The Blog I Never Use

Have you ever spent hours trying to perfect your diabolical laugh? Neither have I, but maybe I should start. On page 23 of Zawacki's How to be a Villain, he indicates that it is very high among the priorities of potential supervillians. I guess I was too woried with learning the art of mass hypnotism and the science behind the so-called death ray to work on my presentation.

But my lack of a suitable laugh was not my reason for abandoning the supervillian game. It actually comes down to two complimentary factors: cost/benfit analysis and political agnosticism. Cost/benefit analysis reveals that the labor which goes into organizing and ruling a country, let alone the world, severly outweighs the benefits of despotic rule. That's not even including the work it takes to get there. I could put in the hours, and I might have in High School, just to prove I could do it but, then what? Then I'm responsible for everyone else's problems and I've got to either pull a Stalin and waste hours every day signing death orders (while becoming more paranoid every day) or I've got to find real solutions to problems.

That is where my political agnosticism comes into play. I don't believe that a politician can really acomplish much positive good, even as suppreme overlord. In history I see all kinds of politicians with excellent (or nefarious) intentions fail to accomplish anything worthwhile. If a despot extrodinare (or Buffy the Republican Slayer, or The League Democrat Ladies/Gentlemen) accomplishes her or his goals for world-management, it is because a mighty social movement supports those goals, not because of suppreme power or because of quality planning.

Now propaganda solves a few problems but, as soon as things start going your way, there are always toadies that feed on the dregs of dictatorial power, who will use the distraction caused by signing death orders and solving all the world's problems to siphon some of the benefits of power for their own use. Now, one would think that a wise world-governing genius would be able to detect such duplicity but history shows that two problems interfere with the detection and removal of such traitor-toadies: First, the smartest strata, pepole with the skills and genius to avoid detection, are too smart to want the burdens of absolute-power and lie in wait for positions such as High-Level Sycopant, to avoid the work but reap the benefits; second, effective toadies are hard to find so, even if you discover their plots to undermine or hi-jack your intrests, they are too valuable to replace (especially since they are too smart and paranoid to train new toadies).

So it comes down to this: I might succeed in a bid for world domination but I am not confident enough, or should I say "megalomoniacal" enough, to believe that I would be able to accomplish my new world order. I guess that means that, if I want to change the world for the better, I'd better start working to set up the structure that best represents my ideals to undergird a social movement (since, as I mentioned above, social movements are more effective than despots).

I guess that there is really a third factor: I'm a really bad liar. I couldn't even play that beloved card game where one is supposed to lie about the contents of one's hand because I can't lie that well. That being the case, propaganda is very difficult. Though, Goebels said that propaganda has nothing to do with truth (has no truth-value), I can't believe in that position strongly enough to propagandize the world.