Scott Adams writes this with his tongue firmly in his cheek, but you have to stop and wonder… maybe it could actually work.
5 Comments
Sounds good, except Idi Amin had a peaceful retirement. That didn’t seem to affect his brutality, Idi Amin killed a hundred thousand to half a million in the small country of Uganda (nobody is sure), to the point that bodies clogged dams of the Nile at one point, and had such legendary brutality that he was said to be a cannibal. (Not out of “cultural” reasons, because he was a sadistic lunatic.)
Unfortunately, sadistic lunatics have a marked advantage over civilized people — a civilized person has some self-imposed behavioral restraints.
But that’s irrelevant to the point, which is that if a dictator knows that he can step aside in full and guaranteed personal safety at any time, he might be a lot gentler in his rule, because he wouldn’t have to act out of fear. When things start getting uncomfortably dangerous for him, he simply bows out and takes his ill-gotten gains into retirement.
It’s not a very good solution from the point of justice, but pragmatically, it might be a better option than what’s available now.
Godwin time. Do you think that if Hitler or Stalin or Mao were given a chance to stop being Bill Gates (just kidding 😉 ) and given a chance to become mild-mannered former mass murderers, they would have even considered it? People like that aren’t rational in that way, they are clever, but not reasonable.
I never studied Stalin or Mao, but Hitler probably wouldn’t have had a chance — he was in the middle of a war of conquest at the time. But of course, Hitler isn’t the target audience for this kind of thing. (Stalin and Mao might have been, but they would have been very unlikely to have accepted anyway, given that the size of their loyal forces would probably have been sufficient to keep them in power.)
The only problem with that is, excepting a few high-profile cases like Pinochet, most dictators don’t come out of retirement to face trial. They either die in office (sometimes violently) or go live in the Spanish Riviera or something with their Swiss bank accounts funding their retirement. So they already are going into retirement, and it isn’t helping. It makes for good comedy though. 🙂
Sounds good, except Idi Amin had a peaceful retirement. That didn’t seem to affect his brutality, Idi Amin killed a hundred thousand to half a million in the small country of Uganda (nobody is sure), to the point that bodies clogged dams of the Nile at one point, and had such legendary brutality that he was said to be a cannibal. (Not out of “cultural” reasons, because he was a sadistic lunatic.)
Unfortunately, sadistic lunatics have a marked advantage over civilized people — a civilized person has some self-imposed behavioral restraints.
But that’s irrelevant to the point, which is that if a dictator knows that he can step aside in full and guaranteed personal safety at any time, he might be a lot gentler in his rule, because he wouldn’t have to act out of fear. When things start getting uncomfortably dangerous for him, he simply bows out and takes his ill-gotten gains into retirement.
It’s not a very good solution from the point of justice, but pragmatically, it might be a better option than what’s available now.
Godwin time. Do you think that if Hitler or Stalin or Mao were given a chance to stop being Bill Gates (just kidding 😉 ) and given a chance to become mild-mannered former mass murderers, they would have even considered it? People like that aren’t rational in that way, they are clever, but not reasonable.
I never studied Stalin or Mao, but Hitler probably wouldn’t have had a chance — he was in the middle of a war of conquest at the time. But of course, Hitler isn’t the target audience for this kind of thing. (Stalin and Mao might have been, but they would have been very unlikely to have accepted anyway, given that the size of their loyal forces would probably have been sufficient to keep them in power.)
The only problem with that is, excepting a few high-profile cases like Pinochet, most dictators don’t come out of retirement to face trial. They either die in office (sometimes violently) or go live in the Spanish Riviera or something with their Swiss bank accounts funding their retirement. So they already are going into retirement, and it isn’t helping. It makes for good comedy though. 🙂