Leadership or Expertise. What Do We Need Right Now?

I released a newsletter today briefly touching on the idea of leadership comparing President Trump and President Elect Biden and how they handled themselves relative to the violent riots we have been experiencing in our nation for many many months now. The Left has focused in on the January 6 violence (which is fine) and the Right focuses in on the many months of violence previously in the BLM protests, marches, riots and more. I simply wanted to point out that neither man did a good job being a leader when it came to these issues. Rioting and violence is intolerable and neither man came out strong enough when it was their time to do so. President Elect Biden has been strong when it puts President Trump in a negative light and President Trump was strong throughout the summer, necessarily, when he was calling for law and order in the many cities where rampant destruction and violence was tolerated.

Just to be clear. I believe all of this violence to have its root in malice and evil and the response from true leaders should have been strong no matter what political party would have benefitted more. True leaders do not take stock in whether or not they will be effected negatively by stating what is True. President Elect Biden made sure in each of his speeches this past summer (far too few and far too weak), that he was on the Left side of the political spectrum supporting voters who would ultimately vote for him. There were far too many of those voters involved with illegal activities and Biden ought to have set the consequences aside and called for every city government and every individual to stop the violence and restore law and order. Innocent people were being harmed and their property damaged and lives destroyed all over the country on a daily basis. His behavior was totally unacceptable and for all intents and purposes should have never won the election for his ‘do nothing’ attitude towards that violence. I think we can all agree that we need equality in our nation to be sure. But, the way we go about things is just as important as the result and we are doing a poor job on the journey…which would suggest that the outcome is probably going to be poor as well. True leaders recognize this and inspire other leaders/people to do better.

Now President Trump made the same error. He should have been swift and strong in coming against the riots and violence at our Nation’s Capitol Building. Even though it has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a handful of anarchist nuts started that siege, there were hundreds of Trump supporters that also followed suit and took part. Whether or not President Trump convinced them to the run up of this black event is an irrelevant discussion. He did not call for violence and those people’s actions are on their own heads. The inciting of the riot was done by those anarchists I previously mentioned but the fact still remains that President Trump was delayed in his response and weak in that response as well. It seems both President Trump and President Elect Biden were swayed by politics and in my book that discounts one from being a true leader.

Now there are plenty of political experts that would suggest differently. Their job is to foment popularity and ultimately to gain votes for ‘their guy.’ We have media experts and race relation experts and historical experts and so on and so on. All of these are great but an expert merely has his/her place. They are rarely leaders. They rarely are able to step out of their field of expertise and be able to make wise and common sense decisions. The experts solution is rarely, if ever, the correct one. Sure it is good to gain as much of a broad perspective as possible but when it comes right down to it a leader has to make a choice between this expert and that expert. Relying on experts as a sole means of making decisions is reflective of poor leadership, in my opinion.

Earlier today I read a transcript of a discussion of a couple of gentlemen who headed up a couple of teams of researchers looking into whether or not mask mandates work. Let me be clear, this is not a statement of whether or not masks help or not as they seem to be nominally helpful as a source protection…which means wearing masks might be a loving way to move forward when you are around the vulnerable. They certainly have never been proven to be helpful in protecting anyone as a protective agent. So, it is a kind and nice thing to wear a mask for those around you but it is foolish to think it would protect you because you wear a mask. Anyhow, these researchers determined, by looking at the top 100 counties in the country of positive counts of new COVID19 cases and found that 97 of these 100 counties have either countywide mandated mask wearing and/or state wide mandated mask wearing. This should be an astonishing fact to people but I daresay that most people will brush it off as unimportant.

These researchers also talked about their research in Europe and found the same thing. For example, Italy, which was dramatically and heavily hit with COVID cases early on (March, April and May of 2020) has countrywide mask mandates with severe penalties for not wearing a mask along with military and police force to make the people comply had a much higher surge in the fall and winter than they ever did in the spring. This pattern held true all over Europe. It is true in the U.S. and it is true in Europe and yet our entire approach to the pandemic is based upon two simple tenets…wear masks and stay socially distanced. It turns out that the communities where this is not true have a predominantly lower rate of cases. Why this is I don’t know and this article is not about that. But, back to my original point, our leaders ought to be looking at the facts and coming up with solutions that will not only inspire people but work.

Right now the economic devastation alone ought to cause any logical person to question the current policies and yet again, as I have been talking about, listening to an economist (an expert in the economy) alone is also a bad idea. A true leader takes into account all viable and true information and comes up with solutions that help people. A true leader serves the people. A true leader mandates almost nothing. He/she inspire people to do and be better.

There are actually better answers than what we are currently doing. I am sorry but vaccinations are not the answer. The experts are not correct. Are they a piece of the puzzle? Perhaps. I am personally against them but I would never tell another individual how to proceed in that regard. From a societal perspective I can’t say if it is a good edition to a public policy or not. I, obviously, am against forced vaccines in any way as the risks, for some people, are very grave. The amount of money spent every year by pharmaceutical companies to pay off families who have experience seriously negative effects from vaccines is staggering. These companies are absolutely protected from being sued or charged with any wrong doing. They are required to ‘pay off’ people who have had negative experiences but many of these are irreversible and being paid in exchange for your child’s life or well being is not a good replacement. In fact, this is mostly evil in my mind. But, that is my own opinion.

Here is a better answer. Empower people to make their own decisions on all of these issues. Expert opinion is great but exceedingly limited. It turns out to often be wrong in the long run and it is the leader’s responsibility to cut through all of the ‘crap’ and make good decisions. There are fantastic treatments for COVID19, especially when used early on. The ‘experts’ have silenced the people using these treatments and it is evil. By the way, doctors are not experts. They try their best and they experiment and gain experience and then act accordingly. It is doctors who care very deeply about their patients who try things. Some of these things are very successful and there ought to be an avenue for others to also try those things. Why we don’t celebrate that type of thing can only be because of money in power I imagine. There are powers that be that don’t want answers outside of vaccinations. There are billions of dollars at stake. What other reason could there be?

Also, there are personal tests available in the world that are cheap and easy. They cost about a dollar and they take about 15-20 minutes to get results. We need to extend trust to our people and empower them with the ability to take their own tests and then make their own decisions based upon the results of those tests. Many people don’t want to announce to the ‘authorities’ their own personal health issues and so giving them the chance to know without being forced to expose themselves is a better answer than what we are doing now. It is obvious what we are doing now is not working. Give people the chance to be heroes in their own right and they will predominantly.

The net result of this type of approach (treatment and personal testing) would do more to curb the devastating effects of the pandemic times 10, I believe, than anything we are doing now. Empowering people, especially in our nation, is the fastest and best way to go. Forcing is going to fail at every turn. Forcing based upon faulty information from ‘experts’ is the worst way to go. Encourage, empower, giving a sense of ownership. Those are the answers that a true leader, at least in our country, will move forward with.

So why doesn’t the FDA approve treatments that work or personal and private testing? It has to be money and power. There are no other reasons that make sense. The FDA has always been in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies. The tremendous amount of money involved in the current status quo is beyond comprehensible. I doubt if it will change on its own. We need a true leader. ‘Following the science’ (as President Elect Biden claims he is going to do) is simply other words for saying…’I am planning on allowing the current power and money structure to stay in place. It is what got me elected and that is in the end, the only important thing in our culture.’ In the end, retaining power, control and the flow of money is what gets things done. Being a heroic leader is not in vogue. I don’t even know if we will ever see one again in our nation. President Trump, with all of his flaws, still created economic gains that are unprecedented. Was this enough? No. Did this show leadership? Well, a little bit. However, he didn’t accomplish the wide open opportunity to inspire hundreds of millions of Americans. And so in my book he never operated completely as a true leader of our country. I, unfortunately, expect even much less from soon to be President Biden.

Where are the true leaders? There are some in business but we need some people to step up and take a stand. We are at a crossroads and that is what we need. There are so many other areas in our current culture where this topic is absolutely relevant but I will leave those for another time.