I’ve never really been a fan of the Catastrophe Syndrome Style in American politics so many conservatives can’t help embracing. I like a little optimism mixed in with my otherwise surly and caustic demeanor when analyzing current events.

But this week is not a week for optimism. This is a week for realizations.

It’s a week in which you recognize that the American tradition of sure-footed, courageous, confident leadership is dying, and rapidly. And a nation without a tradition of, or social infrastructure for, quality leadership is a nation that will shortly be leaderless.

And then it will shortly cease to be a nation at all.

We want to believe that a revival can be had, and that we can turn back the clock to the 1980s or 1990s when quality leadership was still a standard we all believed was reasonable. But looking around at our society now, the problem is that we’re so divorced from that history that it’s hard to map a path back to it.

And that recognition makes the end-of-days vibe grow stronger.

To wit:

1. America Will Not Survive If Mitch McConnell Does

The Republican Party must be worthy of leading whatever revival can be had in America. That’s axiomatic at this point, if only because the Democrats are now fully committed not to revival but destruction of the country.

That might sound harsh, but it’s absolutely true. And it’s provably true — just look at what passes for public policy surrounding our nonexistent southern border.

This week, you’ve seen Democrats on Capitol Hill babble on about how their party is bringing “solutions” to the border crisis. I could show you lots of examples of that; instead, I’ll cut to the chase.

Their solution is to process as many illegals as possible into the country, and then prey on the weakness and betrayal of Republicans to provide an amnesty that will ultimately process them into citizens and voters.

That’s a “solution.” Institutionalize the problem and make it into a partisan virtue because they believe they will get those people to vote Democrat. And, of course, if they don’t, they’ll ultimately get their children, who will be born here and thus citizens. Or, if they weren’t, then they’ll be “dreamers,” and they will ultimately be made into citizens and voters.

The vast majority of the American people don’t find this acceptable. But the Democrats don’t care about the American people. They’re actively trying to replace this electorate with millions upon millions of people from elsewhere.

And Republicans in the Senate, led by the least popular man in Washington, Mitch McConnell, are actively betraying the American people right along with the Democrats.

There’s a “bipartisan” piece of legislation moving that would smile upon 5,000 illegal migrants PER DAY invading our country and provide funding to more quickly process the flood of invaders and hook them up to the welfare state as our cities are inundated and turned into hellscapes.

McConnell is advocating for this. And why? Because the legislation also provides $60 billion in funding for Ukraine.

The next column in this space will go deeper into how awful this is. Suffice it to say that Republican voters have very, very little representation in the U.S. Senate when the GOP caucus is “led” by this man — who physically and mentally is no more capable of “leading” than is Joe Deadhorse Biden.

It’s a problem that is metastasizing. It can’t continue. But it’s clear there is no fortitude on the part of the Republican Senate Caucus to fix it.

And that gives off a very end-of-days vibe.

2. Mike Johnson Can’t Lead the House (Nobody Can at This Point)

This isn’t an attack on Johnson, whose tenure as the speaker of the House is devolving as the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives are turning on him over the federal budget.

Johnson is trying not to put House Republicans in a shutdown-politics bind in an election year — especially when they are clearly going to get zero support from their counterparts in the Senate. He knows it’s a losing proposition that will bury the GOP in House elections this fall, and he’s trying to rebuild a budget process that has been broken for a generation by getting the House to regular order for the 2025 budget.

The current federal budget, which is stringing along on continuing resolutions, is a problem Johnson inherited from Kevin McCarthy, who failed to bring the House to regular order last year and was driven from office because of it.

So this was already a terrible problem. Add to that the fact that Johnson has just 219 Republicans right now. He has zero Democrats willing to cross the aisle and work with him constructively, and that means he needs, essentially, unanimity in his caucus to pass anything.

And on every significant conservative priority item he cannot get to 218 votes.

So he can’t lead. Nobody can. The House is ungovernable. It will get worse if Johnson is taken down on a motion to vacate the chair, which some are threatening.

We know what the problems are. And yet the politicians can’t summon the will to address them. It feels like we’re no longer capable of meeting public policy challenges at the national level. And if America can’t do that, we’re now staring into the abyss — not just here, but worldwide.

3. There Are No Leaders in the White House, and Here’s the Cost of That

Want to see what the utter lack of leadership the Joe Deadhorse Biden administration looks like in real-world terms?

This is what it looks like:

Iran could produce enough fuel for six nuclear bombs in just one month and even produce a single atomic bomb in as little as a week, a former UN inspector has warned, as fears of a growing regional conflict surge.

Weapons expert David Albright has issued out a sobering warning about the destructive potential of Iran’s arsenal, due to the country’s ability to produce large amounts of weapon-grade uranium.

“Iran can quickly make enough weapon-grade uranium for many nuclear weapons, something it could not do in 2003,” he said.

“Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon.

“It could have enough weapon-grade uranium for six weapons in one month, and after five months of producing weapon-grade uranium, it could have enough for twelve.”

This news pops as Iran and Pakistan are engaging in a cross-border tit-for-tat that could devolve into a shooting war, and as Iranian cat’s-paws and Iran itself are causing chaos throughout the Middle East.

We’ve coddled these people ever since Barack Obama chose to become the father of the Iranian nuclear program in his first term (something I discuss in Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It’s All Obama), because the leadership in our foreign policy establishment has been utterly unfocused on our own national security.

And we will be lucky to survive intact when the lunatics in Tehran have the ability to create the nuclear armageddon their warped version of Islam commands of them.

You want end-of-days? That’s as end-of-days as it gets.

4. United Airlines’ CEO Is Mentally Unstable and Is Destroying the Company

This might not be end-of-days for you, unless you happen to be on a plane operated by the corporation this loon is in charge of.

Meet Scott Kirby, airline CEO and performing drag queen:

This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into @united.

This video should tell you everything you need to know. pic.twitter.com/RR5nWwC5OR

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 18, 2024

United is a company in chaos, and it has been since Kirby took over as CEO in 2021. They’ve had labor issues, logistical snafus, Kirby has generated significant PR issues (flying private when your customers are stranded at airports will do that), and Kirby just did an interview a few days ago with Axios in which he touted an insane DEI plan that would earmark half of the new pilot hires for women and minorities, without any apparent concern toward whether these people can actually do the job.

This airline needs to undergo a hostile takeover, and Kirby needs to be fired. The fact that an unstable performative pervert like him could have risen to the position of leadership he holds is a glaring indictment of America’s corporate culture.

5. The Patriots Just Replaced Bill Belichik With a Race-Obsessed Diversity Hire

He’d clearly grown a bit stale as the head coach in New England, but Bill Belichik has nonetheless created a reputation for being one of the greatest organizational leaders in America during his time prowling the Patriots’ sidelines.

It was time for a change. That was clear. Belichik will get a fresh start somewhere else, possibly with the Atlanta Falcons, and we’ll find out if he has any gas left in his tank.

Meanwhile, New England chose Belichik’s replacement. He’s Jerod Mayo, a former Patriots linebacker who’s been in coaching only since 2019.

Mayo has never been a coordinator. He’s never coached anywhere other than with the Patriots. He’s been the inside linebackers coach for the team only since 2019. Almost anywhere in football, it would be regarded as a reach to promote a position coach with no experience coordinating an offense or defense, or exposure to a different system or program, to head coach.

Mayo is respected within the New England organization, which is a plus. He’s also black, which might or might not be a plus. But if he was white, you would be hearing about the suspect nature of the hire and the lack of opportunities afforded black coaches when somebody of such meager qualifications would be given the reins of so storied a franchise.

OK, fine.

But then this was Mayo at his initial press conference:

“I do see color, because I believe if you don’t see color you can’t see racism.”

Jerod Mayo on being named the first black head coach in Patriots history. pic.twitter.com/toTTJ6CrB3

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 17, 2024

At minimum, this was inartfully said. Far more likely is that Mayo has been indoctrinated into the principles of DEI and it never occurred to him that saying he has to “see color” to “see racism” indicates an obvious racial bias of his own.

Everyone “sees color.” To fulfill the vision we as Americans had a consensus on until five minutes ago (or until Barack Obama exploded it), of a colorblind society, you’re supposed to see PAST color.

Maybe that’s what Mayo was trying to say. One doesn’t get the impression that’s it. But this is the kind of leader our culture is attempting to impose on us — we’re getting it everywhere, though thankfully the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach, Todd Bowles, who is also black, does provide a needed counterexample — and it’s utterly impossible to get proper leadership with this poison in the air.

Mayo is a football coach. Why are we talking about race at all when it comes to his job? And how will this country survive if this idiocy permeates everything from the White House to Congress to corporate America and even to football?

It’s not a good vibe. It’s an apocalyptic vibe. Our country is disintegrating before our eyes for lack of leadership, and there is no end in sight.