Dictatorships: Leading an Insane Clown Posse of One’s Own

Late last year, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il died.  Along with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and global supervillain Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-il (1941 – 2011; Supreme Leader, 1994 – 2011) joined an esteemed list of rat bastards no one will miss.  At least no rational person.  That’s the rub, since the Supreme Leader of the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea has been perceived as a crazy lunatic nutjob.  Everyone from David Letterman’s writing staff to the writers on Cracked.com have made a cottage industry from the simple equation: Kim Jong-il = Crazy!

As illustrated in the clip from 30 Rock, Kim Jong-il acts like a hyper-positive weather man, asserting that North Korea is “always sunny all the time.”  In a gonzo performance, comedian Margaret Cho turns the dictator into a goofy clown with absolutely no connection with reality.  (Which makes him totally different from our esteemed political leaders.  Right, guys?)

Critiquing dictators is nothing new in pop culture.  The most prominent historical example is Charlie Chaplin’s the Great Dictator (1940).  What is new is the twist given to this critique, that of insanity.  Its usefulness shouldn’t be underestimated.  With an accusation of insanity, a critic does not need the obligation of taking the target seriously.  The critic also comes from the privileged position of “sanity.”  Unlike other people who are labeled “insane” or “mentally disturbed” (the homeless, the elderly, etc.), Kim Jong-il possessed a massive concentration of military power and the unswerving obedience of the Party machinery.  When not making ridiculous claims, saber-rattling North Korea’s neighbors, and living in obscene opulence, he came across as threatening as an Elvis-coiffed garden gnome.

The charge of insanity made it easier for Internet comedy writers, but was it actually useful or effective?  It is hard to quantify in real foreign policy terms.

The Political Aspects of Insanity

Thus far, we have taken insanity as a given.  If you’re a North Korean despot who claims to have invented the cheeseburger, the charge of insanity seems firm.  However, insanity itself is a slippery concept.  Like the words “reality” and “culture”, insanity can become a loaded term.  How does one define “insane”?  Who defines the term?  What power do they have?  What are the political aspects of insanity?

Insanity is a different breed of affliction than, say, high blood pressure, asthma, or tuberculosis.  One can point at a chart, an X-ray, or read-out and come to an agreed upon conclusion.  The term itself (“insane”) has become the cultural shorthand for the different and maladjusted.  This should not be confused with those who suffer from brain defects or neurological disorders.  Unlike a severe cranial trauma or brain deformation, insanity has as much to do with medical knowledge as with political consensus.  Kim Jong-il was such a real-life caricature of state terror, that is was easy to label him insane.  Kim’s father, Kim Il-Sung, represented a very dangerous threat to national security and his totalitarian rule was nothing to laugh at.

Today charges of insanity usually arise on Internet discussion boards when one voices doubt in the inherent durability of the American two-party system.  Because the economic and global situation has become so bad, it would be utterly insane to vote for someone other than a Republican or Democrat.  (Because these same two parties and the same people in power have done such a bang-up job, I should keep them in power.  Now who’s being insane?)

Because the first step to being different is thinking different, insanity has been used as a regulatory measure to control one’s family life, sexuality, and personal associations.

“Only an insane person would like _______” (Pick what you detest most.)

A. Gay people marrying.

B. A literal interpretation of the Bible.

C. Kim Jong-il.

D. The Atlas Shrugged, Part I movie.

What becomes dangerous about the definition of insanity is it becomes the psychiatric tool of political consensus.  Attacking the opposition by characterizing them as insane lunatics has caused the usual heated American political discourse to become completely abandoned.  Since the Occupy member thinks the Tea Party member is crazypants, then it’s no use even talking to them.  (The reverse is also true.)  Both sides need to abandon the hyperbolic rhetoric and realize they are missing the forest for the trees.  (Obviously, both those groups are insane.  Hey, isn’t that no-account, corrupt, adulterous sleazbag up for re-election in my district.  I need to keep him or her in office for another term to fix things.  To the voting booths!)

Insanity: That’s so Gay!

The political uses of insanity have had real consequences, damaging to individuals and their families.  The fields of psychology and psychiatry buttressed and refined what was formerly the province of religion.  Religious persecution of homosexuality is a given with examples, modern and ancient, too numerous to recount.  Adding fuel to the fire was the psychiatric community’s assertion that homosexuality was a form of insanity.  Like other forms of insanity, it was seen as something “curable”.  In a peculiar twist that shows the circular relationship between religion and psychiatry, certain religious organizations make routine claims that they can cure homosexuality.

Only in 1973 was homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  Its presence in the DSM made homosexuality easier to criminalize and prosecute, since persecuting homosexuality on religious grounds violates First Amendment protections.  (While the First Amendment guarantees free exercise of one’s own religion or non-religion and not getting taxed by an established religious authority, the amendment does have its limits.  These include human sacrifice, bigamy, and violent persecution of another group.)

Consensus can become a dangerous weapon, especially wrapped in the garb of the scientific rhetoric used in psychiatry.

Occupy North Korea

One of the predictable criticisms of the Occupy movement is that Communists run it.  But this is a critique too boring and too predictable to comment on.  What naïve leftists within the Occupy movement need to realize is that free market plutocracies aren’t the only places with an oppressive One Percent.  It takes many forms, usually dynastic.  One sees this with the Saud Family’s financial mismanagement, monumental corruption, and radioactive hypocrisy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Two despots, one car: The Rolls Royce of Czar Nicholas II and Lenin.

North Korea also has its One Percenters.  And like the United States, it asserts it is a democracy run by the people.  (Don’t believe me?  It’s in North Korea’s name.)  The upper echelons of the North Korean Communist Party and military apparatus sport huge waistlines and live in grandiose mansions.  A North Korean Party hack represents the average North Korean the same way an overpaid, multiple-married, pill-popping AM talk show host represents “the Real America.”  Faux North Korean Communism is as real as Faux Conservative Populism.  Both are hard to take seriously and both are manufactured and targeted at rubes too dumb or too scared (or both) to think for themselves.  “If those Democrats are elected, then Obama’s gay Muslim abortionists will take my Bible away!”  “If those Republicans are elected, they will ban abortion, bomb Iran, and make us all Protestant!”

And Kim Jong-il invented the cheeseburger.

In the words of self-styled exercise guru Susan Powter, “Stop the insanity!”

One of the hallmarks of this most hallowed day is eating … eating lots of stuff, then collapsing in a tryptophan coma to watch football.  Patton Oswalt talks about Black Angus Steakhouse in an ode to eating.  Enjoy!

Granted, I think football is a technocratic game, alternately tedious and ultraviolent.  But that’s just me.  I can enjoy Thanksgiving but not football, because America is all about differences of opinion.  We’re not North Korea … right?

"What, son, ya say ya don't like football?"

Only a few short steps to Warhammer 40K fandom.

Long answer: The reason I’m investigating Warhammer 40K mostly stems from my own biography.  As an 80s pre-teen, I enjoyed the pop culture of the time, especially if it was on TV and involved robots, vehicles, and weapons.  Transformers, Voltron, and GI Joe were my favorites.  (Although I owned a number of GI Joe toys, the TV show remained anathema in the house.)

I’m not sure when it happened or where, but it was probably a hobby shop somewhere in (possibly?) South Milwaukee area.  While the store had the usual hobby store staples – trains, models, kites, etc. – what caught my wasn’t a model car or a Lionel product, it was the Citadel Miniatures catalogs of 1991.  (And yes, I still have them.)  The monsters, demons, soldiers, and armored vehicles really hooked me.  In the terms of museology, I had a case of poeisia, the Greek term for wonder and awe.  In the end, my dad ordered not a miniature or model, but the catalog itself.

The catalog fetish still survives with me, since I enjoy buying exhibition catalogs for museum exhibits.  Nothing fuels my imagination more than a perusal of Forge World’s latest.

Besides the Citadel Miniatures catalogs, I also found a copy of Rogue Trader.  The illustrations, the hyper-dystopian mythology, and the ultraviolence appealed to my baser instincts.  Only recently have I discovered my copy, falling apart as it is, remains a collector’s item in high demand.

Rogue Trader, the Dune Encyclopedia, and the Star Wars VHS trilogy (pre-Lucas meddling) form a constellation of precious pop culture commodities I value as one would a saint’s bone.  Given the crypto-religious tone in Warhammer 40K, a reliquary for my Rogue Trader 1^st edition doesn’t seem inappropriate at all.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s: I’m in the thicket of a grad school public history program.  (What is public history?  Short answer: The program you take when you don’t want to become a history professor.)  Grad school in the humanities involves lots of reading.  Lots and lots of reading.  Footnotes, Foucault references, using the words “discourse” and “space” in a sentence.  Heady, intellectual stuff, occasionally interspersed with writing as dense as a uranium milkshake.  I don’t regret a minute of it.

I preserved my sanity by rediscovering Warhammer 40K, this time in the omnibus editions of the Black Library novels I found in the local Barnes & Noble.  The hook occurred with the first sentences of Ian Watson’s magisterial trilogy The Inquisition Wars.  Now considered non-canon, it remains one of the best Warhammer 40K novels I’ve ever read.

The omnibus opens with a short story entitled “The Alien Beast Within.”  It concerns an Imperial Assassin infiltrating a cabal of Genestealers.  Pretty standard stuff in terms of space opera and military science fiction.  While the plot didn’t stand out, the language did.  Watson wrote the story in a gaudy pop decadence, a delicious fantasy reincarnation of French Decadent Joris-Karl Huysmans.  Here are a few opening lines:

THE GIANT EXERCISE wheel accelerated yet again while Meh’Lindi raced, caged within it. The machine towered two hundred metres high, under a fan-vaulted roof. Shafts of light, of blood-red and cyanotic blue and bilious green, beamed through tracery windows which themselves revolved kaleidoscopically. Chains of brass amulets dangling from the rotating spokes of the wheel clashed and clanged deafeningly like berserk bells as they whirled around.

I read on, blissed out on the verbal pyrotechnics.  Here is Watson’s description of the God-Emperor’s Palace on Terra in the novel Draco(1990; 2002):

IF VIEWED FROM low orbit through the foul atmosphere, the continent-spanning palace was a concatenation of copulating, jewelstudded tortoise shells erupting into ornate monoliths, pyramids, and ziggurats kilometres high, pocked by landing pads, prickling with masts of antennae and weapons batteries. Whole cities were mere chambers in this palace, some grimly splendid, others despicable and deadly, and all crusted with the accretion of the ages.

Following the Inquisition Wars, I read the Eisenhorn omnibus written by the impossibly prolific Dan Abnett.  The trilogy follows the eponymous Imperial Inquisitor and his rag-tag entourage across worlds.  What makes Eisenhorn different from the usual Black Library volume is it spends most of the time amongst the ordinary and everyday in the grim 41^st millennium.  It was a nice re-introduction into this world.  Both Inquisition Wars and Eisenhorn are excellent gateway volumes for those interested in the Warhammer 40K universe.

One final note: I don’t play Warhammer 40K.  First, from the prohibitive pricing of just about everything in their inventory makes it financially detrimental to start an army.  Second, I don’t know many players who live in my area.  On the other hand, I continue to enjoy reading the novels and browsing the catalogs online.

Here’s the ending montage to the Wire: Season 2.  The devastating effects of organized crime, de-industrialization, class stratification, and political corruption get showcased in little over 6 minutes.  (If you haven’t seen the series, see it.  It more than lives up to the hype.)

Here Patton Oswalt tells a whimsical tale of technological advancement and the modern American labor force.

Finally, George Carlin gives us his personal solution to paying the deficit.

Having survived Ayn Rand’s epic literary atrocity Atlas Shrugged, we thought that it is time to explore other pop cultural avenues.  The two subjects under consideration are the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and Warhammer 40,000.  (Each title is shorthand for sprawling creative properties involving TV shows, role playing games, video games, web series, tie-in novels and comics, and countless other pop cultural artifacts.)

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica represents a rich vein to tap into the struggles and ethical dilemmas facing the United States after the September 11^th terrorist attacks.  The spin-off series Caprica dealt with issues like organized religion, terrorism, virtual reality, technological advancement, organized crime, and capitalism.  The franchise will expand again with the upcoming series Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, chronicling the First Cylon War.

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 (hereafter known as Warhammer 40K) began in the United Kingdom as a fantasy role-playing game.  (There is also a companion RPG called Warhammer that has a fantasy setting.)  Starting from the premise of The Lord of the Rings … IN SPACE!, the franchise has expanded in tie-in novels, video games, a magazine, and a vastly expanded universe.  Issues like colonialism, imperialism, and posthumanism will be explored.

NOTE: For both features, there will be spoilers.  These are critical analyses, not episode or book summaries.  Also, given the vastness of these franchises, we at Coffee is for Closers would appreciate any feedback, corrections, etc. from fans and members of the academic community studying these pop cultural touchstones in greater detail.

And to celebrate New York state legalizing same-sex marriage, here’s Brian Posehn talking about Slayer.  Hopefully this will assuage the gay panic of the cultural conservatives that make up our readership.  (All seven of you.)

And what better way to celebrate America than with that most of American of series, The Wire.  With our current economic unpleasantness, the question remains: “Product or territory?”

Pages: 1147 – 1168

Summary: Dagny, Hank, and Ragnar break into the secret facility and save John Galt.  Dagny confronts a guard and gives him a philosophical ultimatum.  At least that’s what Rand probably intended.  Unfortunately, it comes across like yet another dogmatic Abbot and Costello routine.

After saving John Galt, they fly back to Galt’s Gulch.  Kay Ludlow reads Aristotle, Judge Narragansett works on rewriting the Constitution, and Hank and Francisco discuss the creation of new locomotives and the high rates Dagny will charge.  (Women, am I right?)

Finally, John Galt prepares the path to re-enter the “outside world” by drawing a dollar sign on the desolate ground.

Sorry, this never stops being funny.

Lest we forget, Eddie Willers got stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere.  After numerous frustrations, he says the titular line of the chapter amidst yet another hissy fit.

Reflections: It’s been a long turgid road, but we finally made it.  We finished Atlas Shrugged before it finished us.  There’s not much to say except that this was the most overrated piece of garbage since The Phantom Menace.  At least the Phantom Menace had a pod race and a decent light saber battle.  If anything, Atlas Shrugged works as a primer of how not to write a novel.  Even leaving aside Rand’s childish philosophy and her bloated ego, the novel is entirely lacking in characterization and drama.  One needs those things in novel writing if the novelist doesn’t want to put the reader to sleep.

The philosophy itself is a failed attempt at cod-Nietzscheanism: Galt as the heroic Übermensch beyond the ken of ordinary looter morality; ferociously anti-democratic; and achingly nostalgic for Greco-Roman classical ideals.  (I would compare Ayn Rand to Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi propagandist and filmmaker, except that Riefenstahl had talent.)  In the end, Objectivism comes across like a gilded Satanism.  Like Satanism, Objectivism fuels a hackneyed rebelliousness.  Extolling the virtues of greed and selfishness may sound badass at first blush, but this is just worshipping gold instead of Satan.  (At least professed Satanists like Marilyn Manson have talent.)

What do you expect from a “philosopher” who names herself as a unit of South African currency?

Objectivism is as badass as Pat Boone donning a leather jacket and doing Metallica covers.  George Carlin puts it another way.  On the topic of feminism, he states, “Changing your name isn’t a radical act.  Castrating a man in a parking lot is a radical act.”  When one owns media conglomerates, has Congressional leaders in their pocket, and possesses extreme wealth, it is rather silly having one think of oneself as a rebel.

In the end, what Atlas Shrugged needed was a good editor … or two.

Finally, the calls for freedom and personal pleasure eventually lead to things like Dave Foley’s “Groovy Teacher.”

If Objectivism is about anything, it’s about doing heroin and having affairs with 18 year olds, or very mature 17 year olds.  That would explain the behavior of Silvio Berlusconi and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The band Karma Rocket from the TV series Party Down sings their hit “My Struggle,” voicing the pain and anguish of Objectivists in their struggle to act like greedy selfish babies.  What better way to end an analysis of this horrendous book?

Quotes:

• “Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.”  Makes me think of that Austrian vegetarian and animal lover who had serious deficiencies in people skills.

• “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade …”  Good to know Objectivists are in favor of slavery, child pornography, and heroin trafficking.  If it’s what the market demands …

Pages: 1126 – 1146

Summary: And now … torture!  John Galt, having refused the entreaties of shyster hooligan Mr. Thompson, gets stripped and strapped to Dr. Ferris’s electrical contraption.  The torture is horrendous until the machine breaks and the idiot operating it doesn’t know how to fix it.

In other news, Dr. Robert Stadler heads back to Iowa where the Xylophone is under control of effeminate fascist goofball Cuffy Meigs.  Words are exchanged, a melee ensues, and KA-BOOM!

Reflections: The torture scene comes across as dramatically puzzling and unintentionally funny.  What kind of sociopath tortures for laughs?  Oh, right …

The humor in the scene throws a giant monkey-wrench into the narrative’s tone.  Granted, the electrical apparatus breaking down proves Rand’s point, but to use the phrase of libertarians, “at what cost”?  Galt, the muscular genius hero guy, gets tortured by fat looter morons.  What’s so dramatic about that?  The characters, such broad caricatures of humanity, sap the scene of momentum and give it all the depth of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  Hell, Rocky and Bullwinkle had better plotting, better characterization, and better jokes than this banal horseshit.

The only real explanation for this nutty scene is Rand needed to make John Galt into the book’s Christ Figure.  A rather odd thing considering Rand’s rabid atheism, although not that odd since cults of personality adopt the liturgical features of religion to suit the star’s egomania.  (Yet another similarity Ms. Rosenbaum shares with Uncle Joe.)

“Aw, come on, John, be our Economic Dictator.  Pretty please!”

For a former seminary student, Stalin cleans up quite well.

Compare this to the torture scene in 1984, written by British Socialist George Orwell.  In the novel, dissident functionary Winston Smith faces torture from O’Brien.  Winston thought O’Brien was also rebelling against Big Brother, when in actuality O’Brien belonged to the Inner Party.  Unlike the rotund dimwits in Atlas Shrugged, O’Brien uses a rat-cage that he attaches to Winston’s face.  No electricity involved.  It’s sustainable and has a small carbon footprint.  It’s also effective as hell.  Perhaps Mr. Thompson had difficulty attaining rat-cage-face-masks from Airstrip One, considering the United States is in transportation crisis in the novel?

In the end, Winston confesses and thus, 1984 becomes tragedy.  Dr. Ferris’s shenanigans just seem idiotic, especially since it is in aid of making John Galt their Economic Dictator and solving all their problems.  It’s a scene diametrically opposed to that of 1984.  1984 is a critically acclaimed novel that attained its rightful place in the Western Canon, easily making 100 Best lists without breaking a sweat.  Atlas Shrugged, on the other hands, required market manipulation by hordes of crackpot cultists buying books in bulk in a facetious attempt at popularity.  That’s just sad.  But so is having the inability to break the $2 million dollar mark on opening weekend and coming in at a lame-ass #14.  In Glengarry Glen Ross, Blake challenges the real estate salesmen to “Always Be Closing.”  Second place is a set of steak knives, third prize is your fired!  What’s 14^th?

Like the Left Behind series, Atlas Shrugged isn’t literature for the ages, it’s only appeal lies with a sliver of the population that buys into its nutjob theories and infantile views of economics.  In a word: marginal.  Here’s another one: Inconsequential.

Call me anything you want, Objectivists.  I’ll make sure to have a couch handy for you to jump on.

At some point, Scientology and Objectivism become indistinguishable.

One chapter left and we’re done with this overwrought literary abortion.  Huzzah!

Quotes:

• “There was nothing beyond the lighted strip but the emptiness of the prairies of Iowa.”
• “He [Cuffy Meigs] wore a tight, semi-military tunic and leather leggings; the flesh of his neck bulged over the edge of his collar; his black curls were matted with sweat.”  Jeremy Clarkson?

• “We want ideas – or else!”

• “Had enough?” snarled Ferris, when the current went off.  “Yes, end this book NOW!  Oh, you were talking to John Galt.”
• “Don’t kill him!  Don’t dare kill him!  If he dies, we die!”  Whew, good thing somebody explained the stakes in the scene or I wouldn’t have understood what was going in.  Way to not insult the intelligence of your readers, Ayn.

• “Galt burst out laughing.”
• “Galt was watching them; his glance was too austerely perceptive.”  Or if someone with actual talent rewrote the sentence: “Galt watched them; he perceived them with a muscular austerity.”  Seriously, Ayn, use the money you made from The Fountainhead and take some creative writing courses at Columbia or the New School or something.  Your utter lack of talent is repellent, lazy, and childish.  “I’m here on a mission of mercy.  If it was up to me, I’d fire your fucking ass.”

“You do not become an author just by using the language to call a cabinet minister unfit for office.”

“There are writers who can express in a mere twenty pages things I sometimes need two whole lines for.”

Karl Kraus (1874 – 1936)

Reflections: The nature of fictional storytelling requires emotional and narrative pay-offs.  Starting with John Galt’s speech, Atlas Shrugged moves into the dénouement.  This is where all the deck-stacking and intellectual dishonesty of Rand’s project reveal the flaws and fractures within her attempted “philosophy.”

While all the characters get shuffled into place, John Galt prepares to escape the clutches of the evil looters.  The looters, in their idiotic desperation, call for John Galt’s help.  The tables are turned and the looters are revealed as having a bankrupt philosophy.

When Galt is finally detained by Thompson’s men in a section of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel brimming with military men, Galt still refuses to help.  Despite Galt’s two-hour speech, Mr. Thompson still doesn’t get it.

In this exchange between Galt and Thompson, we get to the essence of Atlas Shrugged, the very nubbin for why it exists in the first place.

“Okay, I’ll tell you.  You want me to become Economic Dictator?” [Galt]

“Yes!” [Thompson]

“And you’ll obey any order I give?”

“Implicitly!”

“Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”

“Oh, no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet.  “We couldn’t do that!  That’s … that’s not the field of production.  That’s the field of distribution.  How would we pay government employees?”

“Fire your government employees.”

“Oh, no!  That’s politics!  That’s not economics!  You can’t interfere with politics!  You can’t have everything!”

Galt crossed his legs on the hassock, stretching himself more comfortably in the brocaded armchair.  “Want to continue this discussion?  Or do you get the point?”

Do you hear that?  It’s the sound of a balloon deflating.  This alleged confrontation distills the philosophies of both camps, yet it’s so … so … anticlimactic.  Galt is so perfect, smart, and heroic; Thompson is so conniving, weak, and contradictory.  It is the immovable Idealist versus the unstoppable force of the Looter Hordes.

Narrative sterility aside, the essence of Objectivism is now revealed as Rand’s distaste for the income tax.  The fucking income tax!  I read over one thousand pages for this!  Seriously!  (I feel like James Taggart, all exclamation points and apoplexy.)  Nevertheless, let’s take a step back, since I don’t want to give myself an aneurysm, least of all for this book.

Yes, yes, the gulags and purges were terrible, but look!  Don’t you see!  Their taking away my income!

Like anyone who has had to pay taxes, I understand the resentment and hatred people level at the Internal Revenue Service.  Money earned through hard work, etc.  But to write a 1100 page book against the injustice of the income tax is sort of silly.  Like building a cathedral to why Justin Bieber sucks.  It’s ridiculous and rather petty.  Added to this is the Randroid perception that this is the Greatest Novel of All Time.  (It would be, if you’ve never read any other book.  One would also think it the Greatest Novel of All Time as a natural and logical opinion.  Don’t worry, Objectivists, Scientologists hold the same opinion about Battlefield Earth.  They’re both good at buying in bulk and rigging literature polls.  But Objectivism is totally, totally not a cult.  ***Stifled laughter***)

The trick is buying the books in bulk.  Also works when selling subprime mortgages as loans.

Ironically, Rand’s philosophical novel resembles the logorrhea of Dave Sim, except Sim has talent as a comic book artist.  Ayn Rand (neé Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) is just another paranoid megalomaniac who changed her name to sound tougher to her adversaries.  Wait a second … paranoid megalomaniac … name change … sounds a lot like this guy.

“Complain about the income tax all you want, I’ll be pummeling the Nazis into a slurry and sending the first man into space … with the occasional famine and purge.  Have to think of the bottom line in all this.  It’s not personal, it’s business.”

To adapt Stalin’s quote to the parlance of our time, “One unemployed person is a tragedy, a million unemployed people is a statistic.”