Envy

 

It is a curious fact, in need of explanation, that much of the world is currently cursed by awful leadership at once. Justin Trudeau, I would argue, is the worst prime minister Canada has ever had. Joe Biden is certainly in the running for worst US president. Francis is so historically awful as pope some Catholics wonder if he is a sign of the end times. Rishi Sunak in Britain is, at best, a technocratic cipher.

And why is it that, not so long ago, the US, Britain, and the Catholic church all had outstanding leaders at once: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II?

I am reminded of the adage, “hard times produce good men. Good man produce easy times. Easy times produce weak men, Weak men produce hard times.” This may be the cycle.

Reagan followed the appallingly pusillanimous Jimmy Carter and his time of “malaise.” Thatcher followed a period of labour chaos presided over by the forgettable Jim Callaghan. John Paul II followed the notoriously prevaricating Pope Paul VI, the “Hamlet pope,” who seemed not to know his own mind.

Conversely, Justin Trudeau came in following a period of tranquility and prosperity, thanks to the fiscal discipline of Stephen Harper and, to some extent, Paul Martin and Jean Chretien before him. Although Trump’s presidency was superficially chaotic, Joe Biden followed a period of unusual peace and prosperity under Obama and Trump. Francis was elected after JPII and the intellectually impressive Benedict XVI.

I think this tendency to elect medicrities can be put down to envy. In ordinary times, people do not want to vote for someone better than they are. They will actually prefer a mediocrity. They turn to impressive leaders only in an emergency.

This is especially a problem in the US Democratic party. The party starts out representing the bottom half of the US IQ range: there is truth to the old saying that anyone who is not a socialist in youth has no heart, but anyone who is not a conservative once they grow up has no brain. And it is positively founded on envy as its chief principle. So this coalition is going to want to elect people with a lower than average intelligence. This explains a lot.

Winston Churchill is the perfect example  of this envy principle. He had been in government for decades—but he was not popular with his colleagues. They preferred to give the premiership to Neville Chamberlain, a dull mediocrity, perfectly suited, as someone remarked, to be mayor of Birmingham. He blew with the wind.

Only once in the most desperate crisis, did his country turn to Churchill. As soon as the crisis passed, they turned away again, in favour of another cipher, Clement Atlee, “a modest man,” as Churchill described him, “with much to be modest about.”

The sin of envy is all-powerful; it holds us all back. it tears down statues of the great. It holds human civilization back in uncountable ways.