The Headless Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A remarkable aspect of the current uprising in Iran is that it has no leaders. It is entirely organic and spontaneous. Yet it continues, night after night.

Whether by coincidence or otherwise, the Free World is also without a leader, at a time of crisis. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sort of thing that might easily spark World War III. World War I was set off by far less.

Yet Joe Biden is not up to the job. The next option for leader of the free world would normally be the UK Prime Minister; Boris Johnson was holding down the position for a little while. But Liz Truss is in crisis and not even effectively leading her own parliamentary caucus at this point.

Okay, so the German chancellor? Scholz is new on that job and heads a shaky three-party coalition. He can do nothing decisive. Besides, Germany is in an energy crisis.

We are pretty far down the power and influence totem pole once we must all defer to the President of France.

Yet things still seem to be working out well enough for the free world without a leader. The support for Ukraine seems solid, and effective, and they are getting what they need. I understand someone has even set up a crowdsourced fund to buy tanks for Ukraine.

The Freedom Convoy back in February was also a virtually leaderless movement. Much of it was spontaneous.

Moral: leaders are no longer so necessary. Improvements in communication technology let people handle problems on a distributed, decentralized basis. Welcome to the internet. Welcome to direct democracy.

This is exactly why the leaders have been acting wild and autocratic lately. They are hearing the footsteps behind them.