l.c.d. dictation

It’s not always obvious, but it’s grimly consistent: most dictators and autocrats aren’t clever—they’re just willing to be cruel. A few have enough low cunning to seize a moment or twist a system, but intelligence isn’t the driver. It’s laziness, brutality, and the fact that violence is the fastest shortcut to power if you don’t care who or what gets destroyed along the way.

They wrap it in flags, ideologies, costumes, and myths, but the core behaviour hasn’t changed since the first time one primate picked up a stick and realised others would back away. These men aren’t strategic masterminds; they’re thugs who’ve inherited institutions too scared or too broken to stop them. The tragedy isn’t that they misunderstand the world—it’s that they understand it just well enough to break it for personal gain.