Here is the strongman’s trap: In order to do anything in his world, you have to bow to him. Everyone bows to him, and writes this off as a practical decision. But in doing so, you make the strongman stronger. Meeting his demand for loyalty, for not speaking plainly about his outrages, for flattery and obsequiousness—all of this serves to reinforce the unhealthy dynamic he has built. By paying the price to enter the halls of power, you ensure that the price will get higher. By agreeing to his rules, you cement his supremacy. The willingness of savvy and practical and realistic people to write off that kiss of the ring as a small matter is what creates the absurd, surreal conditions that characterize strongmen governments. What you look at the bizarre spectacle of a nation of millions all cowering with pasted-on smiles before a flawed leader and wonder to yourself, “How did that happen?”, the answer is, it happened more or less like this.
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Strength and power are not the same. Strength is often portrayed as the ability to exert force, or to make others do what you want, but those who have worked hardest to build real strength (which is different from muscle mass, something which is completely unrelated) know that strength is the ability to do things on your own without support or resources. Making others do things for you? That’s power. These are not so much quirks of language as they are natural phenomena which are both referenced in their real natures as well as confused and mixed up often.
These ‘strongmen’ are some of the weakest humans in existence.
That said, it is funny and logical. As a person who has not made the decision referenced here, it is funny to watch those who have made the decision. It is essentially resigning your fate to those who want to harm you, it is putting your utmost trust, and sole trust, in those who want to create problems for you. It is even more comedic when such persons who make the decision then take up the banner of legitimacy—everyone else who hasn’t made the same decision is problematic.
Simple logic is hard to use apparently. A person who wilfully tries to harm you persistently, then promises to back off from those tendencies if you obey them, are only going to increase the problems they cause for you if you aid them in… causing problems for you. Funnily enough these people then attribute such events to unavoidable reality. No, they’re probably too embarrassed to admit to themselves that they contributed to it themselves. In doing so, they make it pretty much impossible to rectify the horrible situation, instead relying on the same forces they call problematic to make things better for everyone.
If these ‘strongmen’ are simply seen for the fools they are, everyone around will only see just how incapable they are. Instead you have loads of people who don’t even buy into the ideological horseshit each of these particular persons may have, support them to get them to back off a little bit in the extreme short term, only make it easier for these ‘strongmen’ to create much more severe and long lasting problems for them… which wouldn’t have been possible without their help in the first place. How tragic…but my sympathy only lies with those who did not contribute to such things but suffered regardless.
Dealing with these ‘strongmen’ who are everywhere rather than just at the heads of some nations is also a good thing to do. After all, it is not good to see them go unpunished after messing around, and causing problems, just so they could tell themselves that they have not chosen badly all their lives, which results in them not being able to do anything on their own despite not having real, natural circumstances preventing them from doing so.
