Leadership According to Jean

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A GREAT LEADER ?

By Jean Saintot, citizen of the French Republic and would-be dictator

When Jonathan Wingrove, who happened to be my roommate during my international exchange year in U of T, shamefully blackmailed me into writing this newsletter on how to become a great leader in his stead, I saw it as an opportunity to basically roam about the Supreme Galactic Council. For your information, the Supreme Galactic Council is an association I created with some friends, and whose formal end is the independence of Picardy (the uninteresting, rural region of Northern France where we happened to be born), its merging with Canada into the Empire of Picardy, and eventually, the transformation of the world into a giant sandwich factory. My idea was therefore to inform you all of how much fun it would be to do so, and how the fact the only type of food left available would be ham sandwiches, and how it would put a halt to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

But then he told me I had to talk about actual historical figures, so I had to actually think about what it takes to be a great leader. The following text is the result of my musings. Feel free to lacerate Jonathan’s head with an iron chain if you’re not satisfied with them.

My idea is that you don’t need much to be a great leader. Depending on the space time you happen to live in, it is actually quite easy.

For instance, King Louis XIV of France just had to be born to become a de facto major player in the European political scene of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The same could be said about George W. Bush in more recent American History.

Birth, however, may not always be sufficient. For instance, Louis XVI was born a king, but he got beheaded. This leads us to the conclusion that what we can unscientifically define as “a certain style” is a necessary element of greatness. Louis XVI was a sexually powerless, easy to influence, pathetic nerd who preferred to design clocks rather than governing France. No surprise he ended on the scaffold.

Whereas another famous king such as Aragorn (son of Arathorn, and heir to the throne of Gondor, NDLR) does have charisma, in the form of two impressive swords, facial hair, an ability to make powerful speeches so that people go get killed on the field in his name, and a general impression of coolness.

Birth and a certain style : this is what it takes to become a leader. One could say, there are certainly other criteria. But I don’t think they are indispensable. Actually, the only other thing you need to become a great leader, is comparatively smaller people.

Let me explain myself. I will refer to prominent theories of Political Philosophy and the various sociological observations I made when I was in Canada.

Scientifically speaking, great leaders arise in times of trouble, that is to say, when people are weak and need protection. Great leaders arose in the childhood of Mankind. And when you think about it, most great leaders we think nearly all belong to remote periods of time : Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix, William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, etc. Such people basically became famous because they proved efficient at defending their peoples and slaughtering others. In other words, they were great, not necessarily because they were per se great, but because everybody else was weaker, ‘smaller’ in a sense.

Things began to change a while ago, when democracies started to spread all over the place. Democracy is a wonderful system of government which consists in the people governing itself, either directly or through elected representatives. Modern democracy stems from Hobbes’, Locke’s and Rousseau’s theories that for some reason, the political union of men arose from contracts among free individuals.

You may not know this but in France, our system of government is based on this idea of social contract. Every five years, we gather on the Place de la Nation in Paris so as to draft the social contract that binds us together. Arguments about what to write last weeks, given we are sixty million of us and there’s no room for everyone, and everyone is talking at the same time.

When everybody has agreed upon the basic ideas, we all line up and sign the social contract individually. Really, this is quite great, and it’s a sad thing you weren’t there. People do feel empowered when they sign the social pact. In other words, they become great : for no man has more say than they had in the political decisions that were taken.

I don’t know if you have the same system in Canada. I heard that you did not all gather once in a while to sign the agenda and that you elect people to do so, in the hope that they will stand by their words. But roughly speaking, the basic idea is the same : it is the people that governs, and therefore, everybody is great.

So democracy marks the end of the figure of the great leader. Everyone becomes great. And, once there is no one great anymore, everyone becomes mediocre. Democracy has a tendency to turn great things into mediocre ones. Undemocratic times produced Aristotle, Racine, Shakespeare, Tolstoi; democratic times mass-produced reality TV, soap operas and pop music. Undemocratic times produced Napoleon, Bismarck, Stalin and Churchill; democratic times produced Jacques Chirac, Jean Chrétien, Silvio Berlusconi and George W. Bush.

Canada is certainly the country in which democratic ideas are the most developed. I spent almost a year in your crib, and, let me tell you, you are the most politicall correct bunch of arseholes I’ve never met. No offence, but who would like to live in a society that has almost no unemployment, no racism, no corruption and no hatred ? Life is extremely boring in your country, not because you have problems, but because you do not seem to have any.I was glad to go back to France, which I cherish for its rampant anti-Semitism, social hatred, its Communists and its Nationalists, and the uncleanliness of its streets. I like France, because I like conflicts, I like fighting, I like arguing for the very sake of doing so. Give me a car, and I’ll burn it.

Canadians, on the contrary, are respectful, nice, tolerant, realistic, pragmatic, and passive. They do not care about politics, for, paradoxically enough, their democratic system is so efficient that they do not need politics anymore. In other words, the Canadians are comparatively less great than the French, and the French are comparatively less great than their ancestors, who lived in much more epic times, with Germany permanently trying to invade and the Britons being traitors.

The fact democratic peoples don’t believe in the virtues of politics anymore, gives an opportunity for great leaders to ‘come back’ and seize power. I personally have a plan to become the ruler of Canada, and I don’t think you can do much against me.

Here’s the plan.

1) You don’t actually fancy democracy. Political debates and elections annoy you.

2) What you like in democracy is the prosperity and stability it brings. You like SUVs, you like DVDs and fashionable clothes.

3) So have no fear, for if I become your leader, there will be no debates and elections anymore, and you will still be allowed to pursue a consumerist life.

I swear I will make no attempt to reduce your standards of living. I don’t want to suppress all your liberties : you can go on watching uncensored pop music videos on TV if you want. I don’t even want your money. All I want is power.

Honestly, I’ll be a benign dictator. Everything will go as smoothly as under a democratic regime, except you won’t have to go to polls anymore. In these conditions, I don’t think you’ll say no.

You’re going to say, this guy is a liar. As soon as he’ll hold the reins of power, he’ll do some crazy shit like Napoleon or Hitler. I’d better stone him to death.

Let me dissuade you from doing so. If I were mad enough to try to enslave you, you would rebel, and become great again, for rebellion is the mother of greatness. Now you have to remain mediocre so that I can stay in power. So, I’ll do nothing that may lead you to rebel.

So that’s the end of my essay on power. Here’s the abstract, for those of you who did not catch the logic of my deep thought : 1) it is easy to become a great leader, all you need is comparatively smaller people ; 2) democracy makes us all small ; 3) Canada is a democracy ; 4) Canadians, therefore, are small ; 5) I am neither a democrat nor a Canadian ; 6) I am therefore greater than you guys ; 7) I am entitled to claim absolute power on your country.

Email me if you think I’m wrong. childericwilson@hotmail.fr