Send in the clowns

Over millennia, this planet has seen the rise and fall of countless self-proclaimed leaders. Most of them forgotten by now, the rest of them rightly deserving our scorn and jokes. A few visionaries and idealists amongst them failed miserably and faded away with barely a footnote in history. The others – the infamous ones, the usual tyrants, incompetents and outright lunatics have always done their best to destroy the world as we know it. In the past, not having a say in choosing the leaders was something that humanity learned to live with and survive. They would come and go regularly, and there was usually a bit of breathing space for a period before another idiot assumed power. But now…

The last century has seen the steady rise of super-leaders. Individuals who manage to combine all the undesirable traits – despotic, greedy, incompetent and barking mad – have steadily been gaining power, with more than a few clowns this century alone. What’s with people everywhere, at least in the countries where freedom of choice and freedom of expression are not seen as sedition? (A dated concept, this legacy from the British empire, and certainly incompatible with modern democracy, yet applied with gusto by certain governments.) Why do we go on voting for these monsters? Have we all lost our minds?

I’m not going to list the countries, nor even give you some examples – after all, you know which ones I’m talking about. And they are legion: from countries traditionally seen as bastions of democracy, to states pretending to democracy but using charges of sedition (oh, yes, here ’tis again, that all-encompassing word and a government favourite) to shut up dissidents, to dictatorships not even bothering with such niceties as free elections.

It’s our collective fault, you know. Grumbling on Facebook about the situation in your own country or writing an angry blog post (just like I’m doing) about the lack of democracy somewhere on the other side of the world won’t change anything. Only global and synchronised collaboration and resistance can bring about change. But we’re all too complacent to achieve anything, which is exactly how the clowns want us to stay.