Maxims for Despots
from The Sly Tyrant's Handbook
  

Ω  Corruption swims within Cynicism, as fattening fish within their nurturing sea.
  

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Ω  "Live high and plunder" is the motto of the Permanent Political Class.

Ω  Glory unsettles place-holders. Cleopatra as both Queen and Goddess ruled the grain-fields of Egypt which fed the Roman Republic; it is no wonder that the steady Roman Senators feared her.

Ω  Modern clever Despots feign modesty and frugality; but the most ingrained Despots actually are modest and frugal, except as regards Power over others.

Ω  The Nazis, avowedly fighting a "total war", found time and resources to murder six million Jews and even a hundred and fifty thousand Gypsies. When managing a modern State which does not provide Constitutional authority to note Citizens' Ethnicity and other Failings in its Census, the Despot must cleanse circumspectly and by Stages.
  

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Ω  Coincidence is a friend of the Politician; Ignorance is an ally of the Administrator.

Ω  Unintended Clarity may turn a burning lens of sunlight upon your darkest, safest Secrets.

Ω  Clean voting is critical to maintain a Republic: therefore if you dilute the one, you poison the other.

Ω  "We're politicians: we don't need to show you no stinkin' records!" — In an era of media corruption and sycophancy, the safest way to be elected is to have no public record; the next safest is to hide it.

Ω  A politicians' dilemma: although foreign War diverts money from domestic Projects, it also diverts attention from domestic Malfeasance.

Ω  No matter how spectacular the Portents in your sky, whether Lightning or Cyclones or secretive Craft, simply maintain that these sightings are Weather Balloons, of no concern to calm and law-abiding folk.
  

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Ω  History is on the side of Truth; but conceal it as long as Expedient.

Ω  When promoting or deprecating any Incidents in the controlled Press, note that one of them is more useful than the others.

Ω  For any Issue, hold both Deniability and Responsibility ready, one in each hand: so you may Shift back and forth between them as the Public Attention waxes and wanes.

Ω  What cannot be said crisply in an aphorism, or developed concisely in an essay, or documented thoroughly in a treatise — may be blared in an avalanche of detail with exquisitely tangled logic, to the multitude.

Ω  Even the simplest History eventually is lost, as Big Lies and Quiet Soothings march in lockstep with Bewilderment and Indifference, all abetted by public Miseducation.
  

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Ω  When "power corrupts", make sure that you are first in line.

— the Sly Tyrant

© 2012 Robert Wilfred Franson