In the Land of Opportunity unemployment is high, healthcare is out of reach and unsightly poverty is harder to hide.  

Bread is scarce –read little left of a crumbling welfare system- so an impotent political class is intently focused in putting up a Circus to entertain a society which is ever morphing into an unruly mob.

This is the cauldron which places populist “leadership” at the helm of our heavily armed and increasingly violent society.  The required skillset is to adeptly express hatred and frustration in the loudest and -now very fashionably- most vulgar way possible.

Populism knows no moral boundaries and has no allegiance but onto power itself.  

Look around the world, ours is an era ripe for a toxic blend of brute and cunning leaders. The “blossoms” are popping up amid democracies throughout Latin America, Southeast Asia, in ancient and civilized Europe, and now Israel the only democracy in the Middle East and in the U.S. the most powerful and tested democracy in the world.

The new era of of “strong men” certainly seem to validate the mantra: “become a bully and see the world!”  The disenfranchised who empower those truly “bad hombres” couldn’t care less, they stand to lose anyway but they surely gloat on seeing the bullies take on the establishment.

All of the above is not to exalt the other class of technocrats who utterly fail despite their grand ideals and suave manner.  Either they remain entangled in legalistic red tape or under the guise of abiding by the system of checks and balances avoid the use of executive powers and cannot get past a constant stalemate of inaction.

The enemy is within, “Leaders” are nothing but a grandiose reflection of our very selves. No this is not a case of the wise leading others, instead it is the empowered egos indulging in the ugliest weaknesses and vices.

Granted, not all of us that think or act as monstrous dictators but an increasing number use the polls to express anger and frustration.  Close call elections leave no clear mandate, on the other hand landslide victories might just as well express nothing other than contempt.