From Pathology to Spectacle

How Power Loses Coherence Before It Loses Control

This trilogy traces a single process as it unfolds over time: the shift from governance to performance, from institutional coherence to personality-driven power, and finally from leadership to spectacle.

Written across different moments, the essays move deliberately from diagnosis to mechanism to consequence. Together, they argue that what looks like political volatility is better understood as a systemic condition — one in which trust erodes, correction fails, and performance substitutes for restraint. Power remains, but its bearings do not.

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• Pathology at Scale
  An early diagnosis of what happens when a superpower loses internal coherence — and why repeated policy shocks begin to signal system failure rather than normal volatility.

  https://www.ericwigartauthor.com/p/pathology-at-scale

• The End of Assumption
  Examining how trust functions as hidden infrastructure — and how the quiet withdrawal of confidence in American reliability reshapes global behaviour long before any visible collapse.

  https://www.ericwigartauthor.com/p/the-end-of-assumption

• From Leadership to Spectacle
  A concluding analysis of consequence rather than intent: how leadership degrades into performance, and why that downgrade permanently alters global expectations even after the spectacle fades.

  https://www.ericwigartauthor.com/p/from-leadership-to-spectacle

If power can persist after coherence is lost, what actually anchors stability — and what happens when those anchors fail quietly rather than catastrophically?