There is really very little difference between the mafia and legitimate governance.
Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize their actions and so they are classified as criminals. Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine").
There is no such thing as politics without force, and force requires intimidation, killing, extortion, etc. Just like the shopkeeper who grudgingly but willingly pays the mafia for "protection", we pay taxes on threat of jail time for "infrastructure" and "education", etc. For all but the elite, education is just daycare and training for serfdom.
It's amazing how humans love the strong leader (Trump is capitalizing on this) and how we love to take sides against and enemy or other (sports, etc.) These are animal tendencies that we still embrace and that still have tremendous impact on us in spite of our large primate brains.
In the third world, politicians travel around with a few dozen soldiers carrying machine guns. Our leaders travel in a motorcade with limousines, to hide the raw projection of power from public view. But to an adversary it's a formidable show of force.
Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize their actions and so they are classified as criminals. Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine").
There is no such thing as politics without force, and force requires intimidation, killing, extortion, etc. Just like the shopkeeper who grudgingly but willingly pays the mafia for "protection", we pay taxes on threat of jail time for "infrastructure" and "education", etc. For all but the elite, education is just daycare and training for serfdom.
It's amazing how humans love the strong leader (Trump is capitalizing on this) and how we love to take sides against and enemy or other (sports, etc.) These are animal tendencies that we still embrace and that still have tremendous impact on us in spite of our large primate brains.
In the third world, politicians travel around with a few dozen soldiers carrying machine guns. Our leaders travel in a motorcade with limousines, to hide the raw projection of power from public view. But to an adversary it's a formidable show of force.