond all other men in the art of war? Of course he was – but then what happened in Russia to cause him to fail so miserably? His ego? What about Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world of his day and named 11 cities after himself, only to die of mysterious causes (Mutiny? Dysentery? Fever?) on the road at the age of 32? Was Hannibal’s incredible decision to traverse the Alps with war elephants to surprise the Romans a great bit of gamesmanship or a crazy idea that cost thousands of lives and left Carthage open to counterattack? Was Chairman Mao’s decision to embark on the People’s March in China the brainchild of a visionary leader or that of a narcissistic brute that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths of his own followers?
The list goes on and on from the days of Ashurbanipal to the Vladimir Putin and autocrats such as Kim in North Korea. Many people – and they are not all entirely misguided – ask the same questions about Donald Trump. Here is a man who is literally ‘shaking up the world’ – and it seems to me that it is a world severely in need of being ‘shook up’. But will moderation set in at some point or will Trump succumb to his own impulse to ‘greatness’? Indeed, will this ‘greatness’ express itself in triumphant and beneficial deeds or will it disappear into a jaded, swaying tower-turned-trauma center in his own mind? I am a great admirer of Trump; Elon Musk I am not very comfortable with. Musk has tyrant written all over him, don’t you think? So there seems to be a thin line – dangerously thin – between the utopian visionary and the dystopian fiend.
What is leadership? To me, this is one of the great questions, and I can give some personal examples. When I was young, I was a student who stood out because of my creativity. That’s not a lot of bullshit. I wasn’t so hot in chemistry and biology, but even then my essays were unusual – not for their discipline and mastery – but because of their energy and obvious romance with the English language. Some teachers saw this; others either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Among those who recognised me and encouraged me, a few changed the course of my life in terms of both my intellect and, more importantly, my spirit (a word I use unapologetically). They saw something in me, and I saw something in them. We were never strangers. Indeed, there is a saying “For those who know you, no explanation is needed; for those who don’t, none is possible.”
But what I mean here is that these life-mentors were not just perceptive lovers of literature full of good intentions, they were more than that. They inspired me. I could say the same for some of the coaches I had when I was an athlete. For some you would die in battle; the others could shout all they wanted – and many of them did – and it had no effect. It’s the same with the less than ‘perfect’ woman or man that their lovers can not resist. They just have a special ‘something’. They have ‘it’. But what is or are these somethings and its ? No one knows. Oh, yes there are abundant theories, but – just as with the complex question of ‘creativity’ – nobody knows what makes the artistic or entrepreneurial genius different from the talented, dedicated plodder who wants ‘it’ so badly but doesn’t have….it.
Some call it luck, being at the right place at the right time. Others, they say, could have succeeded just as well had they been given the chance. And it is true. Think of all the young people who died in the wars and who might, had their lives not been cut short, have made great scientific discoveries or written great novels? Or imagine this: somewhere in the world there is a brilliant novel, a manuscript abandoned or rejected and turning yellow in a drawer somewhere. There are withered paintings beside them. If the Puritans had had their way, there never would have been a Shakespeare. If not for his brother Theo, we would know nothing of Van Gogh. Even Kafka nearly ended up in the fire or under a rug in an attic. If you want to take this line of thinking to its extreme – which I am fond of doing – you can even try to estimate the great works of kids who died in infancy or who were aborted. There must have been a da Vinci or an Einstein in there somewhere.
Artem paints a rather favorable picture of bureaucracy, and he is right to do so. Everybody hates it, but it has proved a necessary evil throughout the annals of recorded history and possibly before, depending on how you define it. In other words, there has always been a place for the bean-counters and pencil pushers of any Age; it doesn’t matter if they tabulated their sums with beads or bricks or dollar bills. We truly, undeniably, need bureaucrats in the same way as we need grave diggers and garbage collectors and insurance salesmen. We wish we didn’t, but we do.
But have you ever heard the expression: “A camel is a horse designed by a committee?”
It is one of my favorites. I have to confess, I have never really been a ‘team player’. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I have always been sociable and friendly, always ready to buy everyone a round when it was my turn at the pub. But I have never fit in well with the well-oiled machinery of the company or corporation. In (terrible) truth, I have never been much of a family man or a company man. Crying babies piss me off, and ignoramus bosses are beyond my capacity to tolerate.
Ok, you can say that I am a selfish, ungovernable prick, and to an extent you are right. But it’s also true that, as I age, I experience a newfound tenderness for a helpless babe with his chubby little arms and legs waving at the air; and, more important to this conversation, I have never had the slightest hesitation at getting behind a leader who inspired me to do so. I have always been a boy in search of a father, a student in search of a teacher, a ball-player in search of a coach, a believer in search of a God.
Most of the time, I have not found what I was looking for. Always a misfit as a child, I have remained one all my life though I have crafted social skills enough to meet my needs and get what I want in adequate portions. I often, as do many people, say to myself, argue with myself, how different it could have been if I had just showed up on Tuesday instead of Wednesday and turned right instead of left. But I know that’s a lie. To quote Eliot, “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be…” But what I have done is commandeer my own spirit. I am a great leader in my own little mental nation. In that sense, I am free. I found the revolutionary in my heart, the disciplined soldier in my spirit, to turn a failed, out-of-control life into something meaningful. Does that make me a leader of men? Of course not. A crowd of horny men would not follow me into a sumptuous pussy house even if I had paid for them all in advance.
So I go my own way. I led myself out of the Egyptian wilderness of my own crazy mind; I crossed the deserts formed of the sand in my own soul. But I am a wolf on the mountain side, not a leader of men.
Therefore, I am fascinated, as we all are, by those men and women who, unlike ourselves, really do seem larger than life. And, while it is very true, sometimes tragically true, that their prodigious strength is also their fatal weakness (their Achilles heel), we like to remember those sparkling moments. Elizabeth and Leicester playing cards all night and looking out the palace window at nocturnal London – and England – sprawling before them and under their power; Antony and Cleopatra floating down the Nile not yet ready to commit suicide; Augustinian and his wondrous whore become brilliant Empress – Theodora – in love, passionately together on those nights in Byzantium. Long ago.
Power, they say, is the strongest aphrodisiac, and I really, truly wonder what it feels like to have it. Would I abuse it? I swear I wouldn’t. I sincerely cannot understand why a king, president or even a dictator – one who has power, women, and wealth and who now rules his nation – cannot simply devote his life to the betterment of his people instead of stealing from them, oppressing them, imprisoning and exploiting them. I cannot understand this mentality, I cannot comprehend why they almost always turn the golden apples at their disposal into worm-filled things rotten at the core.
I swear I would be different. But I don’t have the power. I wonder if Nero, Ivan Grozny, Attila, Mao, and even Hitler and Stalin ever had an idealistic moment when they looked out the window at their passing people, caught in history’s trampling, jostling parade, and thought “I love you. I want what is best for you.”
This before they made certain that these people, their people, were slaughtered by the millions. I wonder if I, Eric Le Roy, Mr. Nobody – would be different if I were at the controls. You know, I can dream that I would, I can swear it to you all day long and even sign the documents in blood – and somehow or other I’d likely still manage to fuck it all up. Me in my way, Napoleon in his.
So what will 2025’s Likely Lad, Donald Trump, do, be, and become? History waits. And in truth, none of us, especially not the loudest among us, has any idea. We just sit and search the faces of the other people on the committee.
