Political power: Your means, my ends

Posted by Marc Hodak on May 11, 2008 under Revealed preference | Read the First Comment

In democracies, politicians running for office must:

1) Claim that they want power for altruistic reasons,
2) Carefully disguise their raw lust for power, an obsession that necessarily consumes anyone willing to go through the gauntlet of modern elections,
3) Very carefully leave unmentioned the distinguishing characteristic of government while promising all sorts of governmental largess.

So it’s kind of refreshing (in a pointy-headed, academic way) to see a regime where their thirst for power is completely out in the open, where those in power don’t pretend to give a rat’s *ss about anything other than keeping it. The Burmese junta is completely open like that. Amazing. Dissent or challenges of any kind? Not tolerated. Democracy? Out of the question.

In democracies, politicians disguise the fact that in a choice between their stated ideals versus getting power, most of them consider ideals expendable. In Burma, they are completely open to everyone (but their own people, if they can manage it) that in that in a choice between helping millions of their fellow citizens versus risking losing any part of their grip on power, their fellow citizens are expendable.