Leaders

 

We can feed and clothe everyone,
Teach them to read and write,
Divide and multiply,
Give them the care they need,
Every
Single
Person,
For a few thousand bucks each.
But we don’t.
We are generous enough,
But we are incompetent,
Disorganized;
We fight over details;
We choose leaders who have other priorities --
We are that stupid.
We choose leaders whose souls are vacuums,
With no imagination for anything but their own careers,
Their own self image --
And even that is not original!
They suck up everything good and true
And shit it out
All over the rest of us,
Again and again.

We could thrive, though,
That must always be repeated.
We are blinded by religion,
Ideology,
Ethnicity,
Fear,
A strange fear that ignores the many real threats that we face
In favor of imagined ones;
A fear pressed upon us by authorities
Whose legitimacy derives solely from the power that we gave them,
Though they know even less than ourselves.
We could do it,
Easily,
If we trusted the right people.
But the right people are humble, hesitant.
Honesty is timid.
The right people don't try hard enough to appear trustworthy.
The right people are fools.
We were the right people.