How can anybody measure the safety of the entire world without specifying what it is supposed to be safe from and for whom?
Seeing this interview made me remember this horrible feeling of looking at the leader of the country where I’m living and realizing that he is completely, totally, utterly, and impossibly stupid.
I still believe that a really evil politician is better than a really stupid one. Of course, this is a tough question. Stalin, for instance, was an incredibly stupid person who stupidly followed the directions given to him by a very smart and very evil person. He was about to start a nuclear war before he died and, unlike the evil but not stupid people, was not smart enough to consider what the use of nuclear weapons would do to the planet.
So what do you think, evil or stupid? Please don’t say that you prefer intelligent and non-evil politicians. We all do but there is nothing to discuss about that choice.
Clarissa's Blog 
Evil, clearly. At least they won’t fuck you up unless it serves their goals, so if you can figure out their goals you have a chance at staying safe. Stupid, on the other hand, is unpredictable.
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Yes, that’s what I think, too! At least, with an evil person there is a chance there is some logic guiding the actions. With idiots, you just never know.
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Unless their evil takes the form of “kill you and everyone that looks like you”. Then you’re probably screwed.
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If you’re stupid, then it’s easier for someone to launch an assassination against you, but more dangerous in everything else. If you’re evil, then maybe the totalitarian won’t be as harsh against his own people in comparison to other countries in the world. That’s how I see it.
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“If you’re evil, then maybe the totalitarian won’t be as harsh against his own people in comparison to other countries in the world.”
– Very good point.
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I shall restrict my analysis only to modern, industrialized democracies, because this is the situation of which I have the most direct knowledge (and also because it spares me the necessity of having to write the sentence “at least George Bush was better than Hitler!”).
Taking George W. Bush as the baseline for a leader who is stupid, but not evil, and my own beloved Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the baseline for a leader who is evil, but not stupid, I think I would much rather have the stupid one. George W. Bush only proved so destructive because of the circumstances in America at the time of his administration; specifically, it was coincident with the rise of an ambitious group of ideological neo-conservatives who found him easy to manipulate in order to advance their own misguided policy agenda. Had these circumstances not been present, he surely would have been manipulated, but probably in a much less malign direction. The stupid leader is only dangerous if the people around him are dangerous; if he’s well-advised, he’s not much of a threat.
On the other hand, people like Harper, who have a certain degree of strategic planning ability, are able to manipulate their countries to their own will; thus, they can bend the country to their destructive agendas even if the circumstances, at the time of their election, don’t necessarily warrant it.
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” The stupid leader is only dangerous if the people around him are dangerous; if he’s well-advised, he’s not much of a threat.”
– But what if he’s too stupid to listen to advice? Stalin disregarded every intel about the date when Hitler was planning to attack. People around him begged him to listen. Yet, he stupidly refused to hear them out.
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I prefer calculating and sly to stupid. Actually I think Robert Mugabe is in some ways a good thing for Zimbabwe, because much as he is holding the country back economically, he is also putting a dampener on the culturally and geographically corrosive effects of globalization. If you want African culture and scenery closer to its commercially untrammeled state, vote in Robert Mugabe.
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And that’s because he’s still fighting a clever war against colonialism, perhaps even neo-colonialism — since fighting any war against colonialism is out of date.
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You must bear in mind that the time when politicians (In the West) had power to be evil is bygone. Now they’re limited to puppets on their posts. It’s the large corporations, and banking, drug and mafia tycoons who run the lines.
There’s space for some leadership, but evil? Weak leaders are like troubled waters, they make many a fisherman their day. Good leaders keep them at bay.
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It’s very true what you say. Bush was very obviously just a puppet.
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“How can anybody measure the safety of the entire world without specifying what it is supposed to be safe from and for whom?”
Spoken like a true Asperger person! But IMO, it’s a pipe dream if you are expecting detailed, intricate answers to sophisticated policy questions from most politicians.
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The above post was me, but I forgot to put in my information so it was labeled as “Anonymous.”
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Safe from Martian attack.
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I actually don’t think W was stupid per se (or evil). His fatal flaw was being completely uncurious about anything that might conflict with any already established idea he had. My take is that he was almost autistic (sorry) in that he had established a mental order about the world and went to great, OC, lengths to preserve that.
Obama has some of the same characteristics and it might be part of the personality profile of what it takes to become US president at present. In which case Hillary is definitely out in 2016.
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“an incredibly stupid person who stupidly followed the directions given to him by a very smart and very evil person. He was about to start a nuclear war before he died”
You do realize how provocative that juxtaposition is, don’t you? Tell me more.
My gut feeling on the current NKorea situation is that the young idiot leader is being manipulated by someone behind the scenes and that person’s agenda is to get rid of the young idiot leader (I keep thinking of Ptolemy in HBO’s Rome)
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People also say that Stalin imitated everything Trotsky ever suggested but I don’t know enough about Trotsky to know what motivated him. He might have been a genuine believer, who knows.
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// Stalin, for instance, was an incredibly stupid person who stupidly followed the directions given to him by a very smart and very evil person.
Who is this “a very smart and very evil person”? Lenin? Why do you think Lenin was so very evil? Nobody could make a revolution in Russian empire of then, without killing many people.
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Lenin, of course. Stalin never invented a teensy little thing. Everything he did was a blind repetition of what Lenin invented. The Gulag, the blank execution orders, the terrorism – everything.
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I don’t think she means Lenin. But I’m curious to know who does she mean? Stalin seemed pretty “evil” to me. My impression comes from reading Eric’s Fromm Theory of Human Destructiveness, where he draws out his psychological profile as sadistic.
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”Please don’t say that you prefer intelligent and non-evil politicians. We all do but there’s nothing to discuss about that choice.”
Well, I must admit that I entirely disagree with you in this part, Clarissa. Furthermore – I dare say – it’s excatly the opposite! I think there would be quite a lot to discuss on that matter. And I’m pretty much sure you can remember not so few examples, coming from both the recent and the distant past, among the politicians who looked neither stupid nor evil, but whose decisions turned out to be…hm, not so clever and, primarily, not so good! The former Prime Minister of Ukraine, your native land, comes to my mind. Did she look stupid to you? Did she look evil?
Of course, a far more drastic example comes frome my country, Serbia. Even the greatest opponents of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian ex-president, used to admit that he was a remarkably intelligent, witty, charming man. Furthermore, people who were, in one way or another, a part of his surroundings claimed (and still keep on claiming) how he was a ”role-model father and husband”. And I think there’s no need to remind you on the fact how great symbol of stupidity (in domestic realms) and evil (in the great part of the world) he was and, maybe, still is.
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“Well, I must admit that I entirely disagree with you in this part, Clarissa. Furthermore – I dare say – it’s excatly the opposite! I think there would be quite a lot to discuss on that matter.”
– This is one of those subjects where everybody’s opinion has validity.
“The former Prime Minister of Ukraine, your native land, comes to my mind. Did she look stupid to you? Did she look evil?’
– Yuschenko? He is neither. He hasn’t been as successful as one would have wanted him to but my country has known a lot lot worse. 🙂
“Even the greatest opponents of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian ex-president, used to admit that he was a remarkably intelligent, witty, charming man. Furthermore, people who were, in one way or another, a part of his surroundings claimed (and still keep on claiming) how he was a ”role-model father and husband”.”
– So maybe he was the smart but evil kind? I personally don’t know enough about him to judge.
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”Yushenko? He is neither. He hasn’t been as successful as one would have wanted him to but my country has known a lot lot worse.”
-Actually, I had Yulia Tymoshenko on my mind (as far as I know, Victor Yuschenko never was a prime minister, he is actual president of Ukraine). She was Ukraine Prime Mister, wasn’t she?
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Actually, Victor Yuschenko is the former president of Ukraine, the actual one’s name is also Victor, but Yanukovich. Sorry!
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Yanukovich is an idiot but he hardly rises to the level of evil. Neither does Timoshenko.
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