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>The Western leadership cult is a self-fulfilling prophecy. With everybody believing in leaders (or sufficient percentage of people, at least), the leaders gain momentum by sheer power of belief invested in them. The people (aka sheeple, as I heard it spelled) will spot the leader and follow him, because they believe they need one.

Ah, now I see the point you are making and it is indeed an interesting one. But I think the phenomenon in modern American society is more a fascination with individuals who stand out in some fashion - and then a desire to expose them as flawed, react emotionally to having been "betrayed" by their lack of perfection and and revelling in their downfall, wallowing in schadenfreude Hero worship isn't really very long-lasting. Consequently people in prominent position are seen as either Gods or Devils, where in fact they are usually humans who are no more or less evil than their peers. I am disturbed by a tendency to demonize political opponents.

I see what you mean about the self-fullfilling prophecy of investing leaders with power and then following them because of a fascination with them as "powerful".

But if there were ever a case of "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" it is in western society, since power is so diffuse. Even if one sees the US as a corporate oligarchy, it is certainly one constrained by so many powerful forces that is must behave itself in a way quite surprising for so much power. As a historian I am fascinated by so much power excercised so responsibly ( by historical - not morally absolute - standards. )

Our great War for Oil has resulted in record gas prices. Either we are not very good at wars of aggression or perhaps that really wasn't the primary motive. ( a real War for Oil would entail seizing Saudi Arabia, expelling the Saudis, and taking control of foreign workers who actually make the place work anyway <g> ) If our goals in Iraq were entirely selfish, the smart play would have been to either ally with Saddam or, after overthrowing him, ally with the Kurds, hold the north and let the Shiites and Sunnis have at it. That would have been pretty cynical but would definitely have been to our advantage.

I think in regards to issues of power, we ( the US and Europe ) are off in unexplored territory. Things are getting too complex to manage in a heavy handed fashion. Our experiment is democracy is still just that, an experiment. Fortunately it is a dynamic process.

Meanwhile there is a good portion of the planet is mired in government by theocracy, kakistocracy, or kleptocracy. I am reluctant to look to them for approval or advice.




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>The stalinist use of personal cult (as a variant of leadership cult) is actually quite interesting: while they officially believed in the power of masses, and did not believe in psychology, specially psychology of the masses (qv at Wilchelm Reich), they employed it practically, building on the huge legacy of worse than leadership cult. While the West believes (and hopes) that the leader will emerge from the masses (quite marxistically) when one is needed, these guys made sure there weren't any important leaders except the big kahuna on the top. Because of the patriachal psychology of the Russian masses of the time, who saw the Emperor (aka czar aka tsar) as not just a leader, but as, literally, a father of the nation, infallible, infinitely wise, powerful etc. Stalin just took that legacy and used it.
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>Tito also made sure there are no leaders but him, except that after 1952 or so they weren't evaporated, just put aside. Preparing for his death, a system was brought into existence where we had a collective president (8 members - one from each member state and two provinces), and the chairman of this presidency was rotated annually. Likewise the presidents of both houses (federal and state levels) were rotated annually... and I think this went down to mayor level. There weren't any chances of anyone being a leader, when one can't keep an armchair longer than a year.
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>And despite the mantra that "the system crumbled as soon as Tito died" - the crumbling wasn't actually felt for almost ten years.
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>To illustrate the leaderless feel - in 1978 we (mathematicians of the IV year) went for the graduation trip to USSR. At the obelisk in front of Ermitage, a guy (private entrepreneur?) took a group picture of us, and then asked "who's the eldest?" - who's in charge, who's boss. We just looked at each other. We haven't bothered to elect anyone, didn't feel the need. So my roommate and I volunteered to collect the money and pay the guy when he brought the pictures that evening.
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>>Western civilization was rather clear about all this in the 19th century until liberal guilt had the 'intelligensia' buying into Marxist rubbish. ( They certainly believed it more than Stalin did - he called them 'useful idiots' )
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>>And of course it is ironic that the "Fuhrer princip" was most important in the so-called 'socialist' empires.
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>That's the main reason I (already said I) rank stalinism just a razorblade's thickness above nazism. That was socialism by just name.