From: kludge@panix.com   
      
   In article <10khosd$346jd$3@dont-email.me>, Titus G   wrote:   
   >On 18/01/26 11:25, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >> On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 08:31:52 -0800, Paul S Person wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> And about due for another Warring States period.   
   >>   
   >> Which current authoritarian leader, notable for his doctrinaire and   
   >> erratic ideas of Government, looks to be pushing his country to the   
   >> brink of civil war?   
   >   
   >I can't imagine just one person being able and therefore responsible for   
   >such erratic behaviour perhaps leading to slaughter and sometimes   
   >genocide. There has to be sufficient political and media support behind   
   >the figurehead of the industrial military complex, its financiers and   
   >its not so secret "police".   
      
   It doesn't take much to create that support, though it's not always the   
   same.  In the case of North Korea, Kim has a whole lot of people who have   
   a vested interest in keeping the system the same and in keeping his family   
   in power.  It's not just Kim... Kim is replaceable and if he does anything   
   too wrong he might get replaced with another family member.  But it is   
   very much a family affair.   
      
   Papa Doc's arrangement looked similar at first, and he did in fact have   
   his kid as successor, but he didn't have the infrastructure and he also   
   didn't seem to understand that his country was not an infinite money sink.   
   When all the money was pumped out and the land became infertile, everything   
   collapsed and his family had to move to Miami (along with his rich friends   
   but without all the people who had supported him).   
      
   Putin... I don't think people are really sure about Putin.  Clearly he   
   remains in power because of all of the oligarchs whom he funded initially,   
   but now that they are beginning to hurt, how long will they allow him to   
   remain in power?  I'm kind of surprised they haven't replaced him yet but   
   nobody in the west really knows what is going on inside his government.   
      
   Trump... Trump is not the problem, Trump is merely a symptom of the problem   
   and in his first term he was surrounded with people who were trying to keep   
   him from doing anything too crazy.  In his second term, he seems to have   
   surrounded himself with people who are encouraging him to do crazy things   
   but it's hard to tell how much is his idea and how much are the ideas of   
   his staff.  (There are some people who claim that he is being controlled   
   by Putin.  It seems unlikely to me, but on the other hand what other   
   motivation could he have for deliberately trying to destroy NATO?)   
      
   What Trump is doing that the first two have not is to be totally random,   
   throwing people off of any attempts to figure out his motivation for   
   anything.  Idi Amin was very good at this too, and might be a better model   
   to study.   
      
   What I find fascinating about Trump is that he has a very pre-WWI concept   
   of diplomacy.  He doesn't think about countries but about individual kings.   
   Europe doesn't work that way and it seems to really confuse him.   
   --scott   
   --   
   "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)