Shalom. Moderation may be for the most religious among mankind.

One might ask, “what contributes to and defines the better humanity of humanity.”

I am an optimist who believes there is a “humanity of humanity” better served by a natural “moderate middle” that looks toward improved “qualities in living” — including psychological and spiritual qualities as well as those attending economics, justice, and health — than by deeply narcissistic extremists blinded by their own glory to the needs, privileges, and rights of others.

One hopes the world may be tiring of its tyrants and the followers who would most like to be tyrants themselves.

Is it all about word play?

Who gets to make the call?

Whose eye looks down the microscope?

Whose body wriggles on the viewing platform?

Is our condition one, the other, or both?

This kind of Facebook-inspired thought goes on throughout the course of an average day:

It’s not the “worldly gains”, Lakhkar, that are evil in and of themselves: it is how they’re gotten.

Regarding the dictator-kleptocrats that I also call “malignant narcissists” — they exceed limits and trap themselves in criminality and shame. and it is for those reasons they resent freedom of the press and strive to reject and suppress scrutiny and criticism.

As a class, dictators are weak, not strong, but, in fact, they are creative and the manipulation of belief, loyalty, and perception comprise a first set of intellectual tools for manipulation. At first, they will tell you what you want to hear; then they will tell you to agree with what you have heard. Or else. As a class, dictators come to power through various means but they all sustained eventually by a 1) treasury funded by resources over which they may assert control, 2) paid military and thugs down to street level, and 3) our old familiar, privacy attended by the deflection of scrutiny motivated by integrity.

Dictators subjugate humanity in service to their own aggrandizement associated with, in technical terms, “narcissistic supply”. They own their states and all of its resources, human or natural, and if you are unlucky enough to reside in such a place as Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, they own you too. Their worlds exist only to serve their own greatness, and that which doesn’t serve that end may be destroyed without a second thought.

It’s opinion.

It has some eloquence.

Perhaps there’s even some truth to it.

However, it may be getting a little old for the writer.

Men and women dream.

Some dream huge.

Some think so much of themselves and the God-given or godless and natural favoring of their will that throwing boiling water over a nanny’s head doesn’t give them pause for a moment’s empathy or reflection.

Or guilt.

Depending on the context and thrust of that dreaming, a dream or two might come true, myriad political and social barriers and boundaries (start with family) protecting the young on their journey to Hollywood, the old on their way to retirement aboard yachts.

And for a few, the material achievements accompanied by good enough products and services may want for the greater thrill of power among others, over others, or otherwise manipulated around themselves.

When as much develops in show business, the world goes around, and whether one likes the executive or entertainer, the two cannot grow moneyed and powerful but by charging a fee for an artifact or performance; when the same develops in the political sphere, the burden of the will of the little shit would seem today certain to become either deadly or soul deadening.

Take note: for all the devastation brought to Zimbabwe in the course of his tenure, Robert Mugabe has long achieved the dream of dying an old man: it is certain that he will do that; if he then dies peacefully in his sleep, well then, all the better testament to the validity of the venerable African political post that has been fashioned beneath the unspoken title that is “President for Life”.

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