Before my final arguments just a few quick comments:
Nice potted history of Octavius Stoic. Always liked him, he was a clever guy, probably the pinnacle of the Roman emperors. And okay, he was a stabilizing factor while he lived. And yes:
But I want to change that ‘do’ into a ‘did’. Why past tense…? Easy, back then the most common weapons were a gladius, a sword; the pilum, a spear - and the superweapon, the phalanx. And of course, pretty much everyone in the empire had a sword of some kind, and had been trained in it’s use…
Fast-forward to the present. When I checked my weapon-stash just now, it didn’t take very long, because I don’t have one. Unless you count my outrageously gayly-named Leatherman multitool™. The army has personal anti-tank weapons, er, and tanks. I have a cell-phone, the government has military sattelites. Hmm… fear me tyrants, tremble at the sight of my multi-tooled and cell-phoned shadow, beware my almost totally ineffectual wrath.
The days of a dictator ‘having to care’ are over, and have been for a long time.
‘Most’…? Where are they…? Name them, we’ll count up and see. Is there a new continent somewhere I don’t know about…? Anyway, onto my last arguments.
It’s not the rule, but it might as well be: Dictators start out as the good guys. And that’s the trouble, when you’re already at the top of the moral hill, the only way left is down.
Dictators-to-be usually start out as the head of a heavily-armed bunch of guys, either already within the established military, or as rebel groups out in the sticks. Mao was head of the (anti-military-dictator-Chiang-kai-Shek) socialist red army, and a hero to many; or Mugabe, one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white minority rule in Zimbabwe - for example. Good guys fighting for freedom from opression.
Until they won. And that’s when the trouble starts - the skill-set for “winning an armed struggle” is pretty much useless when you try to transfer it to “running a peaceful, stable country”. And who has the dictator(but not yet) have as a role model to teach him how to run this country they suddenly have come into possession of…? That’s right - the complete bastard they just overthrew. They begin their careers as leaders of countries pretty much politically empty.
Dictators are reactive. Their characters and general mindset are batman/joker reflections of whomever they fought against. They are defined pretty much by what they are not: “I am not a white supremacist !!!” “I am not a _________ !!!” Which is fine, when the opposing trope is around to define you, but when it’s not, when it’s been vanquished, then your mirror is suddenly empty, and you’re not there anymore. They begin their political careers as blank canvases, all contrasts sucked away.
Which is bad, because it takes great fortitude of character and political belief to resist the temptations of power.
This of course is further complicated by the implications of their situation. They’ve won. And not just won something simple and mundane like a game of tiddlywinks, they’ve freed a whole fucking country. That’s like single-handedly winning gold in every olympic event ever in one go.
And what do winners get…? What do they deserve…? Prizes. The biggest for themselves, and runners-up prizes for all their psycho-gun-toting mates. It’s feeding time, ring the fucking dinner-gong boys, ring it good and loud.
I’m not going to list all the dictators who turned round and raped the countries they ‘liberated’ just read this book for multiple modern-day examples in Africa. What I’m going to do is just burble on about the good things of democracy a bit more before closing, though I restate: I’m not saying democarcy is super-duper perfect, just that by its nature it sponsors ruling minorities less likely to be total trainwrecks for the people they govern.
[size=200]*[/size]Power is diluted, divided: policies are opposed, debated, held up to scrutiny by representatives of other factions of the populace before implementation. This obstacle course means that generally the policies surviving to actually affect the masses are universally ‘good’. (lol, I can’t believe I wrote that).
[size=200]*[/size]The democratic system provides a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power between opposing political factions without blowing too much vital infrastructure up. This alone gives democracies an advantage, they do not have to start from square one every time power changes hands, nor go through routine periods of economically ruinous civil war.
[size=200]*[/size]They allow opposing factions of trained politicians to co-exist within the same political system, which means a faction coming into power knows how to actually administrate institutions and utilities, rather than just how to shoot people.
[size=200]*[/size]Democracies of fixed-periods of power (that can be repeated) invest political parties in the populace. Instead of thinking “Right - I’ve won, this is my one and only chance of raiding the cookie-jar, I’m taking every last damn one…” a democratic leader/party thinks “Okay, I’ve got 4 years to raid the cookie jar, but I better leave some, because I might get to raid it some more later…” Which, believe it or not, is better. Especially if they decide to invest some cookies in making a better cookie-producing jar, if only so they can steal more later.
Enough. I’d just like to thank Stoic for giving me a foil to post against, as well as motivation for applying fingertip to keyboard. Tab out.