It seems that again, as per the norm in media consumption in the west, we have come to an age where the angry man, the avenger of egos, has thrown on the armor of impunity and become the icon of the zeitgeist. Many a fellow man and not a small number of women have increasingly become drawn to the fantasy of releasing the shackles of responsibility and social decorum, instead adorning the biggest egos among them with glory and gladiatorial honor, as by which so often many a civilization saw its doom brought on. Across the east and the west, the same themes of paranoia, pessimism, and antipathy have caught us by the necks and are hanging us until dead.
These sorts of things, following strong leaders and leaving behind logic and cool-headed sense, are not intrinsic to man, but perhaps they are to society at large, at least when left alone for too long, like so many gremlins past midnight. The food we fed them is media, and not just that, but angry media, media that represents the inner angst, the depression, the struggle in the minds of so many of us battered citizens, despairing against the system, yearning for some end to the struggle, and conflating that end to the struggle with an end to the system. Thus begins the cry for dismantlement, a shout so often echoed and replied to by those who were waiting in the wings, those awful folk to whom such things as respect and decency are mere obstacles to overcome to draw out from the public what they want most, wealth and power for themselves and their chosen few.
The paradigmatic image of the flawed hero, the anti-hero, commonly conflated with a villain protagonist - errantly - is Tony Soprano. The patriarch of the namesake Sopranos, the mob boss, philandering lout, psychotic menace, family man. Without even catching a second of six seasons of his wastelaying tragedy, you already know the whole plot, every crook and cranny of his story - because it is the same story told time and again, the one we can recite by memory but refuse to extrapolate to our own lives, which is that of the false leader who only leads for personal gain, at the direct cost of all those who follow. Truly, we as a race are cursed with this incessant need to follow the beacon cast by their egotistical personalities, like we believe somehow that ignoring social customs, acting out, and breaking even the most sacred vows , are marks of honor and not cowardice, strength and not vulnerability, self-esteem and not insecurity. Painful as it is to watch the world go this way, perhaps it truly is destiny.
Why then do people not learn? Why would someone who watched the entire story unfold in front of them, choose to rewind the tape and let it play out all over again, not at all concerned that they still to this day suffer the consequences of the last viewing? I am reluctant perhaps due to sheer blind optimism to incline towards human nature as the answer, as doing so gives no possible way out of this time loop. Is it human nature to be a follower to such leaders? Should we be cast in the wind, doomed to chase the strongest wind, hoping and praying it drops us in green pastures and not smoking brimstone? Essentially we are becoming like stock traders, us civilians, trying to ride the wave of enthusiasm for a new hot company, only to be betrayed at the first rocky wave, then only to hop back on the train and ride it again somehow expecting with naive glee to be taken to the highest highs, never realizing the futility of the whole venture, the sheer arrogance to believe there is such a thing as endless growth, that good things never end and bad things never come.
As so many around Soprano forgave, forgot, and forlorned, so too will we all, as even the most esteemed and experienced among us, the wisest of the politicans, thought leaders, and elite, somehow all of us are cursed with this, this mental anchor, dragging us into the abyss. No matter how much we try to fight it, it will keep pulling us endlessly, until we tire and resign ourselves to the darkest depths.