Western Political Leaders are Parasitic PMC Types Without any Redeeming Qualities

If you have spent any time looking at the type of people who keep on getting elected to positions of political power in so-called western democratic countries as “diverse” as USA, France, Spain, UK, Canada etc- it is hard to deny that almost every single one shares certain important characteristics. Firstly, they lack any political ideology or world view. This is in sharp contrast to the type of people who occupied positions of political leadership in western countries during the first three decades after end of WW2. While many of them had all sorts of personal quirks and less than admirable personal lives (JFK’s womanizing, LBJ’s views on many topics including race, Nixon’s whole personality etc), you cannot deny that they had a worldview much larger than themselves and were actually concerned about their role in history.

Now compare these leaders from the pre-1980 era to somebody like Reagan- who did not have any worldview beyond some nonsense about American exceptionalism. Then again, Regan looks like a real statesman compared to people like Bill Clinton, Dubya Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden. Note that this degeneration is much more widespread and unlike in previous eras, there are almost zero people with a worldview larger than themselves in even the second or third levels of leadership in either political party. It is as if every person in politics today had no vision or worldview larger than whatever is required to obtain a corporate sinecure afterwards- whether its in the form of a seat on multiple corporate boards, unusually large advances on books, podcasts or some other “legal” scam. They are also, unlike their predecessors, not able to enact large changes which would improve the lives of those who voted them into office.

This problem seems to afflicts other western “democracies” as well- even those with significantly different political systems. Compare people such as Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou or François Mitterrand to Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron. If those names and their achievements (or lack thereof) are not familiar to you, have a look at how UK went from Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson to Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson. While some western countries, such as Canada, never had impressive leaders at any time in history- some of the ones in first three decades after WW2 (Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau) had a positive impact on their country unlike later scammers and clowns such as Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau. The same pattern is true for political leaders from other marginal western countries from Spain and Portugal to Australia and New Zealand.

At this point, some of you might wonder if the three decade long period of massive economic expansion in post-WW2 west is the reason why many of the leaders from that era are remembered more fondly than their current day counterparts. While there is an element of truth to the idea that people have warmer memories about political leaders who presided over prosperous times than those who drew the short straw, it is hard to deny that many of the socio-economic, institutional and legal changes passed in many western countries during the first three decades after WW2 represented very large deviations from the previous status quo and were often highly controversial at that time. This is true whether we are talking about civil rights, women’s rights and immigration reforms in 1950-1970 era USA or nationalized healthcare and greatly expanded support for social programs and higher education in 1945-1965 era UK.

The same is true for large scale socio-economic and political changes in post WW2 Germany, France and post-Franco Spain. My point is that, it is clear that the average caliber and competence of western political leadership between 1945-mid 1980s was significantly higher than the lawyer PMC types who seem to dominate the political institutions of those countries during past 2-3 decades. While there are numerous theories about the reasons behind this shift, it is hard to ignore that later generations of PMC-type parasites and D-rate actors were elected to office in western countries by a majority of the voters. Moreover, such people were around in the first 3-4 decades after WW2, but seldom achieved great political success during that era. Clearly there was some sort of cultural or mindset change during the 1980s/1990s which led to PMC parasites becoming the dominant type of personality in politics throughout multiple western countries with diverse electoral systems in a short timespan.

What do you think? Comments?