Opinion

The big problem our world has… do you hate it too?

Jan 22, 2016

This old world of ours always seems to be suffering some sort of problem, and has been for thousands of years! Either we are at war with one another, or some country has over-run another, in fact some countries have ceased to exist because of the greed of a neighbour. But the strange thing is, most of the troubles of this nature are brought about by a very small nucleus of usually evil minded people, who through the force of personality or brutality, take over, and run the lives of the rest of us. Usually there is one charismatic man, with maybe a hundred or so like-minded followers, who destroy the existing leaders and take the reins of power from them. Once ensconced, they expand their little empires, by attacking neighbouring states, with for the craziest of them, the idea of ‘world domination’ in their minds. Thank goodness all of them (until now at least), have eventually failed, with the powers for good winning out.

This ISIS crowd are a modern case in point – I imagine their happy little band started out with a few muftis or whatever they call themselves, fanatically looking for a cause and once they found it (domination of the world and destroy all non-believers), all they had to do was to convince a few thousand others, perhaps less fanatical at first, but easily wound up to the required mental state, and look at the world now (and it’s only just beginning, unfortunately).

Go to Central Africa 30 or 40 years ago and you’ll find the name Idi Amin. He was another one, filled with evil but charismatic enough to have been able to take over the whole Congo, and convince the western powers to give him unlimited sums of money, supposedly to develop his country. It was many years before he was eventually removed, and went to live somewhere in the middle east with more cash in his personal account than the GDP of some countries.

A generation further back and Germany becomes the centre of trouble, with another man of charisma, and his few cronies, convincing the people of that great country that they were the master race, to which all other peoples should be subservient. He managed to last for some years, and even attained the office of Chancellor of the Reichstag, through the use of brilliant oratory powers and the underhand treatment of any one who tried to stand in his way, before he was eventually knocked off his perch by the rest of the world, because he attempted world domination by brutal means.

Napoleon was another such character, not so much filled with evil, as an over-riding desire for power. He was one who very nearly succeeded in his efforts, had it not been for his disastrous adventure into Russia, meaning he was exposing himself on two fronts, (very much as Hitler did), as well as over-extending his lines of communication, the further he advanced into Eastern Europe.

The one common denominator that seems to save us from these tyrants is the fact that they really believe that they are better than the rest of us; until we eventually find a charismatic leader of our own, who is ready and willing to fight back – someone with the power of good behind them, but with the same arrogance as the men they are against. Churchill appeared at just the time he was needed to defeat Hitler, and Napoleon was eventually beaten by Wellington, a military mind as efficient and powerful as his own, but without the desire for world domination.

ISIS are the modern equivalent of these people, different from their predecessors in that they don’t try to convert their enemies to their way of thinking; their desire is to wipe all Christians, in fact any religion other than their own, from the face of the earth, and they intend to do so in the most brutal and primitive ways, involving beheadings and the mistreatment of women, amongst many other despicable acts. Let’s hope our charismatic leader appears soon, to lead us to victory!