Analogies

Watching Gaddafi, one wonders whether all dictators are originating from some same obscure factory, programmed with same delusions and even physical gestures.

His speeches that were recently shown in the international media trigger a truly strong deja-vu feeling in those who have seen previous dictators on their last legs. Ceausescu's 'emotional' content, rallying the masses, his gestures, his desperate statements meant to show power and, above all, willpower to survive anything and anybody, were carbon copies of Gaddafi's recent speeches.

Gaddafi declared today to the BBC that people of Lybia love him. So there you have it, the terminal delusions so often seen, and a very familiar element of victim complex, one should somehow feel truly sorry for this poor, poor harmless old man, loved by everybody, but victim to some obscure plot of a tiny minority...

He also said that the protesters are drugged people, drugs coming from al-Qaida. So there you have it, the usual projection onto some external forces and factors that are solely responsible for what is happening... completely disassociating himself from what triggered the demonstrations.

A further superb element of role reversal is in his sentence, which states that his loyal people have been given clear orders not to respond to violence. So here we go, who is the violent element and who is the saint-like creature, who tries to passively endure all that malevolence that the protesters brought...

I wonder whether there is a clinical diagnosis for the dictator syndrome.

Whether there are classic terms and precise scientific descriptions, labels, tags for what these creatures think, say, feel.

There must be - such similarities between so many such creatures, especially in just the last twenty-odd years, are bound to lead to a definition of consecrated terms.

One can only hope, that Gaddafi's position of (diminishing) power and maybe even life will exhibit similarly strong analogies with that of other recent, former, well and truly gone, demented dictators...

One can only hope.