Sunday, December 10, 2017

The Person and the System of Governance

I would like to make it clear that I love authority. I’m a doctor and a specialist and a sub specialist. You simply do not get to that level of authority without respecting learning, education, leadership and frankly, being a follower. I love being a follower. I love learning. You have to be a great follower to become a leader.
I’m also a ship’s captain.  In sailing my leadership and decisions not only put others at risk but myself as well. In medicine this only occurred in infectious disease and talking with psychotic and dangerously insane people. Mostly in medicine you don’t share the risk of decisions as much as you do at sea.  Still if I said the wrong word I’d be dead to day, given the histories of so many of my patients.  Eventually I became a solo sailor. As a solo sailor I didn’t have to “worry” about others as much.
In medical practice I rose to the heights of being a consultant with my own business, a ceo with a corporation.  That’s success story, far more than I ever envisioned.  I’d been happy as a country gp.  I married unhappy women with different dreams. I hope they found what they were looking for.
The trouble today is not with the System of Governance.  It’s with the people who hold those positions.
I don’t like Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister.  I don’t like his decisions. I must follow them for now though I would like to see him impeached or removed . I fear the amount of damage he does will surpass that of  his father’s years of favouritism, corruption, debt and lies.
I don’t think that leadership is attracting the kind of people it once did. I actually admired Mr. Harper and even liked Mr. Turner.  I thought Mulroney and Chrétien were really powerful men. Mr. Martin was an extraordinarily  man.  I might not have agreed with all their policies at all times but I respected them.
The leadership today personally seems sketchy.  There’s a weakness at the core. I see it not just in the Prime Minister but throughout the beurocracies. It’s National and Provincial and Urban. Too much crime and graft and greed and sloth.
The famous Hamlet quote“Something rotten in the state of Denmark, “ comes so readily to mind.
I will follow. I’m not Bonhoeffer.  Like the Beatles,  “I don’t want a revolution.”
But I really would like leaders I could respect. Smart people with vision and character. Not weak, stupid people.  Not the Justin Trudeau’s of this world.   They have too much  greed and are far too shallow and false.  Such people rely on their position and guns that maintain that position.  Chamberlains really. Cowards. Misguided. False.
I admire the System of Governance but sure wish I could admire the person.

No comments: