A Sense of Humor

[dariusk]

 I am glad we are going to have a President who can tell a joke.

Comments

[dirkcjelli]

He's Reagan.

[dariusk]

But he's BLACK.

More seriously, while Obama does have the charisma and the centrism of Reagan, he differs in that as far as I can tell, he is actually intelligent. Even when he makes bad decisions (like some of his cabinet appointments) I'm pretty sure he actually *thought* about them.

[dirkcjelli]

That doesn't reassure me, though.

I mean... (Godwin alert!)...

Imagine super-Hitler. Super-Hitler is just like Hitler, except he is twice as intelligent; Super-Hitler is a military genius.

Would replacing Hitler with Super-Hitler be better, or worse?

[air_hadoken]

That depends on whether or not you're an economically repressed German Gentile, I guess.

Would Super-Hitler require twice the drugs?

[dariusk]

I would actually take evil and competent over evil and incompetent.

[dirkcjelli]

Can you unpack that? You would prefer -more effective- genocide, so long as the mass murderer was even more charming and competent?

[dariusk]

I'm thinking I would rather have a rational monster, whose position I could understand, than a blind idiot dictator. For one thing, I'd like to think that you can possibly predict what someone competent is going to do next. Although in my head I see I was equating rational and competent. I suppose you could have a batshit insane but competent dictator. In which case I'd rather have him incompetent. I guess my order of preference for hypothetical evil dictators, best to worst:

1 rational and incompetent
2 irrational and incompetent
3 rational and competent
4 irrational and competent

I was originally only considering cases 2 and 3.