Criminally Insane
We look at the world as it is today and wonder how some leaders from our past got elevated to positions of power. It is easy in the US because we get to vote our leaders into their positions. In most of the civilized world, that is how you get to be the leader of a country. The US is trying to put a representative democracy into Iraq, although this may be another case of leading a horse to water. It may be easier to set up at least two governments in Iraq and go from there. But since I am not an authority on Iraqi politics, I will just shut up.
Most of the major economic powers (China excluded) have some form of representative government. China has managed to create a unique blend of dictatorial entrepreneurial capitalism that I believe will be tested as people start to become addicted to the bling. Welcome to America’s greatest export; the want for more. It is the lack of the ability to get something more that is the greatest contribution to the creation of the totalitarian government, at least in our enlightened modern era. Most of the great dictators of the 20th century used their current economic situation of attain and maintain their power. It is the maintaining it that presents the scariest picture of our last 100 years.
I have looked up a statistic that my brother Gary pointed out; body count. He has been reviewing the great dictators of the 20th century. His point is that leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot were all insane. The lust for power and the use of it after it has been attained would tend to add to the credibility of his observation. All of these leaders purged any opposition after they got into office. All promised a better life before the attained power and maintained or attempted to maintain the illusion that things were going well. At the same time, if you disagreed with them, you became a statistic. If you were perceived to be part of the problem, you became a statistic. In some cases, you were killed because you wore glasses (Pol Pot). It would appear that the 20th century, our age of enlightenment, was not so great for a number of people.
Here is how the numbers shake out. If you combine all four leaders together and look at the extremes they are purported to have murdered, it comes to 106,300,000 people. That is M for million. Pol Pot, who is the light weight of the group, is responsible for between 1.6 and 2.3 million deaths. Statistically, that was the murder of 1 out of every 8 Cambodians. Let’s say goodbye to 12.5% the people you know. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong have similar stories. In an attempt to modernize their communist regimes, they put programs in place with no support to make them succeed (except for torture). When the results did not meet expectations, they rewarded their citizens by letting them starve to death. That is not to say that there were not the usual purges of those who disagreed with them. Who knows how many died because they spoke their mind? Estimates for the two are Stalin, between 10 and 50 million and Mao, between 20 and 43 million. Of course everyone knows Hitler’s story. He gets credit for the murder of 11 million.
All of these great leaders had the tenacity to attain the leadership role of their citizens and then systematically murdered those who put them in that position. Their justification for these acts was that if their nations were to attain greatness, this must happen. Hitler was leading his Germans to rule the world. The Soviet Union was attempting to modernize their nation and become a world superpower. The Chinese have a similar tale. Cambodia was just one man’s desire to build a utopian agricultural society based on communist ideals. When you rule a country, it is tough to get thrown out power unless you allow it. Kill off those who oppose you, create a scapegoat for those who doubt and paint a beautiful picture of the future. It does not matter if you ever get there since it is more of a carrot than an actual goal. Mix all of this together and you get the ideal dictator. Anyone who is that deluded in the pursuit of any goal is living in a world of fiction. You will never get everyone lined up working toward the same objectives for an extended period of time. In times of war or natural disaster, you get people working for “the common good” but attempting to bring everyone to your utopian ideal is insanity.
You have to love America. You can disagree with everyone, worship trees or small furry animals, aspire to any social position and even help run the country. There are only two times that our government will cause your death. The first is because you have caused the death of another. You have exhibited the deviant behavior of the great world leaders previously mentioned. The other is in the service of your country. To protect and serve the nation that provides the great freedoms that we enjoy. One is the result of an action that you undertook. The other is to stop the spread of those actions in the hands of the criminally insane.
Icool
Cobb
Most of the major economic powers (China excluded) have some form of representative government. China has managed to create a unique blend of dictatorial entrepreneurial capitalism that I believe will be tested as people start to become addicted to the bling. Welcome to America’s greatest export; the want for more. It is the lack of the ability to get something more that is the greatest contribution to the creation of the totalitarian government, at least in our enlightened modern era. Most of the great dictators of the 20th century used their current economic situation of attain and maintain their power. It is the maintaining it that presents the scariest picture of our last 100 years.
I have looked up a statistic that my brother Gary pointed out; body count. He has been reviewing the great dictators of the 20th century. His point is that leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot were all insane. The lust for power and the use of it after it has been attained would tend to add to the credibility of his observation. All of these leaders purged any opposition after they got into office. All promised a better life before the attained power and maintained or attempted to maintain the illusion that things were going well. At the same time, if you disagreed with them, you became a statistic. If you were perceived to be part of the problem, you became a statistic. In some cases, you were killed because you wore glasses (Pol Pot). It would appear that the 20th century, our age of enlightenment, was not so great for a number of people.
Here is how the numbers shake out. If you combine all four leaders together and look at the extremes they are purported to have murdered, it comes to 106,300,000 people. That is M for million. Pol Pot, who is the light weight of the group, is responsible for between 1.6 and 2.3 million deaths. Statistically, that was the murder of 1 out of every 8 Cambodians. Let’s say goodbye to 12.5% the people you know. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong have similar stories. In an attempt to modernize their communist regimes, they put programs in place with no support to make them succeed (except for torture). When the results did not meet expectations, they rewarded their citizens by letting them starve to death. That is not to say that there were not the usual purges of those who disagreed with them. Who knows how many died because they spoke their mind? Estimates for the two are Stalin, between 10 and 50 million and Mao, between 20 and 43 million. Of course everyone knows Hitler’s story. He gets credit for the murder of 11 million.
All of these great leaders had the tenacity to attain the leadership role of their citizens and then systematically murdered those who put them in that position. Their justification for these acts was that if their nations were to attain greatness, this must happen. Hitler was leading his Germans to rule the world. The Soviet Union was attempting to modernize their nation and become a world superpower. The Chinese have a similar tale. Cambodia was just one man’s desire to build a utopian agricultural society based on communist ideals. When you rule a country, it is tough to get thrown out power unless you allow it. Kill off those who oppose you, create a scapegoat for those who doubt and paint a beautiful picture of the future. It does not matter if you ever get there since it is more of a carrot than an actual goal. Mix all of this together and you get the ideal dictator. Anyone who is that deluded in the pursuit of any goal is living in a world of fiction. You will never get everyone lined up working toward the same objectives for an extended period of time. In times of war or natural disaster, you get people working for “the common good” but attempting to bring everyone to your utopian ideal is insanity.
You have to love America. You can disagree with everyone, worship trees or small furry animals, aspire to any social position and even help run the country. There are only two times that our government will cause your death. The first is because you have caused the death of another. You have exhibited the deviant behavior of the great world leaders previously mentioned. The other is in the service of your country. To protect and serve the nation that provides the great freedoms that we enjoy. One is the result of an action that you undertook. The other is to stop the spread of those actions in the hands of the criminally insane.
Icool
Cobb
posted by Cobb at
6:09 AM
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