Within days of landing on the soil of the New World, Christopher Columbus was murdering the indigenous peoples and stealing their mineral wealth. The logic hasn't varied much in 5 centuries. Now it is the oil interests of Texas and the Bush family which have decided that the risk of World War III is relatively minor compared to any obstruction to their right plunder the oil, or black gold, of distant Third World nations.
The current situation differs from that of 15th century Spain in several important particulars. Recall that it was the world's most brilliant scientist, Albert Einstein, who in 1939 wrote a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt recommending that the United States begin production on the atomic bomb. Einstein, a courageous, deeply committed radical leftist, thought long and hard before writing that letter, and almost immediately regretted it. His decision may be criticized by persons absolutely committed to pacifism, yet even they would concede that, given the threat facing mankind at the time, his action was responsible, not capricious, not malevolent, not motivated by greed, power madness or any of the traditionally wicked motives that govern most human conduct.
Fast forward to October 2002. George Bush, a man quite unlike Einstein, perhaps the stupidest public figure of the 20th century, asks for, and receives from Congress the authorization to be the only person in the entire world to be allowed to rest his finger on the trigger of an arsenal of nuclear weaponry that can destroy all life on earth many hundreds of times over ! The authorization to do this comes as a response to a campaign of hysterical rant centered on the urgent need to destroy the weapons of mass destruction of Iraq, a country in which one has yet to uncover a single nuclear weapon, that has never launched a workable missile, that has been reduced to Third World status by the cruel sanctions imposed upon it after the previous war waged by his father, that is no more a threat to this nation than Cuba, another hapless land being subjected to ruthless persecution by the criminal greed that controls our government
One begins to take seriously the Armageddon scenarios promulgated by wild-eyed fanatics and cranks. The descent from Einstein to Bush has been steep but inevitable. More shocking than the devastation that must now inevitably come upon mankind, is the overwhelming accord so easily obtained from a Congress of elected representatives that was designed, once again by some very intelligent people, to protect us against the usurpation of power by a dictator or monarch.
The Congress of the United States has, in effect, put the survival of the world in the hands of a man distinguished more for his mediocrity than for any other ability. (George W. Bush has demonstrated that mediocrity does, in fact, figure among the useful aptitudes).
In the Republic, Plato presents a theory whereby governments move inexorably from a form of Spartan communism to democracy to oligarchy and finally to tyranny. The theory is much over-simplified but there is some merit to it. I doubt however that the descent from oligarchy to outright tyranny has even been as swift and sudden as we have seen it in the last few weeks, or that representative democracy has ever given such overwhelming support to the enthronement of an ignorant, malevolent, blood-thirsty and irresponsible tyrant like the man who now occupies the office of the Presidency.