Fear of a leader’s wrath produces a fool’s paradise of ignorance

Evidence

Moses appears not to have known its full extent himself. Certainly his aides, having seen what happened to Spargo and Witt, were not going out of their way to tell him about it. “You’ve got to remember,” says one city official, “that everyone out there was scared to death. Moses made all those people and he can destroy them. He doesn’t want to hear that his Fair is going badly. He’s always regarded criticism, however constructive or well meant, as a personal attack. All he wants to hear is, ‘Yes, RM.’ The result was that his own people allowed him to live for months in a fool’s paradise.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4492

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A chilling account of how a culture of fear structurally disconnects the most powerful person from the true state of his own enterprise — a case study in feedback interruption at the top.
• XREF: Builds on ch16 (isolating silence destroying subordinates), ch29 (Moses discarding people who served purposes), and ch48 (responding to scandal making the criticized leader the story). Fits power-pathologies literature (groupthink, sycophancy). — connects to: Blind trust in authority can be culpable stupidity rather than virtue; The sub-man’s fear is that the unforeseen will force self-awareness upon him.
• SHARE: Send to a friend who runs teams or studies organizational failure — the mechanics of how ‘Yes RM’ culture produced a real-world catastrophic blind spot.

Broader Connections

• Blind trust in authority can be culpable stupidity rather than virtue #expands (0.85)
• The sub-man’s fear is that the unforeseen will force self-awareness upon him. #expands (0.72)