(Slightly more succinct than “you’d trust to rule the world,” and catchier to boot)
Well, as Mark Twain said in Connecticut Yankee, “An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were […] namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual.”*
So I figure; where better to find someone to meet such criteria than in the illimitable realms of fiction?
Thus I’m asking you, fellow Dopers: Who would you trust to appoint ruler of the world?
The two I can come up with, right off the bat, are:
•Atticus Finch
Everyone picks Atticus in situations like this. A good man, and a stalwart paragon of honest virtue. Not the man to throw his weight around needlessly to impose his Will, or go on skull-piling rampages. Eh?
Optimus Prime What can I say? Functionally, he’s like King Arthur—just with fewer relationship problems to spill over into his professional life. And he’s a giant robot. (That, uh, is important because of the charisma factor. And he’d be able to crush tanks with his bare hands)
So…anyone else?
*Or, for the despot-chooser, someone who shares our particular sets of biases and still possesses proper factors of health, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Emphasis on the biases. But hey, that’s jus’ me.
Me three! I opened this thread with the specific purpose of casting my vote for Lord Vetinari.
Well, to be completely honest, I guess maybe “trust” is too strong a word to apply to a guy like Havelock Vetinari. I don’t know if I’d trust him in any specific capacity, but I feel I could have complete confidence in his rationality and ability to do a damn good job as World Overlord.
Better than anyone else I can think of off the top of my head, anyway.
Actually, I wouldn’t choose Vetinari for World Overlord - I’d chose Carrot, with Vetinari as his Chief of Staff. Carrot to inspire and provide a moral core, and Vetinari to actually run things.
Hmm. A compelling alternative, but I wonder how long that arrangement would last. It seems to me that Carrot is a bit too honest and forthright to feel comfortable being a figurehead. He’d probably figure that he could handle providing inspiration and a moral core whether or not he was head of state (his claim to the throne notwithstanding), and leave the noble titles to Vetinari.
I support the suggestion of Optimus Prime. He’s trustworthy, and being a robot he won’t be slowed down by things like sleep, old age or assassination attempts.
James T. Kirk, specifically Kirk of Star Trek the original series vintage. He’s young,energetic, very bright,and he has a good heart.
Give him a continuous supply of hot babes to seduce and he’ll be focused and awesome as World Overlord.
And I can’t believe I’m the first to mention Jed Bartlett. He has vast executive experience, a brain the size of a planet, a huge heart and good instincts. We’d have to deal with the whole MS issue, of course.
To get a bit obscure, the AI called The Colligatarch from The Eye Inside. Mainly because it WAS essentially “World Overlord”, and was secretly working to wean humanity off of needing or wanting one. It was programmed to work for the benefit of humanity, you see, and for once in sci-fi the programming actually worked.
All this way and no mention yet of Clancy’s Jack Ryan? He has been designed, from the beginning practically, to be the single greatest possible political leader. He’s so set up that it would be literally impossible to vote against him.
They are fictional? I once heard Peter Fonda say that the character his father most closely resembled was Colonel Thursday from Fort Apache. By no means an evil guy but not the guy I want as an Overlord.
What can I say? Functionally, he’s like King Arthur—just with fewer relationship problems to spill over into his professional life. And he’s a giant robot. (That, uh, is important because of the charisma factor. And he’d be able to crush tanks with his bare hands)