Brian Eno (former keyboard player in Roxy Music) defends dictatorships on the Guardian's 'Comment is Free':
"Dictator" is an automatically pejorative word. "Autocrat" is more neutral. There are many sorts of autocrats: from those who seek to control everything entirely in their personal interests to those who seriously care about those under their charge. Those latter can have the interests of the whole community in mind, and they can be "democratic" in the sense that they pay attention to the feedback they get from their people: indeed many tribal and clan systems of government are like this. Leaders are considered "wise" or "good" when they are able to synthesise what they hear about the state of the world and arrive at a decision which works well for most people.
The biggest objection to autocrats is not that they're automatically bad but that you can't get rid of them easily if they turn out to be. However, since the outcomes of our "democratic" elections are increasingly shaped by lobbyists, conditional campaign contributions and partisan media, it could be argued that we also aren't able to get rid of the real powers behind the throne, but just to occasionally change its occupant.
"Democratic" dictatorships?
The worst thing is that some of the comments beneath the piece actually agree with him!
3 comments:
Yes very! In a sense once elected, you have a form of dictatorship. I am sure that a Dictators friends and relatives would be pretty happy with their lot while they are high on the hog. Not so good ala Saddam and the like when the party ends.
The worst thing? It is the CiF thing...
Brian Eno has sucked for a long time, and has arguable always sucked. Sorry to pull out the middle school insults to describe the guy, but the quality of this piece goes well with a lot of his music…
When did CiF turn into the totalitarian lefts stomping ground? I check it out weekly, and I am always surprised by comments that follow many of the pieces.
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