National Leaders

Sometimes the gathered effects of everything that is happening overwhelm the ability and the will to write complete sentences about them, in a weblog or anywhere else. For instance there is the way that a nation's citizens are constrained by their governments to make the assumption that those in the government are the possessors of the best judgment in the land, when in reality there's nothing to distinguish those high officials from the drunken, bullying, brawling habitues of the worst dive in town.

Witness the military junta in Myanmar\Burma letting citizens die by the thousands in the aftermath of an especially destructive cyclone, rather than letting relief supplies be brought in and distributed by agencies from other countries -- unless some way can be found to make it look as if the supplies come from the military itself.

Not long ago, off the Kamchatka Peninsula, a small Russian sub named the Priz, with a nine-man crew, got hopelessly snared 500 feet underwater by 10 ropes from a discarded fishing net. They had no way to escape, just a few biscuits to eat, a little drinking water, enough oxygen for only about 90 hours, slowly fading hopes of being rescued ...and, safely up above, their bumptious, presumptuous, overproud admirals, ministers, presidents, and the like.

Though the Russians didn't, both the U.S. and Britain had the submersibles made for just that kind of mishap, but, preditably and till almost the last minute, the Russian leadership acted in just the way that they had when they let all the 100+ crewmen of the nuclear sub Kursk die after an explosion of some sort near Murmansk a few years ago, rather than accepting outside help in time.

This time, though not till several days after the Priz ordeal began, the current Russian leader, V. Putin, finally realized that his people were never going to be able to free the tiny sub simply by hoping to catch up the sub in their own ropes from above, and, careful of his image, he finally permitted the Americans and the British to bring their stuff in, the latter accomplishing the rescue after a series of other setbacks.

This must be the nature of politics and leadership. Both involve so much nastiness amd indulging of the usual human perversities that too often people with good sense and judgment prefer to direct their energies along other avenues, and the affairs of state are left in the hands of the denizens of the dives.