It happens with a tiring regularity. Things are tough, and a popular movement fronted by a demagogue promises that the solution is easy – just put them in charge. Il Duce, or whatever the jerk wishes to be called, breaks lots of eggs for the omelet, but things get worse, not better. Easy doesn’t do it as well as was promised. People get hurt, economies falter, and wars happen.
In a way, it’s like other scams, bunko’s, frauds, and rackets. The perpetrators and upper-level followers think they are smart. They feel that they can either get off the merry-go-round before it lurches to a stop, or that their role in it is of a low enough level that they’ll walk away unscathed. Sometimes they are right. Their neighbors cover for them, or the level of their involvement is low enough that after things go boom, they are missed in the confusion.
Things often do go boom after there is a political crisis, economic collapse, or war. Perhaps they luck out and their particular type of crapulence, maybe the Party manages to stay in control of a continually decaying system like Soviet Russia. But I’d argue that more often, resources for running the corrupt system run down sooner, discontent builds, and heads roll metaphorically, or literally.
Sooner or later, the populace learns that if it sounds easy, it may not really be that way. Societies, economies, and political systems are complex. Just sticking a poker in and stirring is not likely to yield good results. Stilted promises sound good initially. Don’t like the cost of government? Randomly eliminate a quarter of those corrupt and wasteful individuals; Enjoy the savings! Sooner or later, you learn that the work they were doing was not incidental but was essential to something you really need. OOOPS! The easy, direct “solution” didn’t work as everyone thought.
Perhaps the reason for this search for gold-plated simple solutions is that we do a poor job of teaching about how complex the world is. People like simple, but human systems are like ecologies; they are complex. Attempt to simplify them, and you find that they become chaotic or even collapse. Signs should be put ” don’t poke the tiger.“
Modern Il Duce’s, Führer’s, and the like can be groomed, managed, and theatrically posed by their handlers. Hell! We are only one step away from being catfished! Don’t know what catfishing is? It’s creating an entire fake persona for the sake of deception or fraud. It’s been a real thing online for a while now, and it’s only a step away from being an AI reality. Your maximal leader has the flu? Send out his AI dup to aid in duping the public further. Maybe after a while you just go with the AI clone.
With thousands of years of experience with governments, economies, and complex societies, you’d have expected that we’d have learned by now. But instead, we simply create more complex ways to convince people that the answer is simple. Put me in charge, and I’ll fix it!
But we never seem to learn that Easy Doesn’t Do It.
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True, world affairs are extremely complex. It takes serious tactical and diplomacy, being willing to be guided by wise counsel. “Supreme” leaders often find themselves standing alone in the mess they’ve made.
One thing we often forget about Hitler, looking in retrospect, is that he straightened out Germany’s economy to the extent that many other world leaders nodded and said what a good job he was doing. Eventually those leaders and his top men who had some sense turned against him. Hindsight is 20/20.
I did not know this meaning for catfishing. I didn’t need to, but now I do. This morning I read the news and thought, “Well DB there’s no reason Iran couldn’t attack the US. None. It’s very easy now. You gonna’ shoot down a drone with an ICBM?” (Always loved that acronym…) Many of my European students used to remind me that “my” country had never been attacked and was, therefore, not serious enough, that we Americans were superficial, lazy, and arrogant. I don’t remember if I mounted a defense or not — I must have, mentioning such things as D Day but I never disputed that a war on one’s own land, in one’s own town, is different from “Here I come to save the day!” in a U-boat.
Your students were right. Thank God we’ve never been attacked (since Pearl Harbor), and we rely on that with arrogance. We are too sure that we are safe in a world in which all the rules are changing.
I think my students were right… Remember there was September 11. That did happen. Whatever’s going on makes no sense to me at all. And it makes me sad.