#Failureship Redux
Sometimes, you get so high you can see the future.
Urban Dictionary accepted my submission over thirteen years ago (the concept was older, still), and while some consider it a portmanteau of “failure” and “leadership,” I have always contended that “failed leadership” is not “failureship.” #Failureship is inspirational failing—it captures the success of the individual at failing.
It is closely related to the concept of the “Dangerously Stupid.” While everyone does stupid things from time to time, the Dangerously Stupid not only do stupid things, they often plan them out ahead of time, think them through, and do them anyway. However, planning and consideration are merely the conditions for the imposition of danger—what sets the Dangerously Stupid apart is their stupidity causes harm to other people.
They do the FA. We suffer the FO.
#Failureship, however, is more pedestrian and mundane. There need not be any stupidity exhibited at all—just poor strategic and tactical choices, or not adapting to changing landscapes. Having a bureaucratic or charismatic leadership structure leaves institutions more vulnerable to succumbing to failureship. We are taught to subscribe to the Great Man Theory of history—that collectively-meaningful events are made to happen by a small number of (thus-significant) individuals—and this conditions us to form power dynamics around individual leaders.
Inevitably, these multitudes of bureaucracies and cultic personality sects will produce a subset of those with power who consider endemic entropy to be planned progress, and whose actions augment failure. These individuals typically mistake their having power for their own competence. I have found this especially true in my work with nonprofit organizations, where major donors are sometimes given the organizational wheel, despite them not having any background in the nonprofit sector and, frankly, no clue what they are doing.
Whereas a benefactor provides resources and allows the board and executive director to manage the operation of the organization, the hands-on donor takes a seat on the board or may elevate themselves into the daily management of the organization. This is regardless of their actual qualification to direct an organization.
I had the chair of one board I’ve sat on misstate the organization’s Mission Statement repeatedly over the course of many months, because he wanted the board to pursue a direction that was not compatible with the statement in its entirety. After eight months of doing nothing productive the board voted against following him. Within a week he announced to the board that he was giving money he had pledged to our organization, to a different one. He did not say as much, but this was retaliation for not following his failureship, though he lied to told us that he would “be fine with whatever the board decides,” before we voted.
At some point shortly after his confirmation as Attorney General of the United States (the Peoples’ attorney) Merrick Garland was handed the evidence needed to bring indictments on at least ten counts of Obstruction of Justice against former president Donald Trump (“Individual-1”). Never mind Coup Americaine, for which Garland failed to gain a trial of any of the leadership. Now, of course, it is too late, and instead we will see those foot soldiers who were convicted pardoned and elevated to MAGA Heroes. [n.b., since original publication of this piece, Trump has pardoned all those convicted for January 6-related crimes, and earlier this week announced plans to pay them for their efforts that day].
On January 20, 2025, the coup will be complete. The White House, both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court, taken.
Garland was rendered impotent in early November 2024 by the failureship of the Democratic party. They keep pushing Neoliberalism on a population that understands the American Dream—no matter how it is defined materially—cannot exist in an economy where the more one labors, the worse one’s financial situation becomes, relative to the economy one’s labor is feeding.
That is due to the failureship of the Democratic party’s sponsors, the Comfort Capitalists who insist that with just the right amount of regulation and taxation this economic system will transcend its material contradictions. Positivism (Every day and in every way, I am getting better and better) is a necessary condition to maintain social order and the hegemony of a ruling class.
The Democratic National Committee dares not take up a pro-labor position, to meet their pro-women, pro-BIPOC, pro-LBGTQIA stances. Thus the Culture Wars, because if we talk economy—the underlying connection of all oppressed peoples—that will alienate the sponsors. [n.b., just as with an NGO being run by a Lead Donor, DNC sponsors may have commanding power, but that does not itself confer competency. As the wealth and power imbalances grow deeper, the disconnect between that minority that holds most power and the rest of the “organization” grows into conflict; with the power-holder seeking solutions that make sense from their position, but which do not fit those who constitute the body of the organization.]
Never mind that a class-centered politics would attract the workers—who the ruling class was surprised to find have a clearly-understood and shared class interests, revealed by the execution of Marie Antoinette the CEO of the most profitable health care rationing corporation in the world.
Hell, they saw what Bernie Sanders was capable of organizing (Not me. US. — Bernie knows the Great Man Theory is bullshit) at an average donation of something like $13, and it scared the living shit out of them. Working peoples’ liberation is possible, but we have to work around the biases and limitations imposed by our ruling class. The class consciousness exists—we are seeking a transformational means.
The goal of the ruling class is to impose a hegemony upon the people going forward where they may see social class, but are incapable of empowering themselves. To formalize a caste system. Democracy becomes contradictory so voting becomes something like a holiday ritual, performed because it has always been and its performance reassures us when it changes nothing. [n.b., Democracy has always been contradictory to capitalism. In America, we had a revolution and stopped halfway—democratizing the political process, but privatizing the economy. We have seen the economy thus come to dominate the political process, rendering it largely ritualistic, long ago.]
There is leadership in this direction away from having votes matter, and it is quite welcoming of the failureship by others seeking to preserve a democracy without social class considerations. The Democrats will put up a show “fighting” to keep elections happening, and all the while ensuring that no candidate stands a chance if they do not embrace what produced oligarchy. [n.b.: To wit, the DNC challenges to “The Squad” when they first showed HRC left progressive votes on the table by winning in 2018; later, encouraging establishment party member to run against already-popular (but “too progressive”) Democratic candidates such as Zorhan Mamdani in NYC, Omar Fateh in Minneapolis, and Graham Platner in Maine.]
The Republicans will tell you that Ross Perot cost them the White House in 1992. The Democrats will tell you that Jill Stein cost them the White House in 2016. Both parties will tell you that third-party candidates can keep them from winning. But if we step back and see the Democratic and Republican parties are both corporate capitalist parties—differing on taxation rates, regulatory matters, and identity politics, but not on fundamental economic policy—then we see clearly that so-called third-party candidates have never cost a corporate capitalist party the White House in the past 150 years. The corporate capitalists always win, even when they claim they have lost.
The King of Fail takes office for the second time, in thirteen days. Made possible only by the massive failureship of others.
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