While I have no doubt that the secret police of the Pinochet regime were heavily salted with psychopaths (that being a plausible scenario on the face of it, as well as apparently backed up by empirical results), I do wonder if Pinochet's government really qualified as a pathocracy per se. My skepticism in this regard arises purely from observation of the large scale results of military government in Chile. In contrast to essentially every other Latin American country, all of which are corrupt, poverty-stricken basket-cases, Chile stands out as a fairly stable, orderly, prosperous nation. As the saying goes, from the fruits shall the tree be known; in Pinochet's case, a good argument can be made that he left Chile better than he found it, which is hardly what we'd expect of a pathocrat. There's also the interesting point that he voluntarily relinquished power, again not something you usually see from a psychopath.
Thus, I wonder if it might not be the case that certain organs of the state will almost invariably attract psychopaths, but that so long as the top leadership remains in the hands of psychologically normal humans the worst impulses of the psychopaths are reined in. There may be circumstances that make such a bargain necessary. In Chile's case, before the 9/11/73 coups d'etat the country was on the verge of falling into the hands of communists ... we all know where that goes. Following Allende's removal from power, a Marxist insurgency immediately arose that resorted to terrorist attacks. The harsh methods employed by the military government to suppress this insurgency may well have been necessary - had the Marxists taken control, the historical pattern implies that the bulk of the population would have been subjected to a far worse terror than that deployed by the military against the communists.
As a historical counterfactual, consider the Russian revolution. We all know the horrors that ensued from Bolshevik control. Preventing this would probably have required the Czarists to be far harsher than they were. In an alternate history where the White Russians had defeated the Reds, would we remember the traditionalist forces in Russia primarily for the crimes they had committed in crushing the communists?
Loved the book, it was scary to read and realize that revolutions get co-opted.
These days, covid awoke me to see that we have been under a totalitarian system for a long time. It didn't just start with covid or vaccines. It was far behind that, when viruses were invented to blame sanitation and pollution /toxic issues on.
The people were ponerized with the scientism.
I still see people who are anti covid vax, who are pro vax. Or they still think the virus is real. It's beyond insane, just look at the data- 2020 total deaths were in line with past years in many nations (despite the toll lockdowns caused)
2020 avg age of covid death was around life expectancy, if not more in many nations.
Ugh, it's beyond politics. We are in the middle of a long running genocide by "medicine".
While I have no doubt that the secret police of the Pinochet regime were heavily salted with psychopaths (that being a plausible scenario on the face of it, as well as apparently backed up by empirical results), I do wonder if Pinochet's government really qualified as a pathocracy per se. My skepticism in this regard arises purely from observation of the large scale results of military government in Chile. In contrast to essentially every other Latin American country, all of which are corrupt, poverty-stricken basket-cases, Chile stands out as a fairly stable, orderly, prosperous nation. As the saying goes, from the fruits shall the tree be known; in Pinochet's case, a good argument can be made that he left Chile better than he found it, which is hardly what we'd expect of a pathocrat. There's also the interesting point that he voluntarily relinquished power, again not something you usually see from a psychopath.
Thus, I wonder if it might not be the case that certain organs of the state will almost invariably attract psychopaths, but that so long as the top leadership remains in the hands of psychologically normal humans the worst impulses of the psychopaths are reined in. There may be circumstances that make such a bargain necessary. In Chile's case, before the 9/11/73 coups d'etat the country was on the verge of falling into the hands of communists ... we all know where that goes. Following Allende's removal from power, a Marxist insurgency immediately arose that resorted to terrorist attacks. The harsh methods employed by the military government to suppress this insurgency may well have been necessary - had the Marxists taken control, the historical pattern implies that the bulk of the population would have been subjected to a far worse terror than that deployed by the military against the communists.
As a historical counterfactual, consider the Russian revolution. We all know the horrors that ensued from Bolshevik control. Preventing this would probably have required the Czarists to be far harsher than they were. In an alternate history where the White Russians had defeated the Reds, would we remember the traditionalist forces in Russia primarily for the crimes they had committed in crushing the communists?
Loved the book, it was scary to read and realize that revolutions get co-opted.
These days, covid awoke me to see that we have been under a totalitarian system for a long time. It didn't just start with covid or vaccines. It was far behind that, when viruses were invented to blame sanitation and pollution /toxic issues on.
The people were ponerized with the scientism.
I still see people who are anti covid vax, who are pro vax. Or they still think the virus is real. It's beyond insane, just look at the data- 2020 total deaths were in line with past years in many nations (despite the toll lockdowns caused)
2020 avg age of covid death was around life expectancy, if not more in many nations.
Ugh, it's beyond politics. We are in the middle of a long running genocide by "medicine".