Well, in the USA the founding fathers had the foresight to set up various checks and balances in the system. Whatever you think of Bush, he is still subject to those checks and balances. It is more problematic in societies where the leader has ultimate power.
We’re doubly helpless if it’s not happening in our global neighborhood or if it’s not directly impacting us.
In addition to all the very good points others have raised upthread (peoples’ desire for predictability, suppression of alternate power centres, etc), I suspect that a situation of gradually-increasing dictatorial looniness has similarity to domestic-abuse situations.
In such situations, the abuser and the abusee don’t sense how their thought is changing until they are well on the road to a Dysfunctional Situation. If an abuser in a single household can warp his or her victim’s mind so that the abuse seem the best choice, I certainly don’t see why that wouldn’t play out in corporate-scale or national-scale situations.
Add in the few percent of the population who I have read are genuine sociopaths, who do not actually feel empathy for their neighbours, but merely see them as part of the environment to be used, and I can totally see where dictatorial looniness would spring from.
This is why having an external system of custom or law is so important. It gives a reference to view leaders’ insanity by, as well as dispassionate tools to maintain society.
And rereading my post leads to a further thought.
Would it be possible to correlate the tendency of a society towards Dictatorial Looniness with the state of its individuals and especially its households.
If you have a society where households are ruled by custom in an authoritarian manner, with one group elevated above another, and little dissent, would that make it more likely that the State itself in that society would be authoritarian?
I can think of examples that might go either way: Japan now versus Japan in the 1930s, for example.
That is an interesting and astute parallel.
The problem is getting rid of the lunatic, as ‘regime change’ from outside does not work that well.
My feeling is to try to keep contact with them, and offer them a really viable escape route if they think things are getting tough.
A twice yearly conference with all their peers in a great location, the best medical care known to man and the option of retiring in sycophantic luxury - and being consulted on major matters.
In many ways, an International House of Lords …
I am sure that they get worse when they get (justifiably) paranoid.
You’re making no sense here. The problem is not that the dictators are lunatics, the problem is that they are dictators. Any system of dictatorship or absolute power is vulnerable to this problem. Dictators aren’t chosen among “candidates for national leadership”, which can be examined for signs of insanity. They seize power, and the opinions of some UN board is irrelevant.
Think of all the dictatorships in the world. If the dictator goes loony, what are you going to do about it? Issue a UN resolution that the dictator is loony, and should be removed from power? What will that accomplish? We already oppose loony dictatorships, it’s just that invading every dictatorship isn’t going to work, we don’t have the military manpower or national will.
Many countries already have a body charged with the task of ensuring that people selected for national office aren’t certifiably insane. These people are called “voters”.
I don’t understand. You think Bush is a loon for deposing a loon, so you want to empower the UN to depose loons instead? Do Russia and China (or, for that matter, the United States) strike you as the types of governments that can be trusted to appoint the right doctors to a UN-based panel that will objectively identify loons?