Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Power

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Throughout history, there have been people who did sound very sincere, were perceived as honest and truthful, had an excellent track record, made great promises, showed lots of ambition, and looked like the perfect people to fix the “problems.” Still, it never turns out to be as expected by most people, most expectations, and most supporters. There are solid logical bases for why it happens, and there are always reasons for it.
One of the fundamental issues here is the perception of a “problem.” First, anything that might be perceived as a problem by a so-called leader, his followers, supporters, a group of people, a particular interest, “opinion leaders,” and intelligentsia may not be a problem. It could all be made up. National issues, religious issues, racial issues, security issues, ethnic issues, and territorial issues in the political arena mostly fall into this category. David Icke perceptively calls it a problem, reaction, or solution with more than sufficient historical evidence.
When religious leaders tell people that their religion will lead them to paradise and the other religion will make them burn in hell forever, they are playing with fear and uncertainty. I am told, or we are told by God or via a messenger of God, that this is the path to safety and the other is to eternal fire; they are creating a “you and us” situation, creating clear-cut division in which one group is better than the other. This builds a permanent wall between the two groups, making them hateful, paranoid, and skeptical of each other.
After that, there come notions like “we must destroy the enemies of God” or “they want to kill us. So we must kill them before they kill us”. So, inevitably, one group strikes and attacks the other, and hence, it starts an unending, eternal conflict carried on across generations forever. People keep killing and destroying each other based on useless and baseless fear and notions of you and us.
After a long history, spanning thousands of years, from gods to demigods to pharoahs to divine right kings and emperors, people started to get tired of this bloodshedding and destruction. This gave rise to the movements that said that the power in the hands of the church caused all these problems and coercion issues. So, we must separate power or state from the church. Church may continue to lead believers in its direction, but a state separated from the church must get all the coercive authority.
However, these new ideas raised several issues. First, if God will not determine the king, then who will? And how? Second, if God does not assess authority and restriction, who or what will? And how?
This created different ideologies, authority systems, and state organizational structures. One was the Republic. In which a document called a constitution, approved by the residents of a particular territory, would restrict the government’s authority. Initially, a significant concern was if a nation could be kept together without a monarch. So, many countries did not wholly give up the monarchy, and a symbolic or limited authority monarchy was retained under the supremacy of written or common law, traditional constitution, and the resultant rule of law.
Now, the problem was, how would it be decided who would run the government? A standard method adopted for that purpose was the majority vote. The original governing principle was ” One free man, one vote.” Women and enslaved people were largely excluded. Later, slavery was largely abolished, and women got the right to vote, so the government principle became “One person, one vote.”
Constitutional republic and constitutional monarchy became the dominant forms of government. Democracy did not achieve this kind of dominance until very late. First, there were different forms and shapes of Democracy, like Representative Democracy, Basic Democracy, Multi-Party Democracy, Non-Party Democracy (such as Democracy in the beginning of the United States of America), Direct Democracy, one-party Democracy, etc.
The Western world mostly adopted multi-party, Bicameral Democracy with different versions in each case. Parallel to this, essential Democracy was tried in Pakistan and One-Party Democracy in Socialist Democracies. In contrast, direct Democracy, the Communist paradise of the proletariat, was never realized in the real world because Socialism always failed before reaching that stage.
Democracy was not the only government-making system that replaced the divine right. Dictatorships, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and secular monarchies were also tried in many different places. Fascism and Nazism as the ideological bases for the government ended with absolute disasters. Dictatorships and secular monarchies still survive in some areas. DPRK is the last socialist country existing. Democratic Socialist Venezuela is in terrible shape. Representative Bicameral Democracy continues to spread in the world. Socialism failed because Socialist economies could not sustain the welfare structure of the Socialist countries. But paradoxically, socialist social welfare programs have become a very successful method of getting votes even in countries with capitalist economies. On the other hand, contrary to Socialist economies, the capitalist economies offer a far better tax base to run the welfare programs. So many Western governments have been running several welfare programs in their countries.
You can run from reality but cannot hide from it. The reality of the laws of economics is now hitting the Western socialist governments running welfare on the wealth generated by capitalist economies. The government debts and deficits are sky high, taxation is strangling the economies, creativity, innovation, invention, entrepreneurship, and businesses, and the central banks still have to print trillions to fund the warfare and welfare, causing incredible devaluation in currencies, purchasing power, standards of living due to the inflationary monetary policies.
While Capitalism is still somehow surviving, holding the world on its shoulders and pulling poor countries, people, and economies out of poverty, virtually every government in the world is going bankrupt. The fact remains that regardless of the political system adopted, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every political system that has ever existed on this planet ultimately boils down to an Oligarchy. Few are still bossing around everyone else.