The Cult of Personality
Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:28 am
I'll offer a working definition. The Cult of Personality is where the person doing a job becomes more important than the job that needs doing.
They often come in a succession of family members taking the job, like the Supreme Leaders of North Korea or whoever's top dog in Saudi Arabia. In that hereditary sense they're quite like the old-fashioned unlimited monarchies. A constitutional monarchy is a different thing entirely, the job has to have power as well as visibility.
I can think of no instance in the White House earlier than Donald Trump, but that's definitely what he's got going for him. He has no other asset.
Steve Jobs did it, Thatcher ended up doing it, Branson used to do it, Bill Gates didn't. The verdict is out on Mr Musk.
Stalin and Mao were accused of it unfairly, I think. They did the job determinedly and defended their position in order to do it, but the job was the important thing.
But the House of Saud and Trump do nothing but reinforce their position, regardless of the harm they cause to those they're meant to be serving. Their excuse is that any alternative would be the downfall of what they claim to protect and that their project would fail without them, that nobody else could do it. Anyone with that reason for staying in power should be discarded as a matter of urgency by everyone who works under them. The job has to come first.
And I'm not convinced the Kims do nothing but reinforce their position. Though they clearly have a cult of personality, they may actually have been right to hold onto power given the unresolved continuing war and foreign occupation of Korea. Which is not the case with my other examples. It depends on how much North Korea has been lied about over the years.
For the rest, they're self-aggrandizing delusional scoundrels.
They often come in a succession of family members taking the job, like the Supreme Leaders of North Korea or whoever's top dog in Saudi Arabia. In that hereditary sense they're quite like the old-fashioned unlimited monarchies. A constitutional monarchy is a different thing entirely, the job has to have power as well as visibility.
I can think of no instance in the White House earlier than Donald Trump, but that's definitely what he's got going for him. He has no other asset.
Steve Jobs did it, Thatcher ended up doing it, Branson used to do it, Bill Gates didn't. The verdict is out on Mr Musk.
Stalin and Mao were accused of it unfairly, I think. They did the job determinedly and defended their position in order to do it, but the job was the important thing.
But the House of Saud and Trump do nothing but reinforce their position, regardless of the harm they cause to those they're meant to be serving. Their excuse is that any alternative would be the downfall of what they claim to protect and that their project would fail without them, that nobody else could do it. Anyone with that reason for staying in power should be discarded as a matter of urgency by everyone who works under them. The job has to come first.
And I'm not convinced the Kims do nothing but reinforce their position. Though they clearly have a cult of personality, they may actually have been right to hold onto power given the unresolved continuing war and foreign occupation of Korea. Which is not the case with my other examples. It depends on how much North Korea has been lied about over the years.
For the rest, they're self-aggrandizing delusional scoundrels.