The Tragedy of People Like Putin

ANYONE WANTING to gain a better understanding of Vladimir Putin can achieve this by reading "Red Notice" by Bill Browder. Browder spent a considerable amount time in Russia, and he paid attention. He details the amoral brutality of Vladimir Putin, and how he used his KGB connections and skills to catapult himself into absolute power in Russia, and how Putin extorts money from the Russian economy, making him one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, so the Santayana saying goes. This truth has been proven and proven again thousands of times, but nobody exemplifies it more than the brutal Putin. The best from of government is a benevolent dictatorship. We might wish that Jesus Christ would return to the world and govern us all. We would undoubtedly live lives of complete joy and fulfillment under his wise divine guidance. But alas, we are stuck with the likes of Putin, Trump, and various dictators around the world. No, Trump is not a dictator, only a potential dictator. And so are we all. Thus, we invent democracy, and entrust governance to we the people, we the masses. And yet, we don't. Every democracy in the world, including the United States, has safeguards against giving too much power to the teeming masses. James Madison, the father of the American constitution, designed the document specifically with that in mind, hence, the electoral college, and other limitations to popular government. We do not truly trust the power of the people, and with good reason. Heaven forbid that the unwashed masses of the poor should use their democratic power and overwhelmingly majority numbers to separate the wealthy from their wealth. Madison, a wealthy man, like all of America's founders, knew this. So instead, we rely on oligarchies or dictators to rule over us, and it is they, rather than the people, who govern, and always have. Rather than the poor confiscating the wealth of the rich, the rich confiscate the wealth of the poor, which, when considered in toto, amounts to considerable wealth. The tragedy is that people like Vladimir Putin are the rule, rather than the exception.