WHEN A NATION EMBRACES A FALSE REALITY, SOONER OR LATER IT’S DAMNED TO FAIL
“Everyone is entitled his opinion but not his own facts.” - Patrick Moynihan
As we all know, opinions are subjective views and judgements, not necessarily based on facts or knowledge. Facts, on the other hand represent the truth. Facts are objective, proven by scientific methods, and exist in the open for everybody to see, to study and to know.
However, in politics, facts are often ignored, and false realities are embraced. I, as a retired physician with 40 years of clinical experience, and interest in psychosomatic effects of diseases on human behaviors, often wondered why doesn’t the truth matter?
And on some occasions, a very ambitious person with hidden or somewhat overt peculiar personality characteristics, such as charming charisma, ability to speak in simple language that is loaded with one-liners, Machiavellianism, egocentrism, cultism and narcissism, runs for political office or a leadership position, and easily get elected or appointed to that position.
To me, all politicians possess some of these personality traits. That is why they run for a political office in the first place - to satisfy their ego.
I believe politics is more about power than the truth, more about winning than being right. That is why I don’t generally like politics and politicians. I like and yearn for a brilliant statesman or stateswoman to run the country for the sake of the country, nor for self-interest or self-satisfaction.
When politicians with these personality traits are elected to leadership position of a country, they immediately take the advantage of the position to enhance and solidify their power even further by appointing their cronies, or second or third grade men and women to every position in their administration, so that they can be easily controlled, and remain loyal to him. They lean right and become nationalist and populist with a tendency to control and micromanage everything like a dictator. They project a mystic power. This attracts a huge crowd of dedicated followers.
It is interesting to note that this type of people easily becomes dictators in countries with history establishing big empires and run by kingdom in their past, such as the Roman Empire, Czarist Russian Empire, Chinese Empire, Ottoman Empire, Persian Empire. At the present time most of these countries run by dictatorship.
However, as history repeatedly has shown us, at the end dictators, and countries run by dictators fail, truth speak for itself, and freedoms prevail.
