I guess you have to live long enough. In my lifetime I have seen the death of a myriad number of tyrants. From Hitler to Gadhaffi tyrants seem to come and go with little or no long term effect on the world. It seems that we have collective memory lapses when it comes to the grand injustices. Armenians seethe about the genocide inflicted by Turks, Jews seethe about the genocide inflicted by Hitler and so it goes. I distinctly remember the hope with which the death of Nasser was received by the world. Egypt was to emerge as an exemplary democracy that was going to galvanize the region. Never happened. Sadat took over. More wars were fought. The death of Hussain in Iraq resulted in years of bloodshed giving birth to a dysfunctional government. The death of Bin Laden has had little effect on the government of Afghanistan (even if you believe that Al Qaeda and Afghanistan were separate entities). Eventually the Taliban will prevail and the country will fall into the same kind of tyranny that was there before the Nato forces arrived History has an imperfect memory and history teachers blend into the past with little to show for their efforts. Why is that?
On the one hand you can say that mankind (with apologies to my women readers) is a fundamentally fractious bunch that is territorially and clan challenged. From the very first dawn of time clans had to be cohesive in order to survive and territories had to be defended lest game and later arable land be lost to raiders. But, you would have thought that the institution of agriculture and a relatively sedentary population would have seen that aggression was wasteful of both human and emotional resources. The Bible is redolent with acts of aggression by which the Children of Israel conquered Canaan. This in the name of God. In Biblical times the Israeli clan was quite open to integration with outsiders but in recent times outside integration through intermarriage is seen as lethal to the prospects of Judaism long term. History has taught us that relatively heterogenous populations survive better than inbred ones. Interbreeding results in strength. Darwinian theory applies as much to nations as to turtles. The strength of the United States is largely the product of the best that newcomers brought to the table. England is a polyglot of aboriginals, Saxons and French. Germany is a polyglot of northern tribes that eventually overtook the more gentrified southern Europe. Hitler was highly focused on the "purity" of race in a country whose very origins were very muddied with many clans and factions.
One theme that runs through the history of tyrants is greed. Whether greed of material things or greed of territory it seems that tyrants can't seem to get enough of them. However, history should have taught these tyrants that the shroud has no pockets and "you can't take it with you". Far flung territories was the undoing of the Romans. The Greeks (even today) could not keep it together. Smaller territorial units did better but tyrants believed that if they were doing better at home, new territories were even better. They weren't.
Another theme that runs through history is the dehumanizing of the victim before his or her undoing. Every object of genocide has been dehumanized so as to make annihilation palatable to the rank and file doing the killing. Tyrants have also been known as gentle family men. Religious too. And yet orders went out to slaughter millions of Jews or Ethiopians or whoever seemed to be the flavour of the day. For Muslims to say that Jews are the devil is to dehumanize Jews so that they be destroyed. Same for the Tutsis. Same for the driver that cuts you off to whom you give the "finger". I would bet that you would never do that in polite society. The very act of bullying is one that is preceded by dehumanizing the victim. It's never Johnny but a "fag"--a nameless dehumanized form that is worthy of ill treatment in the eyes of the bully.
I have very little confidence that the African spring offensive will produce any fundamentally positive results. We in the West believe that democracies and self determinations are the hallmark of advanced societies. So did the Greeks of old. But we seem to forget that our democracies are about 900 years old and we still don't get it right most of the times. Democracies depend on the ability of a person to trust an elected official to do his and his neighbour's will. That trust is eroding in the United States and is the subject of the 99% who say politicians don't represent their needs. In fragile countries like those in the middle east trust is hard to come by. Eventually these movements peter out and a strongman emerges to put the country back together again. Tribal or religious factions emerge. The Christians in Egypt are suffering at the hands of the Muslims. The various factions of Islam can't seem to get along.
And so we are back at the beginning. Is mankind genetically encoded with fractiousness and ill will? Probably.
Bernie
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