One of the themes of this blog is that, with some exceptions, the people who are most dangerous are politicians. Since rich people own politicians, indirectly, they are included.
We’ve been, as a society, obsessed with serial killers for some time. They are seen, by many, as the ultimate evil. The average serial killer is responsible for about six deaths.
The Iraq war killed about half a million people (we don’t really know, since we didn’t count, but the post-fact estimates are credible.) That means George W. Bush, as the primary driver of the Iraq War, was the equivalent of over eighty-three thousand serial killers.
If we want to spread out the blame, US and UK politician who were for the war were the equivalent of over 83,000 serial killers.
The high end estimate of active serial killers in America is 2,000 active killers.
Recently I did a bit of research into the effect of Clinton’s “Welfare Reform” bill, in which he cut access to Welfare significantly. Interestingly, it’s really impossible to tell how many people the bill killed or made homeless (which is a delayed death sentence).
We don’t count.
But I’m guessing Bill’s serial killer number is pretty high. Let’s ignore how many Americans he killed. Iraq sanctions killed somewhere between 200K to a million people, with Madeleine Albright famously saying that if 500K children had been killed, it was worth it.
Even 200K suggests a serial killer count of over 33,000.
Obama’s policies deliberately helped banks steal (foreclose) American homes (steal is the correct terminology, they used documents with fake information and signatures.) Once again, we don’t really know how many people had their homes taken, but 750K were included in a single class action suit, so that’s the lower bound estimate. I wonder how many of those became homeless or died as a result? Again, we don’t know, but it’s bound to be a lot of people. There’s no possibility that it doesn’t massively increase Obama’s “serial killer count.”
Yesterday we discussed prosecuting those who have enabled the Gaza genocide. Of course there’s plenty of blame to go around, but assuming a death count of half a million, which is going to be a low end estimate, we’ve got a serial killer count of over 83K.
Don’t worry about serial killers. They kill hardly anyone.
Politicians, at the behest of their owners, on the other hand, now they have bloody, bloody hands.
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mago
And everyday we see more killings, more atrocities, more lies and coverups.
It’s difficult to fathom the criminal mind that gets off on murder, but it’s even more difficult to understand the motives of those who kill freely on a mass scale in the name of some (“good”) cause or another. Then there’s the cheerleaders and apologists. How do these people live with themselves?
Sick is too weak a word to describe this behavior and its scale. I’m old enough to have lived through wars, assassinations, genocides and all around brutality and depravity, but I never thought I’d live to witness what we see today.
It kicked off royally during the Reagan years, but I’ll leave it there.
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Yes, it’s hot evil versus cold evil. Andrew Kimbrell describes it perfectly. Hot evil sells. Cold evil is many times more dangerous. It’s stealthy and it scales.
https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/cold-evil-technology-and-modern-ethics/
For anyone interested, they’re ALL war criminals. Lock ’em up or off with their heads or whatever you prefer as a punishment. I’m flexible.
https://youtu.be/0p0TV9A65TQ
Soredemos
I’ve thought about this exact thing in relation to the true crime genre. It’s immensely popular, has been for decades, but now in the age of subreddits, YouTube, and podcast, there’s an entire field of strange internet weirdos who obsess over specific cases. Vast amounts of effort minutely reconstructing a timeline of someone’s final hours before they vanished at 3am, that sort of thing. It’s all very voyeuristic.
Which, fine, whether that’s creepy or not, that’s not the issue. The issue is the larger phenomenon of so much energy being dumped into specific cases and killers, while the literal orders of magnitude crimes, both foreign and domestic, by ‘respectable’ leaders goes unnoticed. Imagine a four hour deep-dive documentary into the body count of even a lesser villain like Obama. The minute examination of meeting transcripts and executive orders and so on.
restive
Don’t forget Clinton’s efforts in Yugoslavia and Russia, or Obama’s fine work in Libya.
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Never, ever forget Stalin and Mao. In the modern era they are likened to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods when it comes to golf majors. No one else will ever come close. Stalin and Mao were Ted Bundy times 100 million or more. They sat atop and directed Cold Evil killing machines and lapped it up.
Clinton in Yugoslavia? What? Small potatoes in comparison to the heavyweights Mao and Stalin.
Ian Welsh
Stalin and Mao have been dead for over 50 years. 70 in the case of Stalin.
Interesting you don’t mention Hitler. On top of the Holocaust, he killed 20 million Soviets. Can’t see how he avoids the 20th century list. For that matter, if you’re counting famines (without which Mao is about 12 million) then the British in India are on the list, too.
Odd which people we choose to put on the list.
Of course, the real point is “they’ve been gone for a long time now.”
Anyway, climate change deaths will be attributed to leaders from the 80s on, especially 80-2020 or so, and that’ll make Mao, Stalin, the Brits and Hitler look like pikers, barely trying hard.
Thermobarbaric
In reply to L&S and his casual disregard of the crimes of William Jefferson Clinton, do familiarise yourself with the rationalisations of his vile SOS Albright for whom the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were “worth it” to impose the “shining city” values of the US in Iraq and the ME in general. I’m sure the number of adults who died during this period is sizeable too.
And I believe the so-called Comeback Kid was also the President during the time of the Rwanda massacres of 1994 with an approximate death toll of around 1,000,000. He, the most powerful leader in the world at the time, did absolutely nothing to stop the killing.
Curt Kastens
It is stupid to claim that someone is evil because they killed 10 or 20 mikkin people.
The numbers of those people who deserved to die has to be subtracted and that never gets done. Then the number of people whos lives were saved because of all the evil mother fuckers that were killed has to get added back in to the equation as well. That never gets done either. All that ever gets done in the west is to pretend that all thke people killed by Stalin and Mao were innocent lasses.
Then another important thing that always gets disorted in the west is what the motivations of Stalin and Mao were. These distortions are a prefect example of the western leaders blaming others of what they are guilty of, which then gets amplified by the western media.
Finally killing someone accidently by implementing a policy badly should not be considered nearly as reprehinsible as killing them deliberately.
And the western populations get suckered over and over again. Because who is going to set the record straight for them?
Curt Kastens
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then where is does the road paved with bad intentions go?
The commies were far more right than wrong when they said that the ends justify the means!
Roxan
Our leaders are psychopaths. I worked with psychopaths in state hospitals, for years. The hallmark trait they all shared was a desire to do harm in any way they could, from smearing feces or spit on door knobs and counters, to attacking us at every opportunity. They were human sharks, eternally seeking prey–hitching rides, picking up hitchhikers, hunting for lone women, looking for unlocked doors and windows. We often think a killer must look like a killer. They are often bland, even affable, convincing in fact…until they see their chance.
mago
Yeah, and let’s never ever forget Genghis Kahn or Charlemagne, just to drop a couple of names . . .
Oakchair
Then there’s the cheerleaders and apologists. How do these people live with themselves?
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They could enter denial and pretend to be moral and intelligence because it’s all for a “good” cause. They could admit that the dystopia used them to help commit nightmarish atrocities.
Maybe one of the problems is that it’s a tragedy of the commons. Until the masses decide to exit denial an individual accepting the harsh bitter pill accomplishes next to nothing except for inflicting the pain of knowing they are living in a nightmare. The masses therefore are led to picking denial. Not to mention just look at what happens to dissenters.
There’s a reason 1984 had 2 minutes of hate, TV in every room, and plenty of pointless distractions for the masses. And that reason wasn’t for the aesthetic appeal.
shagggz
@Ian: “Odd which people we choose to put on the list.” -Isn’t it? To me, at this point the predictable boundaries of L&S’ moral imagination resemble those of a trained poodle, such is the extent of his cognitive capture. Rather than a blunt sum total of deaths attributed to the assigned target of hate, why not consider which side has the better claim to legitimate self-defence? What is the visionary ends to justify the brutal means? The complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the white man’s burden quest to civilize the savages (that is, the rest of the world) by any and all means (up to and including genocide) is coming to a head now and collapsing before our very eyes.
Perhaps a good time to reassess what we’ve been fed about the motivations of those tyrants our betters deem subhuman filth in need of our benevolent civilizing boot upon their face, eh L&S? Just a thought…
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I left Hitler off the list because everyone always points to Hitler as an example. Hitler would have been the greatest of all time if he had decades to work his magic like Mao and Stalin.
So no, Ian, I didn’t leave Hitler out because I’m a Nazi but hey, think what you like. I could equally say to you, why did you neglect to admonish me for leaving Pol Pot off the list.
Yes, I agree, let’s add Hitler to that list but because his mission to be the greatest mass murderer of all time was cut short, he’s more likened to Arnold Palmer. Arnold was a great player but he never came close to touching Nicklaus or Woods when it came to the majors, albeit Palmer before Woods was the most popular player of all time just as Hitler is the most popular of all time.
I’m not excusing Clinton and his atrocities. Many fail to mention the Al-Shifa atrocity which was a war crime in my opinion and it’s always overlooked and seldom if ever mentioned as part of Clinton’s legacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKt9mMu3zLM
All I’m saying is, his atrocities, for which he is directly responsible versus indirectly, pale in comparison as onerous as they are as all atrocities are. I consider the modern era post WWI, fyi, so Stalin and Mao and yes Hitler too are relevant. Clinton was 30 years ago — that wasn’t exactly yesterday either.
All that being said, we really can’t compare leaders today to leaders of yore even within the modern era considering the pace of change and how that affects leadership. Take the POTUS, for example. Starting with Reagan, the office of POTUS has increasingly become a ceremonial rubber stamp and public relations scheme for the special interests that have seized control of the government. Trump is an example of how ridiculous that has become.
Soon enough, America will have its first AI POTUS and I don’t know how you all feel and think about that, but for me I think it might actually be an improvement all things considered.
Mark Level
Thank you to shaggz & to Ian for calling out L&S. He’s blind to his moral blindness. He divides people into humans and subhumans as much as any psychopath fanatics. Who are the subs? Russians, anyone associated with “Communism”, not so much anyone identified with Fascism. I have never seen him say anything negative about Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, e.g. He spreads utterly false nonsense– Russia lost up to 1 Million people in the SMO!! But they don’t value life being Asiatics, here he directly channels General William Westmoreland saying of the Vietnamese, “The Asiatics don’t value life like WE do.” Pure projection.
He was claiming in an earlier thread that the Russians would take losing “a million more” in taking “Keev.” Uhm, no. I pointed out to him that in the first 5 years after the USSR collapsed, our guy Yeltsin on behalf of the Empire canceled everyone’s pensions & handed the economy over to looting Oligarchs, and 5 million Russians died prematurely. In a period of 5 years, ’91-96, the Russian mortality rate plunged 7 years. People sold their children, some starved. Health care gutted, that’s Capitalism, gotta love it!!
When I pointed out the deaths of 5 million (my source is Max Blumenthal, never less than credible) he first ignored my point completely. When I reiterated the logic, suppose 1 million soldiers died to save 5 million of their brethren? Wouldn’t virtually any country and culture understand that logic, he simply refused to respond apart from a distraction.
He repeatedly went back to “Haha!! Hitler duped Stalin and betrayed him, Hitler was the winner between dictators!!” Uhmm, Hitler died in ’45, Stalin persevered and carved up the world with Churchill and Roosevelt after 1943, in Tehran. Hitler destroyed his own country, then said they deserved it for not being strong enough!! And to L&S he’s somehow a “winner”?
Oh, in closing, I accept the general consensus that 6 million European Jews died at the hands of the Reich. 5 million Russian dead by the USA, using economics instead of bullets, was just a big yawn to him. And the death-tallies of Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland et all are certainly over a million, how much higher is tough to say.
L&S is to a point smarter than Tallifer was, but Tallifer at least knew when everyone saw through their bullshit and wisely fled, rather than doubling down. (Per Tallifer, Zelensky would’ve crushed Russia and been in Moscow about 2 years ago, all their “experts” promised it.) L&S in his own mind can never be wrong, what a level of entitled arrogance. S/he was dumber, he is more persistent in his folly, again like Trump– “I’ve ended 7 wars in 6 months” (one of his spox just repeated this). Kind of pathetic, frankly.
Ian Welsh
Depends how you define it. I’d say Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Sturmer, qualifies.
shagggz
Mark Level – Pathetic is putting it very diplomatically. It does not seem there is any sort, or amount, or scale of evidence that would dent L&S’ faith that the racial supremacist empire vying for permanent global dictatorship with the record of constant wars of aggression and betrayals of all promises and allies is no less evil than whoever it deems subhuman filth on the receiving end of its holy mission.
Oh, Putin pentupled his country’s GDP after its disastrous naivety of trusting the aforesaid supremacists to be benevolent leaders that resulted in the largest peacetime drop in life expectancy ever recorded? Well, he’s actually an evil kleptocrat because he didn’t let the national destruction run to completion, obviously!
When you are this steadfast in your refusal to recognize any attempts at enacting an alternative to this garbage barge to hell, you are in fact allied with it, your gormless recourse to some half-baked “principles” be damned.
somecomputerguy
I can’t believe that no one brought in America’s most beloved serial killer into the discussion, to explore the his potential contribution, conceptually.
I am referring of course, to the most prolific serial killer yet known, Dexter Morgan, aka ‘the bay harbor butcher’ aka ‘the dark avenger’ (season one reference) now active again in the New York area.
In the 15 seconds or so we have, before we all get sued for copywrite infringement, we might consider the utility of a DKI; Dexter Killability Index, or some such.
The series has always had gigantic, obvious unexplored satirical potential. So obvious that I expect the reason we probably will probably never get a “Mr. Morgan goes to Washington” season, is the same reason they brought Dexter back for a single season, for the sole purpose of killing him off; you can’t have ordinary people getting away with stuff.
On the other hand; Dexter now has a billionaire in the cross-hairs, so who knows?