Walter Russell Mead: Worry about Global Weirding, Not Warming

Wally Mead is one of our best social commentators and this article is no exception.  The bottom line is that our human world is changing faster and faster and most of the technocratic elite who 'govern' us got into their positions not by innovation but by learning the rules really well.  This is why lawyers, the ultimate rules mavens are so over represented in leadership.  Our elite schools reward conformity from an early age (you need to start prepping for Harvard by 14) and replicating what the teacher wants, creating this conformist conveyor belt.  But change cannot be held back and the technocrats with their 3 point programs and detailed regulations and inflexible bureaucracies are unable to cope.  The slow motion collapse of Social Democracy is just a symptom of the demise of the technocratic, managerial culture that underlies it.  Must read internet here.

The mismatch between the small ‘c’ conservative ideas of our leaders and chattering classes and the upheavals around us makes the times even more dangerous than they have to be.  The crew is rearranging the deck chairs instead of preparing the life boats — not because they don’t want to help the passengers, but because their minds have no room for extreme events beyond the bingo, shuffleboard and dance contest that were scheduled for today.

These last few days that sense of the good ship Denial rushing headlong towards Niagara Falls seems particularly strong, and not just when one looks at the Washington debt limit discussions.  Look, for example, at Europe.  Not since the 1930s has the incompetence, incapacity and selfish shortsightedness of Europe’s governing class been so shockingly on display.  For eighteen solid months Europeans have been trying and failing to come to grips with the economic crisis of the eurozone.  And for eighteen months they have ignominiously failed.  Solutions are still possible — but only if European policy makers wake up to the realities around them, and fast.

While their fecklessness endangers the global economy, the Europeans are simultaneously knocking down what little is left of their defense establishments — to the point where the Obama administration (sounding more like Dick Cheney every day) is telling the Europeans that their incompetent naïveté threatens the survival of NATO.  None of this stops European leaders from erecting one fantasy on top of another in a bewildering series of cloud-palaces: global carbon treaties, anti-death penalty campaigns, regional associations across the Mediterranean.  Every species of quackery and flapdoodle finds a home and a subsidy in Brussels.