Imagine looking at a planet from the outside.
You see beings capable of creating life, building civilizations, composing music, and sending spacecraft into the universe.
Then you look at who they’ve put in charge.
People obsessed with their own positions. Who would rather control others than take responsibility for themselves. Who can talk for hours without saying anything and watch a problem grow while debating what they’re allowed to call it.
You would wonder.
How did a civilization with so much potential hand so much power to people with so little self-awareness?
And why do they keep doing it?
That’s how I sometimes look at the Western world. Especially Europe.
And honestly. I think they’re useless, pretty much the whole bunch. With very few exceptions, I have NO respect for them. There’s no one I look up to. No one who makes me think: Here is a person worthy of leading our countries.
I don’t even need to prove my point. They do that perfectly well themselves.
Europe is in decline, and I struggle to see how this ends well if we stay on this path. But maybe that’s what it will take. A collapse. So we can start over.
Maybe the system has to fall apart before we stop patching up something that has long since shown it doesn’t work.
That’s a devastating price to pay for something we should be able to change while we still have the chance.
We talk about our values, then hesitate when it’s time to defend them. We celebrate freedom, then reach for more control the moment people use it in ways those in power don’t like. We talk about personal responsibility while organizing society as though the government should take over more and more of it.
What happened to trusting adults to run their own lives?
We need leaders who understand the world they’re supposed to lead. Who can change course when something isn’t working. Who can protect our Judeo-Christian foundation and actually have the courage to say what it rests on.
Freedom of speech. Freedom of conscience. Equal rights. Personal responsibility. The freedom to practice a faith and the right to reject it. A government that serves its citizens and can take their criticism.
That takes character. You have to put your own need for approval aside. Handle opposition. Admit mistakes. And make decisions whose value extends beyond the next election.
But a system can become so focused on preserving itself that people and reality are expected to bend to fit it.
So we get another rule. Another layer of bureaucracy. Another explanation for why nobody could possibly have done anything differently.
And the rest of us get used to it.
That may be the most disturbing part. How little we’ve come to expect from the people we give power to.
We have to do more than see through it and shake our heads. We have to demand character, judgment, and accountability. Even when the person failing us is someone we voted for.
Because from the outside, it would be hard to understand why free people keep accepting leadership they don’t trust.
At some point, you would ask: Do they even realize it’s their civilization that’s at stake?