Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

That too, of course .

I've noticed that the idea of a Benevolent Dictator here is associated with the Right. Not that I'm denying that there right wingers which use it, they exist.

But is interesting when you live in a country where "Average people" and Far Leftists can root for the idea of a millitary dictatorship.

(Now, their Right wing equivalent manage to be even worse somehow, Fujimorists are just a mix of bad things, ethnic cleansing included...thought they also have a Left version in the Shining Path, which was more nutty but with less resources. Yet still managed to be classified as genocidals).

I'm hyped for seeing stuff as globalization continues.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Mar 8th 2019 at 8:13:30 AM

The Left and Right are always dependent on where you stand.

Essentialy many people believe in "benevolent dictatorship", some people also believe that ONLY dictatorship can provide stable and safe life (go and take a look at Fallout: New Vegas video game thread on this site, there have been recently arguments about whole "dictatorship is benevolent and democracy is overrated" talk going on there). When argued against it, people point out to such dictators as Lee Kuan Yew and say he was awesome and is example of "benevolent dictator".

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Mar 8th 2019 at 9:17:20 PM

The myth of the benevolent dictator largely comes from a base human desire for simplistic solutions to complex problems.

A democracy is a very complex system with many different parts that many people find hard to grasp. It's also something that, on paper, requires active participation and an informed citizenship. It's a societal model that asks something of the average person.

The idea of the dictator is far easier for people to understand; they only put their trust in one person, who gets all the responsibility. Since the dictator makes all the decisions, the citizenry doesn't have to care about who gets into office, what the laws are, or how the system works - all of that will be decided for them. The dictator can make decisions without checks and balances and consultations, meaning that in theory it would avoid red tape and be more efficient provided the dictator was competent.

Of course, it doesn't actually work that way. Authoritarian systems are more corrupt than average because they have no accountability for their leaders - they're rife with kleptocrats, cronyism, and petty squabbles. It's something we have seen over and over and over again. The only difference is the population doesn't get to know about it, meaning they have an illusion that everything is working fine. So in reality, you are giving up your civil rights for no benefit whatsoever.

Well, despite all of that there's still a LOT of people in the world, who actively want dictatorship and even dissapointed when media portrayes dictatorship in a bad light. And as i said they love listing dictators from the past (such as Lee Kuan Yew) as examples of "benevolent dictator in real life".

The idea of a "harsh but fair incorruptible strong man taking leadership and making country great and prosperious" is still increddibly popular today (mostly because people hate bureaucracy and "paper work" SOOO much).

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Mar 8th 2019 at 9:46:32 PM

That's kinda what I was getting at. I think the most apt representation of that disdain for bureaucracy is in Kafka's The Castle; the main character arrives at a town whose entire society and structure of government is completely opaque, needlessly convoluted, and alienating. None of the villagers seem to understand what the bureaucrats actually do, but still hold them in a revered status and come up with ridiculously convoluted and arbitrary explanations for their actions. None of it appears to make sense, but everyone besides the protagonist acts like it's the most natural thing and couldn't be any other way. All of its leaders feel more like ghosts than real people. All of the victories the protagonist obtains while struggling against this system are hard-fought and pyrrhic.

Of course, Kafka was speaking to a truth with his work, but people don't seem to understand that a dictatorship would not really solve these problems.

People forget that the reason we've got so much red tape is because people in the past learned the hard way that letting people wield power with no checks or hindrances is a horrible idea.

I've long believed that ultimately none of us can really be trusted with power over others.

Dictatorships have bureaucracy, they just don't have accountability. It isn't a hatred of red tape — which exists everywhere — but being held accountable in general that makes them strive for one man rule.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize that democracy being messy and difficult is a feature and not a bug. The whole idea isn’t that if nobody gets their way then everyone does.

People also have very primitive and simplistic idea on how governments supposed to work. Like they love to imagine "strong man, who through his competence (that he achieved by freeing himself from empathy and morality) destroys his every enemy (who often imagined to be REALLY cartoonishly stupid or evil) and if he noticed corruption and evil in his government, he just gonna destroy it as well, efforotlessly solving every problem. He don't need anyone, as he is capable of doing everything himself".

The idea that dictatorship is the best governing method ever in some groups never cease to baffle me. The only time that it's even feasible (I said feasible, not necessary) is during a time of extraordinary crisis. There is a reason that the Romans despite all their fuck-up only do the dictator stuff during crisis and after it's over, go back to their normal government. Of course, in practice, it didn't go as smooth as that. That is pretty much the reason why those dictators do the "we're doomed unless you give me absolute power" routine. In conclusion, I do not consider dictatorship to be even an actual, proper government method, and I think people who do are edgy idiots. I mean I don't even trust my parents with control over my life. How can I trust some random stranger?

Gods... don't remind me. You try to watch a cute heartwarming video about a girl showing of her Alita-themed prosthetic arms, and the comments are just flooded with "Brie Larson said or did something at some point, maybe, and that means anything she stars in has to suck!" type bullshit.

As a side note, I actually like the eyes, and I'm still convinced that the Uncanny Valley effect is completely intentional. "Does it bother you that I'm not completely human?" indeed...

A dictatorship will never be as FUNCTIONAL as a government let alone as benevolent because the simple fact is a single ruler will never be able to do all the things necessary to make a society function.

That’s sort of a non-statement. Dictatorships still have bureaucracy, the dictator isn’t literally running the whole country by himself.

Seeing as how I’ve seen this criticism come up with Captain Marvel and the involvement of the Air Force in production, is there any point where being Backed by the Pentagon isn’t terrible? Just from looking at the page, I see there’s plenty of examples of non-US militaries helping with media and I don’t see anywhere as much criticism compared to US examples, although that might be more because of the foreign interventions the US has done.

According to someone who's seen it, the movie doesn't glorify the USAF at all.

While I have seen some people who say it doesn’t, the topic existing at all has got me thinking about the Backed by the Pentagon thing and whether it should be allowed.

Dictatorship bureaucracies are rarely functional for that reason because all decisions must be and are approved by the leader.

I'm... Largely ambivalent about 'benevolent dictatorships' in fiction.

I've already explained several times how it's just more convenient as a literary device, but even beyond that...

Well... The general argument against the notion of a benevolent dictatorship is 'Dictatorships are bad!'. And while that's not untrue, it's also sort of not something people are actually consistent about.

Even democracies recognise some level of need for 'dictatorship', which is why democratically elected governments don't run absolutely every decision they make by the entire electorate. They get elected, but then they run the country semi-dictatorially for the duration of their term.

There's a fuckton of checks and balances (or at least there should be) and the elections for different branches of the government are usually staggered so that if one branch is currently misusing their semi-dictatorial power, another branch can put a stop to that before the end of the term limits of the original branch's members, but outside of those checks and balances elected officials essentially have dictatorial powers with zero accountability for the duration of their term.

A benevolent dictator is not that different from the ideal image of elected head of government in a democracy. In the sense that the ideal elected head of government, who does exactly what's best for the country and also does exactly what the people want, would become a benevolent dictator in spirit. They would be re-elected every time (making the elections little more than a formality), would wield functionally absolute power (the branches of government would agree with their every decision and write all the laws they want, making their role a formality too) and have no real accountability (they would never do anything that would need to be checked or balanced, so the checks and balances are a formality too).

Now... The ideal elected official is every bit as much unrealistic and fictional as the truly benevolent dictator... But the only functional difference between the two is that the former has the author create an illusion of democracy, while the latter is... Well... A lot more honest.

Edited by Robrecht on Mar 9th 2019 at 5:47:14 PM

Uhh...are you sure you want to stick with that statement? Dictatorships are almost always plagued by infighting and “left hand, right hand” issues. Just look at North Korea, or Libya under Gaddafi.

Edited by archonspeaks on Mar 9th 2019 at 8:36:46 AM

Yes, you are exactly proving my point.

A dictatorship is not more stable. Quite the opposite. The lack of delegated authority leads to constant fighting for power.

Counterpoint: Stalin.

Stalin's reign was super-duper stable. The main reason he took power was that he saw all the factional infighting under Lenin and went 'Yeah, no. None of that. Everyone has to toe the line or this revolution's fucked.'

He brought extreme stability to the Soviet government. The Stalinist government was an extremely functional government. His government being functional did not make it, or him, good...

Edited by Robrecht on Mar 9th 2019 at 5:57:02 PM

My point isn’t that a dictatorship is stable, but rather that the idea that a dictatorship is one man doing everything isn’t correct. Dictatorships still have civil servants and bureaucrats, the dictator themselves might have authority over every part of the government but doesn’t literally run every part of the government themselves.

Are you using Sarcasm Mode?

Stalin was one of the most single most unstable dictatorships of all time.

I don't think you can claim stability with literally millions of purges of both leadership and citizenry.

The purges didn't happen because of instability, they occurred because of Stalin's totalitarian paranoia. I'm not saying that Stalin's government was stable (I don't know enough about it to say such a thing) but the purges are a poor example of stability or a lack thereof.