How To Stay In Power

The main objective of all despots and most politicians is to stay in power. How do they manage to achieve that? The experts say fear, control of information, reward, and being somewhat nuts goes a long way to holding on to power. There are a few sub-rules as well...depend on as few people as possible to keep yourself in power; let the cronies that help keep you in power know they can be easily replaced; tax the people as much as possible to enrich yourself and pay off your toadies; distribute as little tax revenue as possible, just enough to give people the impression you care about them while keeping hope alive that things will get better.

For dictators, there is a prerequisite, of course...disarm the people, so they can't push back. All your Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots disarmed their collective populations as a necessary imperative. They all sold gun confiscation as an issue of public safety and then proceeded to rid themselves of the opposition. It is amazing how the citizenry begins to take you seriously and obey you when their means of defense is removed. Creating an external or internal fear and then selling the people that only you have the answer, while they are in no position to disagree, is very effective. Try to remember when you were a child about to be punished...fear with no way out, no defense. You would have agreed to garbage duty for the rest of your life. Hitler was very effective in using the loss of World War I and the poor economy of the Weimar Republic to convince Germans that the plight they were experiencing was not a fault of theirs, but that of the Jews and most of Europe. The Bolsheviks used fear of the House of Romanov and then took the family under custody as an answer to that fear; they then murdered the family to underscore that there was no turning back. Stalin's constant political purges, executions and death camps or Gulags served to keep the fear going. It is interesting to note that Stalin's last planned purge was in 1952. His plan was to rid Russia of Jews, using the excuse of a fictional plot by Jewish doctors purposely engaging in medical malpractice. Before Stalin could see his purge take root, God took him to his new home, wherever that is. A letter was found after Stalin's death in which numerous Jewish leaders in the USSR were supposed to declare their loyalty to the state, a sure sign of a coming purge. The letter was never released due to Stalin's demise. God had a plan for his people, Israel, and God was not going to let Uncle Joe get in the way.

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I believe the Clintons use fear to control their cohorts. They deeply involve people in their schemes, then remind them that if either Clinton goes down they too will go down. It is certainly possible that Bill Clinton's visit with AG Loretta Lynch on the tarmac was a "remember where you came from" speech, and "by the way how are the grandkids?" Many politicians use fear of the opposition, like showing grandma being thrown off a cliff, to control what people think. They often create a problem just so they can offer a solution. Lenin said, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." Hitler said, "Make a lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Controlling the flow of information, making it constant and ubiquitous, in posters, films, and TV will make whatever is being sold appear normal and accepted. The Rocket Man of North Korea keeps his people in fear of the rest of the world, paranoid, in the dark, and off balance while convincing them he is their only salvation. Reward plays a vital role. Party members and those who enforced Stalin's or Hitler's rule were rewarded for their loyalty with fancy apartments, higher salaries, better health care and a life-style average citizens could never have achieved on their own. If all this sounds like organized crime, it's because it is...just on a massive scale. The lure of free housing, free education, free healthcare, a life relieved of the struggle to achieve all these necessities is a strong enticement, even if it is an illusion. The swamp's drain plug has been pulled, but the swamp monsters are determined to keep from being exposed, desperately hanging on to their power. Being somewhat off-center psychologically seems to be a common trait among tyrants and wily politicians. A psychiatrist would have a field day with any one of them.