The Worst of the Worst: Academic Research and Study of the Vilest Tyrannical Murderers in Our World History

By William N. Spencer

A look back at some of the worst despotic tyrants in our world's history. Perhaps by reading about their great egotistical mistakes
we can prevent abominable history from repeating itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669801702

William N. Spencer

A life-long advocacy of youth ministry and teaching, with over forty years of work in the unionized labor sector, both public and private, has given me a strange perspective of the American workplace. After starting college at age 51, and ending with post-graduate degrees in both Management/Leadership and Human Resources Management, I have acquired the astuteness and discernment to put these shortcomings and faults into print.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by William N. Spencer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/29/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

835584

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Why This Book

Chapter 2 Introduction

Chapter 3 The Psychology of the Sicko

Chapter 4 Communism 101

Chapter 5 Capitalism 101

Chapter 6 Getting Started

Chapter 7 Mao Zedong

Chapter 8 Marx and Engels; Lenin; Stalin.

Chapter 9 Adolph Hitler. Benito Mussolini

Chapter 10 Japanese War Atrocities

Chapter 11 Pol Pot: Ho Chi Minh

Chapter 12 Caesar, Caligula, Nero

Chapter 13 Saddam Hussein, Muamar Gadhafi, Al-Assad Basher, Mohammed Siad Barre

Chapter 14 North Korea: Kim IL Sung, Kim Jong IL, Kim Jong Un

Chapter 15 Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic

Chapter 16 Suharto

Chapter 17 Idi Amin, Haile Selassie, Robert Mugabe, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Charles McArthur Taylor, Mohammed Siad Barre.

Chapter 18 Francisco Franco, Slobodon Milosevic, Nicolae Ceausescu:

Chapter 19 A few Other ‘Fine’ People

Chapter 20 Be Careful

Chapter 21 Frightful Follow-Up.

CHAPTER 1

Why This Book

My personal academic field of expertise is that of Human Resources Management—the hiring, training, paying for, retention, legal issues, and at times the firing of employees. And all of these points are directly under the influence of conditions within the United States economy. Our great American economy is controlled—and under constant assault at all times—by government entities at many various different demographic levels, and many different degrees of expansion or suppression.

Unfortunately for America, as it is in many/most economically advanced economies, there is no single, all-encompassing national policy or plan to promote nation-wide economic growth that guarantees or insures any corporation’s right to succeed, or for any and all average workers to achieve and maintain any semblance of prosperity.

From 2008 until 2016, here in America, we had a national policy that was hell-bent upon trying to: Put every American business out of business, and to put every American worker out of work. Where the honest/truthful unemployment level—as was accurately recorded and reported by the National Labor Participation Rate—was even far worse than at any time during the so-called Great Depression.

And then, suddenly, from 2016 until 2020, for only four short years, unemployment was at its absolute lowest point ever in American history. More White people than ever were working, more Black people than ever were working, more Asian people than ever were working, more Hispanic people than ever were working, more woman than ever were working, more businesses than ever were expanding and growing, more new businesses than ever were being started up all over America. Economic expansion and growth at all levels was rising at an exponential rate. The over-all stock market increased over fifty percent in under three years.

And then, in 2020, this great growing prosperity bothered and scared a lot of people. It was as if the hidden people controlling America’s political power (the swamp) wanted America to commit economic suicide. What this problem was, in actual/factual truth, was that any economic success by the little people, and for the little people, without hundreds of thousands of political bureaucrat / sycophants raking in an unearned share of these riches for themselves, could not be allowed to continue.

Here and now today, it is most apparent and evident that each and every elected politician of one particular, certain political party, at any level—city, county, state, and federal—is inflicted with the very self-same set of personality disorders most predominately displayed by all known despots and tyrants throughout all of history—Caligula, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.—currently termed as the ‘D-Factor’, the evil, corrupt ‘Dark’ side of human personalities.

So this point leads to my overarching question presented and brought forth in each of my books: Are all elected politicians of this one political party just naturally psychopaths or sociopaths? Or, could it be that all psychopaths and sociopaths just naturally gravitate to the dishonest and depravity of this one political party? One or the other, no difference.

So, while about one out of every ten people have some type of medically recognized personality disorder, to some degree or another, not all of these conditions qualify as being at the level of psychopath or sociopath.

Most of the time when we think about tyrannical or despotic dictators, we are thinking of sub-human or near-inhuman individuals like Caligula, Stalin, or Hitler, but that, mistakenly, would be eliminating a great majority of the man-made cruelty that has been inflicted upon our fellow man over the centuries.

Many singular tyrants are just the short-term, one-time most ruthless oppressor within their own little demented/manic organization. Just think of Al Capone, or any of his temporary leadership counterparts of the Mafia, or any of the various other nationalities of criminal family enterprises.

Then, there again, a tyrant does not have to be just one person—although most such groups, immoral and depraved activity is primarily the brain-child of one particular figurehead—such as Lenin/Stalin and Russian Communism; or Hitler and his Gestapo; Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge; or Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the National Democrat Party.

Relating these above points, and to segue into my next chapter, is a short paragraph by Jeremy Sherman Ph.D.: To tyrants, winning is everything – prevail, dominate, claim victory in every interaction by any means necessary. We often overestimate how much a tyrant decides or chooses how to be. You didn’t choose your personality and neither do tyrants. They slide into it and it’s easy to see how one could. No one leaves advantage unused and once we have it, it’s hard to wrest it from us. Tyrants are like the rest of us, reluctant to give up advantages even when it’s a virtue to do so.

Adding another small insight to this relationship between the ‘leader’ and the willing group is a few words from Haslam and Reicher: This view that ordinary people can do monstrous things derives strength neither from psychology alone nor from history alone, but from the convergence between the two. And that convergence extends beyond identification of the phenomenon, to the way in which it is explained. Eichmann and his fellow bureaucrats became obsessed with the technical details of genocide (e.g. timetabling transport to the death camps) and, in so doing, they lost sight of the larger picture. They had no awareness that their acts were wrong. They simply followed orders mechanically, unimaginatively, unquestioningly.

References:

Sherman, Jeremy E., Ph.D., MPP (2019): Here’s How People Become Tyrants at Home or Anywhere

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ambigamy/201903/here-s-how-people-become-tyrants-home-or-anywhere

Retrieved, December 2020

Haslam, S. Alexander and Reicher, Stephen D. (2008): Questioning the banality of evil

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-21/edition-1/questioning-banality-evil

Retrieved, December 2020

CHAPTER 2

Introduction

Human Recourses Management, socio-political-economics, sounds rather dull, boring, stuck-in-the-mud; but only if you are not one of the front-line practitioners involved with the complex intricacies of the American workplace, or in any way involved with the hearts, minds, or souls of people.

Human Resources training is most often nothing more than seeing that an employee has the specific skill-set for a specific job. Teaching college, at one time, in the past, meant teaching people how to learn—not what to think, but how to think—how to properly read and research, and to Find the Truth. Oh how I miss those good old days of the not so long ago past.

Today, every year, year after year, thousands of third-rate colleges and universities—on-line diploma mills—are turning out millions of semi-literate, half-educated ‘graduates’ who probably cannot read their diploma, much less read any serious tome of literature. And each of these ‘graduates’ with their near-meaningless Bachelor’s Degree, expects to be regarded and treated as some type of learned, intellectual person, worthy of an executive position and a high six-figure income. When in actual and factual truth and honesty; being a burger flipper is a much better fit for most of them.

So how and when did this vast majority of people—for the most part, of younger student age—lose their natural thirst for knowledge and desire for self-improvement? When and why did the majority of these ‘young skulls full of mush’ become such unconcerned bobble-headed sycophants working against their own future prosperity and self-achievement?

An insightful comment from David Stewart may help to explain: God created mankind upright, sound and brilliant. So how did the majority of mankind become so dumbed-down and foolish? So it’s not a matter of intelligence. Eve was deceived by the serpent before she sinned. Deception is in fact a matter of our God-given freewill. Eve chose to sin! She wanted to believe the lie. Eve was deceived because she wanted to have her own way instead of God’s. That is key to understand.

So perhaps, just maybe, the old Flip Wilson television program adage really is correct: The devil made me do it!

And this point, my friends, leads me to my number one biggest pet peeve in the academic world today; The Dunning-Kruger Syndrome; People who are too stupid (unlearned) to know just how stupid (unlearned) that they really are. A few hundred years ago, during the French revolution, the stupid people in charge of the ‘national overthrow’ knew that they were uneducated, unlearned, and just plain dumb. Which is why they murdered almost every college professor, intellectual persons of science, educated clergymen, and most skilled craftsmen. How dare all of these smart people constantly keep telling each and every one of us—the dumb people—how to do things right?

One would think that every once in a while the great majority would finally learn from their economically disastrous mistakes, as per the ‘Great Awakening’ of the presidential election. But, apparently, as it is said, that stupid is as stupid does. Or, stupid people get the stupid they vote for.

Jean-Francois Marmion characterizes this vast mental conundrum: Apart from the perpetual purr of idiocy that surrounds us, day in and day out, there is also the roar of the masters of stupidity, kings of stupidity, total assholes, Liberal Democrats. Those assholes, whether you encounter them at home or at work, do not strike you as anecdotal. They hound you and harass you with their obstinacy in crass wrongheadedness, their unjustified arrogance. They prosper, they sign on the dotted line, and they would happily cross out all of your opinions, emotions, and dignity with one stroke of the pen. They erode your morale and make you doubt there can be any justice in this vile world. No matter how hard you try, you cannot detect a spark of kindred connection in them.

The absence of discernment in analysis, this arrogance that places itself above the common run of humanity to level judgement upon the rest of the world: these are the most foolproof signs that you are dealing with a Liberal Democrat idiot. The peculiar nature of error is that it does not recognize itself. Obviously, a fool cannot recognize himself. On the contrary, he himself constitutes a kind of ‘lightning rod of folly’.

Collective intelligence has its counterpart: collective stupidity. If a majority of people embraces a manifestly false and idiotic theory, others will go along with it merely because of the power of conformity. Today, this pseudo-insanity is the highly coveted liberal democrat condition known as consensus. To name another better known instance: the false virtues of brainstorming. Where everyone thinking and working together agrees to the same idiotic and wrong conclusions. These realizations have led psychologists and sociologists to take another look at what it means to be gullible.

Much of the social, economic, and political problems which we all must deal with today in America can be attributed to just simple, ordinary laziness; whether in the general public, students at every level, or the majority of teachers, mainstream media, or even supposed science. Do we blame it on the internet and/or the faux, pseudo-truths of the Wiki-World? Do we blame it on web video-clips where everyone gets to be a thirty-second movie star? Do we get to blame it on today’s want-to-be famous, not quite so bright scientists, each and all claiming to be an ‘expert’ about anything and everything?

Unfortunately for truth and knowledge, as stated above, today’s most overused and improperly bounced around catch-word is ‘consensus’. Which here and now, in liberal democrat party speech means: Since we are all too lazy to do our own independent research and analysis, and most all of us pretty much agree to whatever our elected democrat party dictators put forth, at least for the most part, we expect the rest of the world to just go along with whatever we say. NOT!

Real science, real research, will more often than not verify one sure fire point. Just because 999 ‘scientists’ out of a 1,000 say that something is so, this in no way invalidates that the one out of 1000 people could just as well be the only one who is right and correct.

How can so many supposed ‘so smart’ people be so stupid, so often? John Little enlightens: An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest strengths as a species. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Socio-political-economics: Our great American society runs on money—earning it, spending it, investing it, and saving some of it—and keeping this under control, and operating smoothly is of the utmost paramount importance; and this, is the field of economics. But unfortunately, especially in today’s more ‘modern thinking’ time, politics and politicians are in much greater control of every aspect of our personal daily lives than ever before; and the most uneducated and robotic of our citizens seem to welcome this incompetence with open arms.

Why have we relinquished and surrendered so much power and influence over our daily lives to these greedy, self-serving, self-absorbed elected politicians? As a group, they are much narrowly learned, and or barely educated—almost all are lawyers. Such that, they are all well-versed in playing games with words—words with no real-life exigencies with regards to the outcomes. Constant change, not for any betterment or improvement, not to make life one bit easier for the masses of millions, only to make themselves rich.

And yet, election after election, hardly anyone anywhere truly questions the ever-changing—yet never-changing—array of pretty-faced-politicians masquerading and parading before us, competing for a $175K per year job that nets each one of them many $millions per year under the table?

This disgusting dirty little non-secret, seemingly accepted by almost everyone today, was brought to light by a new, modern adage describing our great president Donald Trump. There are hundreds of different versions of this, so I will just use what is from my mind right now: I am not one bit concerned about any millionaire/billionaire becoming a politician. But what does concern and worry me, is a politician who becomes a millionaire/billionaire while in elected office.

An illuminating illustration of this point is presented by Percy Corbett: Order, in the sense of regulated behavior is observable in all groups of living things. Below the human level it is a product of instinct, in man it is the response to a common sense of need. That need, or interest, may be success in the hunt; it may be defense or aggression against other groups; it may be organized group labor to increase the food supply. Whatever the immediate purpose, the incipient order leads to a division of labor, to the evolution of a ruling class, priestly or military, to guilds of skilled artisans released by the food supply from the labor of hunting or cultivation, to the arts and sciences, and to the building of cities.

Socio-political-economics. The scary part of that subject, beyond a doubt, is the politics; and yet, politics in one form or another is a basic function of every part of life. Whether on the job, in one’s city, county, or state, or even nationally in Washington D.C., politics and politicians have not always been the low-life, scum, sleaze crooks that they are today.

Victor Wolfenstein reports: Politics is a human activity. It is men who run for office, wield power, make decisions, and execute policy. And just because men are the actors in the drama of politics, their personalities are important contributors to the character of their political participation. Indeed, students of politics from Plato to the present have tried to explicate the connections between man’s nature, as they have understood it, and his politics. Why does a man become a revolutionist? What personal qualities will help him to be an effective leader of men? And what characteristics enable a man to make the transition from revolutionist to administrator of the state?

I am from the government, and I only want to help you. Yes, these are quite scary words. And the truth of politics and politicians, which has been loudly bandied about for the past thirty to forty years, is now well beyond any dispute: The government does not solve any problems of America – the government merely creates the problems.

First things first, we must never forget that Lenin and Stalin, adhering to the political policies of Marx and Engel, were supposedly only trying to help all of the citizens of Russia—trying to make life better for everyone. Again, the same can be said for Germany and Adolph Hitler. Following the cruel and inhumane financial treatment leveled against every German citizen after Worlds War I—extreme economic punishment disguised as ‘reparations’—making their lives better was an easy lure towards domination by Hitler. Looking back at the socio-economic politics of almost every country which became the home of a murderous, tyrannical dictator—China, Cambodia, Spain, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Uganda, Romania, North Korea—the average citizen in every country was always wanting any form of reprieve from their long history of suffering and pain. And of course, their ‘new government’ was always there to ‘help them’.

Victor Wolfenstein again effectively illustrates this point: The revolutionist, by vocation, is primarily devoted to the goals of the organization of which he is a member, or the ideology he espouses. Revolution is a long-term involvement and other vocational or avocational interests are decidedly secondary to the purposes of the revolutionary cause. In many cases, all secondary interests die out and the individual becomes entirely devoted to the cause itself.

Each and every one of these fine upstanding human beings that I will be describing all share many common traits; narcissism, megalomania, egotism, a radical sense of self-importance, and most importantly, a deep-seated fear that someone close to them just might possess these very same warped, twisted, and depraved characteristics, and take over power for themselves. Indubitably, in every known instance, each of these despotic creatures believes that they honestly and truly are saving their countrymen from some perceived disaster or external threat. The cause itself is what provides them with the motive and opportunity to carry out their degenerate schemes. In effect, they become not just the solution and salvation of the problem, they become the cause.

Norrholm and Hunley clarify this: Dictatorial leaders such as these represent the extreme potential of the human capacity for evil, and yet, despite their apparent omnipotence within their individual spheres of power, these individuals also tended to suffer from excessive anxiety – mostly regarding paranoid fears of citizen uprising and/or assassination.

The most often asked question is: What makes these people the way they are? Why do they do the evil things that they do? What is going on inside of their heads? Where did they ever come up with this crazy garbage? Were these clowns dropped on their heads when they were babies? Nobody anywhere seems to know anything definitive. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Five thousand years ago, the Egyptian Pharaohs all acted this way dealing with ‘’their people’. The rulers (Caesars) of the Roman Empire also acted this same way dealing with ‘their people’. In the years 1525 to 1875, the slave owners of the American Southern States also acted this same way dealing with ‘their people’. On and on and on, over and over, apparently no one anywhere ever reads or truly studies history; if they did, three-fourths of this crazy stuff would never have happened anywhere, or would have been allowed to happen by the people subjected to the results.

A small enlightenment for justification is presented by Robert Mandel: Rogue states, commonly identified as countries that shun civil participation in the international community (such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea), seek to ignore any existing rules, to expand their own power, and to undermine the influence of the major powers. While in theory it might seem difficult to classify unruly actors within an anarchic system devoid of uniform rules, in practice it seems relatively easy to identify those extreme states that are both more flagrant and more destructive in their disregard for what little is left of overarching global norms of behavior. With the end of the Cold War, and the global spread of democratic and capitalist values, these rogue states have by and large become even more marginalized—isolated and alienated—from the rest of the increasingly interconnected international system.

Unfortunately, society usually allows for the easy way out, the overly simple alibi or excuse; so many of us just shake our heads about the overt depravity, tsk tsk tsk about a few crazy people in control of a few God-forsaken / third-world / crap-hole countries, and we go on our own merry little way. As stated, history is full of these maniacs. In some nation-states, this type of dictator has been in power and control for centuries. So how can we, in our supposedly greatly enlightened age and era of modern man? Are far too many people in far too much fear to ever whisperingly mention the crack-pot, irrational leader?

One of my greatest socio-political pet peeves is the super abundance of far too many bobble-headed, butt-kissing, sycophant followers behind each and every third-rate politician at any and every level; and the glory-grabber, hanger-on behind every ruthless tyrannical dictator. Perhaps this is the biggest problem of all, even worse than the nut-job leader in charge.

Probably so, and so says Willard Matthias: "Not all of the blunders from the non-use of intelligence can be laid at the feet of elected and appointed policymakers. Sometimes, subordinates with their own policy agendas withheld information estimates from their superiors. (((Sounds like the 2016-2020 Never-Trumpers))). Sometimes domestic politics and powerful bureaucracies intruded upon policy decisions. Some of the blunders were caused not so much by people failures as by inadequacies within the system.

Most important of all, the tragic waste of lives and treasure that accompanied the blunders of the past century—underestimating Japanese power and aggressiveness, ignoring the anti-Hitler plot, failing to recognize the German preparations for a pre-Christmas attack in the Ardennes, misjudging Soviet intentions after World War II, waging unnecessary wars in Korea and Vietnam, and conducting an enormously dangerous nuclear arms race—must never happen again.

Ways must be found to supervene the power of the military-industrial complex and the proclivity of our society to elect leaders who are unschooled in the many historical, cultural, ideological, scientific, and economic movements that in the future will require a higher level of knowledge and wisdom than ever in the past."

Regrettably, most people everywhere today get all bent out of shape (however, only for a very short period of time) over one lone deranged individual who goes on an isolated killing spree—whether it be a school shooting, an IED, or using a motor-vehicle as a weapon—yet, nation-state murderous tyrannical dictators are allowed to kill their own citizens unabated for decades. Why should these insane idiots be allowed to inflict such immense pain and suffering for so many years?

Allen Frances states: The frequency of mental disorders in mass murderers is controversial because it is not clear where to draw the line between bad and mad. The paranoia exists on a spectrum of severity. Some clearly do not meet criteria for any mental disorder and often may justify their acts on political or religious grounds. Others have the frank psychotic delusions of schizophrenia. Many perpetrators are in the middle, gray zone where psychiatrists will disagree about the relative contributions of moral failure versus mental affliction.

References:

Stewart, David J. (2015): The Psychology Behind Mass Subservience To Tyranny

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government

/911%20Cover-up/psychology_behind_mass_subservience.htm

Retrieved, December 2020

Marmion, Jean-Francois (2018): The Psychology of Stupidity

Penguin Random House LLC.

Little, John (2018): The Flat Earth Mentality

https://omegashock.com/2018/04/13/the-flat-earth-mentality/

Retrieved, February 2020

Corbett, Percy E. (1971): The Growth of the World

Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey

Wolfenstein, E. Victor (1971): The Revolutionary Personality: Lenin, Trotsky, Gandhi

Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey.

Norrholm, Seth Davin Ph.D. & Hunley, Samuel Ph.D. (2017):

The Psychology of Dictators: Power, Fear, and Anxiety

https://www.anxiety.org/psychology-of-dictators-power-fear-anxiety

Retrieved, December 2020

Mandel, Robert (1999): Deadly Transfers and the Global Playground. Transnational Security Threats in a Disorderly World.

Praeger Publishers. Westport, Connecticut.

Matthias, Willard C. (2001): America’s Strategic Blunders:

Intelligence Analysis and National Security Policy: 1936 – 1991

The Pennsylvania State University Press.

University Park, Pennsylvania

Frances, Alan J. M.D. (20114): The Mind of the Mass Murderer

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-normal

/201405/the-mind-the-mass-murderer

Retrieved, December 2020

CHAPTER 3

The Psychology of the Sicko

Tyrants, dictators, despots, sub-human purveyors of death, pain, suffering, imposing such pain and suffering upon others, with total disregard for anyone other than themselves. These people have been with us throughout all of our five-thousand or so years of recorded semi-modern history. Most of them—for good or for bad—have succumbed to the old adage of: Live by the sword, die by the sword. But not before inflicting intense pain and suffering upon many millions of earth’s living human creatures.

First, a few observations and definitions as to what or who we are discussing. The first explanation is from Alfred Jones: In ancient Greece, the word tyrant meant ‘ruler’ and did not have negative connotations. It was not until the rulers or leaders began to take advantage of their rank in a negative sense that it then began to have undesirable connotations. The word also became associated with both despotic rulers and anyone else who had power over other people more and more in ancient times, the tyrant was more often than not, a person who took power illegally. It might have an overthrow of the existing government or some type of power play.

While sectarian and religious-wise, we are taught that all living humans are created in the image and likeness of God, and that all people are created equal, there is no denying or disputing that there are three classes of people; those that lead, those that follow, and those who just stay out of the way—as best they can. So in reality, the worst, most cruel, most inhumane, most vile and despicable despotic tyrant is usually a person with greater than average leadership potential.

How one uses, or abuses one’s power is the deciding and differentiating factor among us all. Nathan TOPL explains: Dictator - a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force; a person who behaves in an autocratic way; (in ancient Rome) a chief magistrate with absolute power, appointed in an emergency. A person can be a dictator without being tyrannical. Having the power without abusing (or even using) it.

Most so-called normal human beings always profess societies’ need to be forgiving and understanding of the poor and misguided criminals among us. They always retort: There is always some good in everyone. or also: There but for the grace of God, go I. Wrong! Not! In my thirty-five years of federal government law enforcement, I can definitely guarantee that there are some people—a very small percentage—that have absolutely nada, none, zero degree of morals, conscience, contrition, concern, or caring about anyone other than their own personal gain. And guess what? Those are the foremost negative traits of any ‘good’ tyrant, despot, or dictator.

As Taylor Markarian explains: Not everyone has the stuff to be a dictator. Being the sole leader of a totalitarian state takes intelligence, the ability to connive and persuade, and a penchant for violence and terror. The most infamous dictators in history—Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, etc.—all had unique characteristics and signature tactics that got them their dark spot in history.

A small look at the mental ‘deficiencies’ that possess these strange people is presented by Michelle Rankin: The infamous strongmen might have all come from different corners of the world, but they all displayed several of the same psychopathic characteristics, including charisma, narcissism, lack of compassion, and even sadism. Psychopaths and individuals with poorly developed amygdalae can end up with extreme dependencies, meaning that what satisfies a normal person can’t satisfy a psychopath. In turn, they become addicted to the highs of drugs and alcohol, or even more extreme actions like power and murder in the case of dictators and serial killers.

Matt Davis adds a few lines of retrospection: Most of us can’t imagine wanting absolute control over a nation or feeling compelled to commit mass murders — so then what is it about a dictator’s psychology that makes them different? The world over, dictators seem to share similar characteristics — a need for admiration, excessive paranoia, and ruthless brutality.

Norrholm and Hundley also discuss this point: Dictatorial leaders such as these represent the extreme potential of the human capacity for evil, and yet, despite their apparent omnipotence within their individual spheres of power, these individuals also tended to suffer from excessive anxiety – mostly regarding paranoid fears of citizen uprising and/or assassination.

James Fallon, Ph.D. clarifies further: So, what binds dictators across history and geography? What traits do they share? Successful psychopaths are usually charming, charismatic, and intelligent. They brim with self-confidence and independence, and exude sexual energy. They are also extremely self-absorbed, masterful liars, compassionless, often sadistic, and possess a boundless appetite for power.

Great bunch of guys, right? Wonderful club to be a part of? Even though centuries of time separate their individual regimes, their game plans, modus operandi, and ways of doing ‘business’ are very similar in almost every aspect. With all humankind, one thing always seems to remain the same—good is good, and bad is bad; regardless of ever-changing politicians, regardless of ever-changing laws, this point never changes.

I must admit here, that fifty years or so ago, I was a prime candidate to join this select group—or so the Fed/Military psych-shrinks kept telling me. Between twenty and twenty-five times a year, at least for my first twenty years of service, every time that I returned from participating in a messy/dirty operation, I was required to undergo psychiatric evaluation—to ensure those people in command that I currently was not, and would not soon be a threat to myself or to so-called ‘civilized’ society. Almost every time, this involved a mandatory battery of goofy-ass shrink-driven psycho-babble ‘tests’. And wowie-zowie, each and every time I scored extremely high as being well above the legal borderline level as a psychopath and sociopath.

And the brass’s reasoning for leaving me out there and working in the field: It takes one to know one. Better to be working ‘for’ the good guys than against them? And there were thousands of us in this same category.

A very well-reasoned assessment of this situation is presented by Stuart Wilde: Tyrants are angry, usually because they’re scared. More often than not, they are tyrants because they were abused as kids. Sometimes they’re angry because they feel they haven’t gotten half the breaks in life they think they should have had. If their image is wrapped up in material things, or if it’s trussed in a power trip, they will be threatened by anything that vaguely hints of a reality check". The tyrant lashes out when cornered by the truth. Inflicting pain on others helps them feel less disempowered, less terrified by their monsters and dark memories.

They desperately need to be loved, yet they live in an emotional desert because no one likes them; most are scared of them. That reinforces the tyrant’s warped idea that the world is against them, and that making life hard for others is a way of experiencing power. Sometimes, if the tyrant is really powerful, they pull lesser, would-be tyrants around them, and a gang or a fascist outfit is born."

We psychopaths/sociopaths do not think and reason things quite the same way as ordinary sane individuals—for some of us, this really is the best way to stay alive and counter the truly ‘bad guys’. Jeremy Sherman puts this in perspective: To tyrants, winning is everything – prevail, dominate, claim victory in every interaction by any means necessary. We often overestimate how much a tyrant decides or chooses how to be. You didn’t choose your personality and neither do tyrants. They slide into it and it’s easy to see how one could. No one leaves advantage unused and once we have it, it’s hard to wrest it from us. Tyrants are like the rest of us, reluctant to give up advantages even when it’s a virtue to do so.

Personal economic advantage is always derived from the utilization of personal political power. Most often, inside America, the application of said power and its inherent attainable privileges and rights do not necessitate torture or murder, as a general rule. That is not to say that many other politically motivated tactics, such as, false arrest, false imprisonment, impounding bank accounts causing financial ruin, threats made against one’s family and friends are any less harrowing. Using legitimately legislated, voted, accepted, and passed laws against one’s political opponents is just as malicious and evil in the USA as it is in the USSR.

A tyrant is a tyrant, whether voted into office by unlearned and uneducated citizens; by cheating, fraud, deception at the ballot box/voting centers; or usurping control through a military coup; the end result is still the same. E. A. Rees reveals such: In considering the nature of authoritarian political leadership systems – whether the leader is designated as an autocrat, dictator, despot, tyrant, or whatever – the question of defining the features of such systems of rule remains. A simplistic definition, which says that a dictator is one who decides everything, whose word is law, and who can act with total impunity, is inadequate. The process of government – of policy formation, resolution of policy options, overseeing policy implementation – could never be performed by one individual, except in the simplest of societies. All rulers need subordinates through which they can govern; all are required to recognize limits to their power and to act with regard to practicalities or prudence if they do not wish to bring about their own downfall. No ruler can ever decide everything alone. Some delegation of power is unavoidable. The real question is the way in which such leaders manage their subordinates; the way power is concentrated, without the leader being overburdened and overwhelmed with petty decisions, and without such over-centralization crippling the functioning of the state.

Amazingly, over the centuries, most of these despotic, murdering, tyrants came into their reign of terror by murdering the despotic tyrant who was their immediate boss, or their parent. Such wonderful Human Resources Succession Planning? Again, almost each and every one of these killers was ‘promising’ to make life better for the average citizens of their nations, and for the world. ‘Revolution’, out with the old and bad, and in with the new and good—or so we are led to believe.

Black and Thornton add their two cents worth on this matter: "Revolution is used here as a general term to denote the wide range of circumstances—from mere threats of force to major civil wars—in which illegitimate violence is employed within a country to effect political change. It is not necessary to emphasize that violence in the realm of politics has been in some degree characteristic of all societies, and that in many, it is still the most common means of effecting change. Revolutions have varied widely in purpose, scope, and intensity, but they have in common several characteristics.

The legitimate means of effecting change breaks down when the incumbent political leaders are trying to enact a change which significant elements of the population are not willing to accept, or when insurgents have goals that cannot be achieved by the legally available means."

While I truly do not like discussing partisan politics, or religion, this does seem like the proper place to put thing into perspective. As I stated before—or perhaps I didn’t yet—my research and writing teaching subject was sub-titled