This is Paul Kagame, apparently posing for a Walmart District Manager of the Year photo. He is the current dictator of Rwanda. Kagama toppled the last dictatorship. The last dictator was actually killed in a plane crash initiated by... no one knows. It was that crash that started the genocide. Everyone started killing everyone else. Kagame's Tutsi army came down from Rwanda to halt the killing and succeed the dictatorship. Okay fine. He did that. He is now president.
Kagame abhorred the autocracy of the last dictator. Hated it with a passion. He thought, the Tutsi have been victimized, they are now faultless. But people didn't go along with it. He said to himself, if only people would just listen and do as I say, everything would be fine. 16 years later he is president, yes, but in the exact style of the previous dictator.
This is the psychology of a dictator. He thinks the last dictatorship was so horrid, so unbearable, that a new government will be best, no matter what it looks like. Who cares if he, the poised war hero, becomes a dictator to implement freedom? But suddenly he understands how the previous dictator felt. How awful that must be, to realize you have much in common with a genocidal maniac. THINK, Paul Kagame, think.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
ReplyDelete(signed) George Santayana
Oh, and btw -- those who REFUSE to FORGET the past? They, too, condemn themselves to repeat it -- only in an even more horrifying and excruciatingly hellish inner circle of the inferno.
(signed) Dante A.G. Rasputin