When Too Much Power Makes the Elites Insane

American Thinker ^ | 2 Jul, 2021 | Jack Gleason

[MtnClimber]

Power corrupts, and absolute power will make you nuts.

We've all heard the phrase "power corrupts," by Lord Acton, a 19th-century British historian. The full quote — "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely" — referred to the absolute power of kings.

Research from 2012 by Katherine A. DeCelles, a University of Toronto professor, concluded that wealth and power don't affect everyone equally — they just allow existing personality traits to emerge to excess.

There are many stories of wealthy people setting up foundations that help millions of people. But there is a dark side as well.

People with great wealth and power quickly become surrounded by underlings who fawn over their every word. Every idea is brilliant; every thought is genius. After a while, they start to think they are gods.

George Soros: "I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of self-importance―to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes or, even better, a scientist like Einstein."

[MtnClimber]

If you could buy the elites for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth, you could make massive capital gains to be taxed at 50%.

[ptsal]

Accurate and Funny....Twofer Award

[joethedrummer]

Among the richest and most elite is an obsession with the need to end “global warming” and make the planet healthy and “sustainable.” The real fear is that “their world” is going to be polluted and overrun by the stupid people in “flyover country.”

-Ain’t THAT the truth of it!

[PapaBear3625]

One problem the elites see, is the genetic "regression to the mean" , where the children of an exceptional parent may inherit the wealth that he created, but not necessarily the parent's intelligence and drive. The children may be above average, but not exceptional.

Unable to rely on ability, the descendants will tent to want to use their wealth and connections into the Deep State to preserve their positions from competitors which may emerge from the middle class.

[No.6]

Spot on. Being evil, and knowing they are evil, they run up against their own mortality and hate it. They wish to preserve their selfish wills into perpetuity through the amorphous State.

As C.S. Lewis writes (I’m paraphrasing), evil thinks it’s about the self and is unique but always takes the same banal forms everywhere on Earth and everywhen in time. The Pharaohs made gold sarcophagi, Nebuchadnezzar had his dream, etc.