A 'leaderless' West

It is troubling that the West currently lacks the strong, visionary leaders it desperately needs. Despite our cultural and civilisational advancements, we do not have inherently better leaders than our ancient counterparts. Our recent political reality is a stark reminder that the more cultured we become, the fewer great leaders we seem to produce.

Leadership is a rare and vital trait that transcends the nature-culture dichotomy. It is not just a crucial element in the lives of humans but also of animals as a fundamental pillar of societal and natural progress. It shows a primordial instinct for safety and certainty and the advanced capabilities for social transformations, economic growth, and cultural progress. In essence, it is as natural as it is cultural, as primitive as it is contemporary, and as instinctual as it is rational.

Both humans and animals, primarily mammals, need leadership to maintain and expand group "identity," promote order, protect safety, and ensure generational growth and prosperity. Animal leaders lead because their instinctual need for collective survival naturally guides them as a life force and principle.

It is much more complicated in the human world.

Until recently, some great leaders in the West came from military backgrounds, including Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Bismarck. What is common among them is not only their being military leaders in the first place with the extraordinary capacity to create a new political reality, but also in their facilitation for the social and moral values, traditions, and aspirations to be passed on to new generations with a renewed hope, an enhanced confidence, and an enlarged imaginary horizon into the future. In them, the essential relationship between people and their leader is manifested-the leader, whether military or civic, must ensure safety, prosperity, and intergenerational continuity while setting moral, political, and cultural standards for the people to inspire, feel proud of, follow up on, excel in, and immortalise.

In the animal world, leadership is hardly corruptible. Animal leaders sense themselves always as part of a group or pack and dedicate themselves intrinsically to the welfare of their existence. They act, think, and lead like a collective, never as a single animal, for they have no self or self-interest. Unlike animals, humans have a self and self-interest and are hence corruptible.

Leadership in the human world is as ambiguous as a double-edged sword, used for either excellence or mediocrity with compassion or violence. It is often intricate with desires for power grab, pleasure, and extension, with a tendency for total or partial dominance through intimidation, violence, war, and control. While there are also some forms of altruistic leadership, called servant leadership, leadership is mainly intertwined with power, influence, and dominance.

Despite the publication of thousands of books on leadership, we have seen fewer and fewer leader-like figures emerge with global influence, admiration, and exemplariness. In the political area, there is a noticeable absence of leaders who can showcase a transformative force, improve human conditions, aim for noble goals, mould cultural vibes, embody a grand vision of the West, and provide vital hope for the world. This absence is a grave concern in the current political landscape.

Let us look closely at the current presidential race in the US, which is being competed by two key candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and which will shape the political orientation of the world in the future. Here, we do not focus on what they are discussing but on what they are not discussing or discussing less. The latter reveals more about what they are politically repressing-akin to what Sigmund Freud would call psychological repression-unwanted contents that they try to hide and push into oblivion from public attention.

These contents include, but are not limited to, the astronomical debts of the US Federal government, 35 trillion dollars, to grow unlimitedly; millions of illegal migrants with a prospect of being given in some states voting rights to undermine the legality, legitimacy, and integrity of the current US elections; the prevention of nuclear wars; and the growing threats of the BRICS countries, a collective term for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, driven by the common goal of de-dollarisation to topple the US-led world order and replace it with an authoritarian world order under China's leadership.

This repression on both sides may indicate they are not addressing vital and strategically crucial matters related to the existence, influence, and future of the US. It leads us to second-guess whether they represent the political will and interests of the people in a democratic system, defined as the rule of, for, and from the people, as Abraham Lincoln famously said.

Currently, millions of Americans are suffering from inflation, costs of living, homelessness, high crime rates, a mental health epidemic, and decaying social infrastructure. They are in dire situations more than ever; thus, they also need a more decisive, not divisive, leader. Alas, it seems the candidates are pursuing not what Americans need but what their donors want. If either of them, particularly Trump, who is viewed by many as a hope-perhaps the last hope for people in the US and worldwide-does not represent the vital interests of Americans and the US, the consequences will be too dire to bear.