As a man who lived in Bangkok, for more years than he can comfortably admit, I have often suspected that sexually-transmitted disease plays a larger part in human events than the prim could ever imagine.
In considering politics more generally, the phenomena of "madness" are difficult to chart. There are too many forms of it. In the world today we have several obvious madmen ruling states -- Ahmadinejad of Iran, Gadhafi of Libya, Chavez of Venezuela.
The problem, for the "common people," with the sometimes arduous task of living under unhinged rulers, or with the conditions of life they create, is broader than can ever first appear. The lust for power itself is a moral failing, a beginning to madness.
My near-hatred of politics on the big scale -- of large central administrations, with ambitions to "advance history" -- is founded in the scope they give to men like Lenin. For syphilis was just a disease, until it found him in some Paris brothel.
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