The Lethal Cost of Leaderlessness

“Leaderlessness” is kinda generous, isn’t it?

The word implies a rudderless ship drifting without any positive control. What we are faced with is actually much, much worse. We do have someone at the helm…..but that someone is a malicious ignoramus who is actively doing us harm, and what’s more, trying to profit of it in the process.

I am writing this from lockdown in Brooklyn, where the streets are as eerily quiet and empty as in a bad science fiction movie, where — if you dare venture outside at all — the occasional pedestrian you meet will scurry out of the way as your paths cross, where half the supermarket shelves are stripped from panic buying, and where the hospitals are already straining at the seams, running out of resources, and pleading for masks and protective equipment for their harried staffs. Everyone we know is hunkered in their crummy apartments, washing their hands raw and disinfecting every doorknob they touch, drinking booze and wondering how long we should expect this to last, and what damage will ensue while it does. How much worse it will get we don’t yet know, but I don’t know anyone in either the medical or homeland security communities who is bullish.

We turn on the TV and are comforted by the calm leadership of Andrew Cuomo (and across the country, Gavin Newsom, among others leading by example). But he is not…