02-01-2020, 03:35 PM
A brilliant, highly-educated person with sociopathic tendencies, like Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Goebbels, is far more dangerous than a dumb sociopath who 'only' does dumb crime such as auto theft or armed robbery. The dumb crook usually gets caught faster. A sociopath who has all the advantages of wealth, connections, and power -- let us say Harvey Weinstein -- can do far greater crime than someone not so privileged. Intelligence, education, and connections do not make one safer if one is evil. Perhaps those might give one cause to be honest because the rewards for legitimate achievement can be high. Then again, there is Bill Cosby, who couldn't pass up the opportunity to do date rape.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
