Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Understanding the tyrannical mind

 

Brandon Smith does an excellent job of outlining the mind of a tyrant.  A tyrant need not be a dictatorial warlord like Genghis Khan;  he or she can be a low- to mid-level bureaucrat or supervisor in business, or an elected or appointed official in local, regional or national government.  The common factor in all of them is that they want power, and are willing to do whatever it takes to gain and retain power.

Here's an excerpt.


[There is] a specific human element that is obsessively attracted to control, not because they are afraid, and not because they want comfort, but because they enjoy the feeling of power. They are addicted to it. I’m speaking specifically about narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths; they are members of our species but they are lacking the key psychological traits that make us human, such as empathy, conscience, imagination, love and shame. In almost every case of government gone wrong it is because these types of people were able to slither into positions of authority and take advantage.

. . .

At the core of tyranny is the removal of choice. Centralization is all about eliminating options for the public while telling them their lives will be streamlined, easier and safer. If people have options outside the establishment system or ideology then they might question the validity of the power structure. They might ask themselves “What if there is a better way than this?”

And, since there is always a better way than fear and slavery, tyrants have to engage in a constant war with all alternative ideas and principles. The only way they can be sure that people won’t rebel someday is to erase the existence of choice. Not only that, but they have to convince the masses that to even suggest another choice is sacrilegious and dangerous. The system must become absolute in all things and in every area of daily life.

. . .

As noted, tyrants are usually psychopathic personalities, and a part of this mindset is the compulsion to expand and devour. Like a growing amoeba, or that creature from the movie ‘The Blob.’ Their hunger for control is never sated, they will always want more.

. . .

There will be people out there that make the common ignorant argument that all of this is an exercise in futility because it doesn’t “address solutions.” There are many solutions to authoritarian systems, I have been writing about them for over 16 years now. We can talk all day about decentralization and localism and organization and revolution, but none of this matters unless we understand how our enemies think and the tactics they use. If we do not know them we cannot defeat them.

They are not complex and they are not necessarily ingenious but they are relentless. Underestimating their obsession with control would be disastrous. That said, the one thing they value more than power is their own lives, and until these people are made to understand that their lives could be the cost of their compulsions they will never stop. There is no reasoning with them. There is no diplomacy or compromise. There is no middle ground. They will continue to take, or they will be disrupted. Knowing their mindset brings us several steps closer to shutting them down.


There's more at the link.  It's well worth reading.

On a national and international level, examples of tyranny are legion.  Take the Biden administration in the USA, the Trudeau government in Canada, the German government and its horde-mentality bureaucracy, the World Economic Forum and its prescriptive approach to the future . . . they all exhibit clear hallmarks of tyranny.  (Klaus Schwab of the WEF is an excellent example of the breed, as are Governor Whitmer in Michigan, Governor Newsom in California, and many others.  They'll masquerade under the banner of democracy, but in reality they're as much tyrants as anyone's ever been.)  So long as we submit to them and let them get away with it, the worse things will become for all of us.

Tyranny is also a besetting trait of the "woke", the politically correct imbeciles who currently infest our society.  As C. S. Lewis so wisely put it:


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.


Fortunately, it looks like more and more people are becoming aware of the problem, and of those responsible for it.  The next question is:  "How do we get rid of them?"  They're not going to give up and go away of their own accord.  They'll have to be ejected - and that's going to take a real struggle.

Peter


11 comments:

Joseph R. said...

Hey, Peter, minor correction: that's Brandon Smith, not Brandon Sanderson.

Peter said...

@Joseph R: Oops! Thanks. Fixed it.

Phil said...

Rule .308.

Jonathan H said...

To implement that rule, somebody has to get good intelligence, move fast enough to use it, and preferably have a practical escape route.
While I'd prefer to see the responsible people directly punished, in many cases it is easier to gum up the system than take on the tyrants directly, especiyat the beginning of hostilities.
It will be far easier to disrupt utilities and access in the areas they control and escape than to strike them directly.

Old NFO said...

HR... just sayin...

Paul said...

Read Unintended Consequences. I can see it starting that way. it is a very good book. Well worth the time.

Peter had a link to free copies earlier on his site. Maybe we can have them again?

John in Indy said...

Noted a post at Raconteur Report that Google is editing down visits and blocking searches for even smaller, influential blogs like this one. Have you seen this effect, or is it just battlespace prep ahead of the to be stolen midtetms?

Justin_O_Guy said...

I've been watching how many times the people who pass obviously bad legislation, while they tell us with a straight face the good things that we were going to benefit from it passing. When the Good things failed to materialize and bad things did, they would shrug and give us the Well,those things were just unintended consequences.
Well, just because You didn't Say that was something you wanted to see happen, that doesn't mean it was unforeseeable. Or even somehow surprising.
NAFTA forced Mexico to allow America to import food. The Mexican people had been farming the same land for generations. NAFTA bankrupted their farmers, with our subsidized imports. Guess what the newly poverty stricken Mexicans did. They came across the border. None of what you are seeing is accidental.
Or maybe you believe that our best and brightest just got screwed every time we entered into a trade agreement.
Ooopsies!!
At some point stupidity stops being cover for sabotage.

Peter said...

@John in Indy: Yes, it's affecting me too.

Aesop said...

The absolute hands-down best way to understand the mind of a tyrant is to blow it out his opposite earhole kinetically, then examine it closely before the buzzards find it.

Anything else is a distant second place.

NITZAKHON said...

Understand that each and every tyrant, IMHO 100% of the time, is absolutely convinced they are doing GOOD and RIGHT things.

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2021/08/slip-sliding-towards-hell-with-a-good-conscience