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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (243043)	9/25/2007 11:11:25 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hitler rose in an era that societies believed in "Great Men" as the foundation of leadership and progress. Huge masses were more than willing to be putty at the hands of a leader they'd perceive as "great leader." This was true for Germany, Russia, USA, UK, Italy, China, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Japan, etc. etc. On the other hand, WWII left a bad taste from "great men" in populaces' mouth and turned the mentality around towards people need to inoculate society against the great men as they'd be just too clever and charismatic to be trusted. This explains modern politicians as pretenders of "I am just one of the common people." Unfortunately this has had the effect of turning the best conman into the most successful politicians. Now you get new england prep school brats claiming to be a southerner and pepper their speeches with with middle America slangs and gaffes just to pretend they are one of the common people and embody their values, while plotting how to selectively emphasize and shape those values to manipulate the society into their own agenda. So to answer your question, no the world is not better prepared this time around. But the danger does not come from fire-brand "strong leaders" or dictators or another Hitler. I comes from people like GW...and like the old generals, people who are preoccupied with WWII type leaders are busy fighting the last war. Current issue of Scientific American Mind is dedicated to the leadership theme and has articles that touch on the above points. Buy it off the stand or visit sciammind.com for selected articles.