The system is so broken that we need to reset, reboot, and rethink everything. But our last best hope could be no hope at all
Stop picking sides, think real hard, and you’ll come to the only truth on the table: we are not being led. We are being dragged, shoved, mocked, manipulated, and sometimes exterminated by a global cabal of narcissists, opportunists, and cosplay emperors.
With the latest spat between Trump and Musk playing out like a cross between WWE and the Jeremy Kyle Show, it’s clearer than ever that modern politics is no longer governance – it’s merely gladiatorial pantomime, broadcast in real time across TikTok and Twitter, where tantrums trend before the tea time news bulletins.
Politics or Pantomime? Welcome to the Age of Clowns in Power
What we have today sitting at the heads of state are not leaders; they are toddlers with nuclear toys. Their egos are as inflated as their social followings, and their concern for the common person? As tiny as the button mushrooms in their trousers.
We live in a world of over 8 billion people, and we entrust our futures to fewer than 200 heads of state, most of whom wouldn’t qualify for regional management at Asda. Just think about that for a moment: 8 billion people had to choose only 200 people to run things – and this lot is the best we could do?!
“8 billion people had to choose 200 leaders… and this lot is the best we could do?!”
It’s not like exceptional talent and selflessness don’t exist among us anymore. I’m sure you’ll even be able to find examples in your own social diaspora.
The Leaders We Actually Need Already Exist
So, just imagine if the world were led by minds like Mark Pollock, the blind adventurer pioneering robotic exoskeletons to help paralysed people walk again; or Professor Sarah Gilbert, who not only co-developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine but refused to patent it, putting humanity before profit.
Professor Brian Cox, who makes the cosmos accessible while reminding us how small we are – and how big we could be. Or Dr Denis Mukwege, the “man who mends women,” risking his life daily to treat victims of sexual violence in the Congo.
“Democracy was meant to be power by the people – but which people? The ones duped by Facebook posts and Reddit conspiracies?”
Add to that list Dr Kip Thorne, whose mind-bending work on black holes and gravitational waves redefined modern physics, and Dr Fei-Fei Li, the AI trailblazer ensuring that the machines of the future are shaped by ethics and empathy, not just algorithms.
These are just some of the true giants among us – brilliant, selfless, visionary. And yet none of them are in charge. Why?
Probably because the people who could lead us effectively aren’t seeking power, they’re too busy changing the world for the better… and because they’re smart enough, and observant enough, to realise how filthy the swamp of governance really is. And understandably, they don’t want to dip their toes into it.
Tantrums, Tweets, and Toddlers with Nuclear Toys
How did we get here? How’d we end up with a parade of pantomime buffoons occupying the most powerful positions on Earth?? Are we addicted to punishment? Are the masses masochistic? Do we see leadership as just another reality show, tuning in for the drama and staying for the memes?
Why do we keep electing personalities, not people of integrity and substance? Why do we assume that just because someone is rich or famous or brash, they must somehow be qualified to run countries, manage economies, and decide who lives and dies?
“Today’s world leaders are toddlers with nuclear toys – their egos inflated, their empathy extinct.”
Where are the leaders with wisdom, empathy, and integrity? Where are the scientists, doctors, teachers, researchers and masterful economists – those who understand the complex systems that actually underpin modern civilisation?
Instead, we get career politicians desperately trying to climb the greasy pole, eyes on their next book deal or speaking gig, or worse still, the top job!
Meanwhile, they’re completely detached from the realities of the citizens they claim to serve. And if, by some miracle, a decent public servant does rise through the ranks, the machinery of money and influence will chew them up, spit them out, or convert them into just another puppet.
Democracy Doesn’t Work – At Least Not Like This
Monarchies don’t work. Dictatorships don’t work. And here’s the unthinkable: it appears that democracy might not work either. Not in its current form. Because the people voting often don’t know what – or who – they’re voting for. We are manipulated by weaponised algorithms, repeated untruths, and now AI-generated deepfakes so good, even their mums wouldn’t know the difference. Free will is being algorithmically overwritten by clickbait and tribalism. Soon, ‘free will’ will not exist.
Democracy was meant to be power by the people – but which people? The ones duped by Facebook posts and Reddit conspiracies? How can we give these easily-swayed masses the power to elect those with their fingers poised over apocalyptic red buttons?
World War 3 Won’t Be in Trenches – It’ll Be in Code, Clouds and Fallout
Eighty years – nearly a whole CENTURY – after the end of the last World War, we still remember and talk solemnly of the two great global conflicts like they were hard lessons we have learned from. We haven’t.
The rumblings of World War 3 echo louder with each passing month. They’re talking conscription in the UK for God’s sake! As if boots on the ground will win a modern war! It won’t. This time, the global conflict won’t be fought with tanks and trenches; it’ll be fought with drones, robots, AI and weapons that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like sparklers at a bonfire.
“We’re giving the power of life and death to leaders who’d consider human extinction a valid strategic option.”
It always totally astonishes me whenever anyone even mentions the nuclear option in any kind of seriousness. If our so-called leaders are even willing to contemplate such self-annihilation, they are unfit to serve. Full stop. The moment you factor “end of humanity” into your strategic options, you’re not a leader. You’re a lunatic. You need to be locked up.
Time to Tear It Down? A Case for a Complete Global Reset
Maybe there needs to be a big reset. A total reboot. The political systems. The arbitrary borders. The broken economic models. The idea that leadership must come from wealth or celebrity, or military might. Tear it all down and rebuild from first principles. Power from the ground up. Real expertise. Real accountability. Let common sense prevail and logic rule.
However, for that to happen, it would require the sort of catastrophic and insurmountable shock that only a world war could deliver after all.
That won’t work. Because when the last bomb drops, when the final tantrum ends in fallout clouds that enclose the world in eternal darkness and sap it of life, there won’t be anyone left to benefit from the total reset.
No Hope, No Heroes – Just Roaches at the Top and Bottom
Actually, there will be cockroaches. They’ll be the only ones left crawling out of the wreckage, blinking at the gloomy silence, ready to start again, to evolve, to create the next civilisation, to be our legacy. Is that really what we want etched into the fossil records?
“We don’t need kings or celebrities in suits – we need scientists, doctors, and thinkers. But they’re too busy fixing the world to run it.”
Is it too late? Are we really just going to swap the roaches at the top, for the roaches at the bottom in a final act of ideological self-immolation, because we fucked everything up so badly?
You’re probably expecting a final paragraph starting with something like ‘or maybe we can still…’ but I’m too depressed and disillusioned to offer a hopeful sign-off. There’s always possibilities of course, but we haven’t got a real-life James Bond or Ethan Hunt to cut the right wire just as the countdown clicks to the final second. Instead, we’ve got… well, you know the jokers we’ve got. God help us.
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