Glob-a-log

One of the more enduring myths people hold dear is that whatever you can say against dictatorships, they are, at least, more efficient than democracies. The trains running on time in Hitler’s Germany is one of those oft-mentioned examples of this line of ‘argument.’

There are many more and far more serious examples that prove the exact opposite. So, while the old Communists built the most impressive public transport systems, they were also too incompetent to feed their own people or produce even the most basic household stuff in their own, state-run factories.

Anyway, anyone still having illusions about the strong man’s reign might take another look at Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I know that some who still believe in the authoritarian myth will now protest that Mugabe is mad – but that’s the point.

Authoritarian states are the perfect vehicles for madmen: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idid Amin, Mugabe etcetera, etcetera. There are no true systems of checks and balances in a dictatorship and that’s why all of them end in abject failure – and in misery, torture, starvation and/or death for the vast majority of people living in them.

Back to the myth, though – and to China, once again. China is performing well, right? To the point that most all of our Western pundits and politicians are forever making those ‘At least the trains run on time’ noises. Never mind that the regime is corrupt, and if not (yet) mad, then at least bad and dangerous. Never mind also its harsh treatment of minorities and anyone else who tries to come between the machine and its grandiose aims.

Also never mind that the state can’t be trusted to build schools to withstand a bit of a wind; that can’t be trusted to keep its workers safe from being abused and kept as slaves by corrupt factory owners and province leaders; that can’t be trusted to offer any medical treatment to its penniless farmers; that can’t be trusted to build a damn without causing either floods, draughts and/or famine; and that can’t be trusted not to poison its rivers, poison its air, and poison the very earth itself.

Ah well, but the trains still run on time, right?

Still, sometimes it is the small stuff that is as entertaining as it is enlightening. As a symbol of all that is wrong and dysfunctional about any dictatorship, the following story works quite well. It has the obsession with uniforms, and with guns, and has more than a whiff of show trial and manipulation of the media to it – and it ends, as it always does with dictatorships, in clownesque incompetence and abject failure:

Reporters in southern China have been accidentally shot by police during a demonstration of illegal weapons, according to Chinese media reports. An officer who had been taking part in press conference on a police campaign against homemade weapons, picked up a confiscated gun. The gun discharged as he grasped it up, firing pebble-like projectiles across the room.

(Photo from the breath-taking cryptome.cn site)

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 21:16 and is filed under Columns, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.