tl;dr

There is a fundamental problem with leadership in the USA. They don’t seem to exist. The supposed national leaders like Trump and Musk aren’t. They destroy in the name of greed and corruption. They pose as leaders. Our supposed leaders aren’t honest or direct with people. In their own way, all of them lie to us. It is time to have leaders who deal with objective reality and fix problems. People are hungry for real leaders, and current events will only fuel that hunger.

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” ― Jim Rohn

The Problem

I had an entirely different topic teed up for the week. I was thinking about the balance between nostalgia and progress. Then the week happened. I needed to address the rampaging elephant in the room. We have a “leader” who is destroying our Nation through an avalanche of stupidity, raw power, and greed. On the other hand, I was locally offered an example of how current leadership fails. We get more toxic positivity and failure to directly address reality. Instead, we get a filter where only positive things are spoken openly.

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.” ― Aristotle

I always worry when I’m writing from the heart and my heart is angry. I am definitely angry these days. This anger comes from the event we all see unfolding in the news. Trump and Musk are trampling the Constitution with impunity. The USA may not be a democracy in weeks if it still is. Our government is being fed into the chipper shredder. Cruelty, stupidity, ignorance, and incompetence are on display almost beyond bounds. I am also angry at the impotence of the Democrats in the face of this. I am angry at the cowardice and meekness of my work leaders. How anyone with a working brain can see business as usual today is beyond imagination. Yet, this is what I see. Work is just business as usual while a Category 5 Political-Hurricane is making landfall. Disaster and catastrophe are upon us.

It is very clear that most voters are fed up with the Nation’s direction. A clear majority thinks things are broken. I am among them. The whole secret to Trump’s success is that he is different. To many he seems strong and challenges all our norms. This is less about Trump’s qualities than the failures of existing leadership. Enough voters simply ignored his legion of faults and put him in charge. They ignored his endless lies and corruption along with a lifetime of criminal behavior. The reason they did this is a scathing indictment of our pathetic leadership class. A reality TV show star is seen as being better.

“Never confuse movement with action.” ― Ernest Hemingway

The Problem Up Close

“Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.” ― Sabaa Tahir

I got to see another example of how pathetic our institution’s leaders are recently. We had a great internal workshop that brought together one of our big programs. It was great to see the work and all the people. The program has many wonderful, smart, and talented people. The problem is that our leadership is pretty standard these days. Therefore they are shitty and weak. There is little honesty or courage to be seen. It mirrors all the issues responsible for putting Trump in office. It is worth taking a look at why. Once the carnage that Trump and Musk transpires we might get to rebuild something to be proud of. That is if we have leaders worth a shit.

Why is the leadership so shitty? One way of pointing to it is a habit of practicing toxic positivity. Basically, profound and obvious problems are simply ignored in public. The public face is unremittingly positive and any voice that speaks reality is refuted. You cannot talk about problems openly. If you do, you are criticized. The end result is a lack of credibility for the leadership. Whenever they talk about something you really know about, you see the lies. You see the omissions of problems. If you know the ground truth, the gaps with reality are vast. I remember talking to someone at a class I took who told me a story. They had an all-hands meeting where a certain program was lauded. In the afternoon that program was cancelled. Management credibility was too.

They are bullshitting people or they aren’t competent enough to see actual problems. I’m not sure what is worse?

I asked a specific question about an important topic, artificial intelligence. I pointed out that security issues have undermined all the greatest breakthroughs in information technology locally. Search is the primal example from the late 90’s. When Google came out and introduced it, their search was an epiphany. The internet opened up and became something magical. Conversely, our internal search sucks. It sucks because it can’t see the data that would make it work well. We’ve also blown the benefits of smartphones and social media. I wondered “Are we going to blow it with AI too?” It is a reasonable question. Given their track record, we should assume they will fuck this up too. They will certainly fuck this up if they don’t admit the faults of the past.

Yes, I politely asked this without any expletives. I’ll note in passing that this is another way Trump’s norm-breaking signals that he’s different.

Our leader’s response was “Well that was harsh”.

It’s amazing how incapable of taking any critique they are. If they were actual leaders this wouldn’t happen. Rather than welcome someone being honest and direct, they deflect. These “leaders” are more interested in making everything sound good and in control. This was followed by the usual chickenshit bullshit answer too. They’re always on top of things, yet things never get fixed. So, it was another plea for new leadership. It is another reason to think they’ll never make things better. In summary, these attitudes render capable people completely incompetent and unfit to lead. Our culture is prizing toxic positivity, and the comfort of institutions over actual leadership.

Suddenly, I looked at what was happening to the Nation and it became clear. The absolute failure of our usual leaders paved the way for our budding dictatorship. It is on the verge of triggering a Constitutional crisis that will end the USA as a functioning democracy. All because our leaders won’t lead and won’t deal with a reality teeming with problems.

The Solution is a Bigger Problem

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw

Because we have lived with these pathetic leaders for decades, we now sit at the edge of catastrophe. For years people have increasingly hungered for change and actual leaders. This has laid the groundwork for the horrible choice Americans made recently. People are so hungry for leadership that they chose a fake reality show CEO as President. Worse yet, someone devoid of deep ideas with an endless appetite for corruption, law-breaking, and cruelty. Instead of finding brave competent leaders who set an example and solve problems, we have the opposite. The cure is almost certain to be worse. We sit at the precipice of a catastrophe that may effectively destroy a nation.

This seems to be the desire for action and movement of any sort. Most of the leaders today simply cannot deal with the balance between good and bad news. Their collective approach of highlighting the good while ignoring the bad has fueled a slow steady decline. Problems are allowed to fester and grow without relief year after year. In my own institutions, I have witnessed the constant erosion year after year. People across the country see the same as a slow decline. We see the decline in our institutions and feel a growing malaise. It is this feeling and lack of action by traditional leaders that has brought us to the brink of disaster. It has become a habit and is accepted without complaint.

We have the problem of growing inequality and our leadership is drawn from those benefiting from it. They do not feel the weight of our collective problems. Their world is different from those they lead. The additional complication is that fixing things is really hard. The status quo is easy. Destroying things is also very easy. Since lazy greedy people have been in charge they take the easy route. The new easy route is destruction. Destruction is what we are going to get. For many Americans this destruction is going to look like action. This action will ultimately meet reality and that reality is going to be brutal.

Americans are well-to-do and generally prosperous. A big component of this is delivered by the stability of the governance. Without this stability we will start to see economic shocks and prosperity will begin to suffer. The tech base of the country is driven by science funded by the government. This is true of our computer-based tech and medical treatments. Without stability, the economic engines created will start to unravel. Without the government and stable infrastructure, the economy will begin to sputter. National security and defense provide safety and protection. This will begin to crumble too. All of this will begin to hurt people and support for the destruction will end. The better option would be to address problems carefully keeping stability and safety intact while fixes are pursued.

Reality-Based Leadership

What is the change in leadership needed?

We need leadership that deals squarely with objective reality. They need to stop thinking that they can wish cast reality into existence. Instead, they should step up and confront reality and challenge us to fix problems directly. This is the change we need. People are sick and tired of leaders who try to message success and the reality they want. Leaders should be honest and direct asking people to do the hard work and sacrifices to implement genuine repairs. For too long our leaders have pretended that things can fixed easily with minimal effort.

These leaders are rejected by institutions. They challenge the status quo and produce discomfort. For too long this has been rejected as unacceptable. Instead, the institutions should adopt a spirit of continuous improvement. Do not rest on past accomplishments, but seek new advances. If we were always seeking to be better, we might have avoided today’s crisis. Ultimately the thing missing is the sense of progress. The stagnation and decline are the seeds of destruction now being harvested. We need to have the opposite. If people know that things are being fixed and improvement is afoot they will go with that. Ignoring reality and wish casting success is not the path to stability.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ― Peter Drucker

tl;dr

There is no doubt that our government is wildly inefficient. The USA could benefit greatly from dramatic improvement. At the same time, virtually every function of government is necessary and desired. The government is the large-scale structure of order for humanity. Our government is inefficient primarily due to a lack of trust. This leads to many expensive checks on everything done. Changes by untrustworthy corrupt leadership will do little to fix anything. It will just make the underlying problems worse. In addition, the destruction of the government yields chaos and suffering. Instead, we need to fix government by getting at the core of mistrust.

The State of Things Today

“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” ― Peter F. Drucker

I work for the government and I can see gross inefficiency everywhere I look. The situation is dire and needs to be addressed. The work I do is itself inefficient and my support has a vast overhead that does little or nothing productive. Nothing would make me happier than seeing this improve dramatically.

Right now, the fight for government efficiency is being taken up by DOGE led by Elon Musk. I have no doubt that it will be a complete failure and disaster.

The reason why DOGE will fail is twofold. People like Trump and Musk are part of the reason the government is so inefficient. Much of what we do is related to corruption and greed. The second reason is their desire to simply remove government from business’ way. Regulation and government are a societal hedge against business irresponsibility toward society when profit is at stake. This will simply create destruction and in the long run power the very reasons government is so inefficient to new heights. We will just see the government gutted with corruption and greed supercharged. Of course, it is most likely that DOGE is a trojan horse for a huge executive power grab and assault on the separation of powers. Efficiency is simply a marketing label to make DOGE seem like a good idea to people who aren’t paying attention.

I work for a contractor doing government work supporting our National defense. We are a GOCO, government-owned contractor operated. As such we have to comply with all sorts of regulations, directives, and laws. We are incredibly inefficient. Many of our employees spend their effort executing low-value work defined by the government’s directives. Those directives are usually a combination of executive and legislative actions. In that sense, it is the will of the American people. A good bit of these directives directly impact me and the time I spend at work. These are a whole bunch of no-value actions that you must do. They add nothing to the science-engineering product I work for.

The key question is why do I have to do all this shit? Most of this shit has low value and detracts from my real efforts. In addition, this all costs a lot of money to pay “support” people. Time away from being productive is another drain on money. Together it equals government waste and lack of efficiency. Moreover, these burdens of time and money have grown without bound my entire career. When I examine the underlying reasons for virtually every inefficiency there is a common thread. All of this stuff is related to trust; or more specifically, a lack of it.

One of the big drains on my time is mandatory training. All the training is based on executing various regulations to show compliance. The training is generically horrible and takes a lot of energy to pay attention to. We have other processes like our timecard, our accounting, document control, and information classification that all cost a lot of time and money. Our purchasing process is extremely time and documentation-heavy. This costs extra money. When you examine the underlying thought process it all equals a lack of trust. It requires a mentality that anything we do needs to be checked. We need to make sure I don’t fuck up or do something wrong. My professional experience, judgment, and knowledge are suspect and useless. It is really simply a vast statement of lack of respect too.

I cannot be trusted to make decisions.

What is Government For?

Humans are social animals. Groups of humans working together is the sole reason for our success. Physically, humans are truly weak. Yes, we have great intellect, but most of it is useless without other people. If humans were just individuals they would be food, and likely gone extinct. At the largest scale, the ability for humans to cooperate is government. It is essential for a town, state, or nation. The government is the very identity of our collective groups. The USA is defined by the government. This makes the hate of the government by so many, basically self-hatred.

Humans have a distinct limit on their capability to interact with others deeply. Evidence is that the limit is on the order of 100-150 people. The success of humanity is operating at the level of thousands or millions of people. To do this we need systems and institutions we all can coordinate our actions through. The assemblage of these systems and institutions is government. The government operates through a rulebook we know as the law. Thus the government coordinates the actions of the entire population. It cannot be distinguished from the people themself. The government is us. All of this should run on faith in the institutions. This is trust. What we really have in the United States today is a complete lack of trust.

Ideally, the government should be working for the best outcomes for the population. This is not happening. The way this has occurred is a draining of societal trust. It is a combination of social media, wealth inequality, corruption, and change that’s undermined it. The reaction to all of this is regulation. Every break in trust is met with regulation and regulation is expensive. A big part of this is the behavior of corporations. Basically corporate interest is now purely greed. That greed is not moderated by ethics or social cost. If they can make more money they will lie, cheat and steal. They will discriminate or pollute without any limits. Because of this we regulate and use that as the hedge to unbridled greed. The problem is that regulation is a very inefficient way to achieve the necessary limits.

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” ― Edward R. Murrow

Breaking the System

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” ― James Bovard

In all likelihood what the Trump administration will do is destroy much of our system. We can expect much of government to be shattered and broken in a couple years. The function of everything broken will simply drop. The need for these functions will not disappear. Every part of our current government is built to solve a societal problem. The inefficiency of the delivery is a completely different issue. If the government function is destroyed the problem will assert itself anew. It will not be efficient; it simply won’t be there.

We do need to recognize that our current inefficiency is the product of largess. After World War 2 the USA stood atop the world economically with wealth and power unrivaled. The only hedge against this supremacy was worry about the threat of the Soviet Union and nuclear armageddon. This allowed the USA to be extremely inefficient and get away with it. Those days are gone now. The USA is extremely rich, but also extremely unequal. The wealth is concentrated amongst a very small group. This state is corrosive to social trust and the seeds of revolution. It leads to instability that either leads to chaos or authoritarian rule. Neither outcome is good for a Nation.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” ― Aldous Huxley

How a grifter like Trump or a greedy oligarch like Musk can fix this defies logic. People like them are the very reason the inefficient system exists. At the end of their destruction of government, the likely response is even less trust. That lack of trust will yield even less efficiency. The outcome will be chaos and suffering followed by even less trust and greater needless cost. Their efforts will not end well. Because the real root of the inefficiency is not addressed, the problem will simply compound. In the end, the population as a whole will suffer.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ― Alan Moore

Fixing the System

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ― Ernest Hemingway

Americans would be far better off if we fixed the system by repairing it. As always to fix something, you need to know what is wrong with it. Fortunately, the root cause of government inefficiency is simple. A lack of trust. Or more to the point the lack of trust. The thing to realize is that failure of trust is extremely expensive. The government red tape is mostly related to not trusting our fellow Americans. We waste most of our money making sure other Americans aren’t wasting or stealing money.

“Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government– in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.” ― Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman is the architect of shareholder value being the sole purpose of business. He is the founder of the level of inequality we see today. One of his mistakes was that wealth provides a way to pay off the ref. Today, the refs are owned by the business. His perspective like almost all extreme points of view is out of balance. Today, we are living with the consequences of this oversight and mistake. It is important to see how this mistake contributes to government being inefficient. Government becomes the friction society needs to control excesses of greed and power.

There are a bunch of steps we should be taking (and won’t any time soon). Chief among these is corporate governance. We would be far better off if corporate interests were aligned with the population’s interests. If greed was tempered with social and societal good, regulation could be moderated. Instead, we exist in a world where corporate decision-making is pure greed. Shareholder value is their North Star. Regulation is the only thing standing between them and ethical and moral crimes. Now corporate interests and oligarchs can buy the law. If the regulatory environment (the administrative state) is wrecked they will run wild. A catastrophe will follow at some point. Trust will plummet further and the reaction will end up being opposite to the intent. Society will be harmed and the population will suffer. This will not end well at all.

“None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have faith.” ― Paulo Coelho