One bullet solutions don't, really.
(This is a chimera of a few of my comments in other entries elsejournal.)
I have just said elsewhere that there's also no reason to think that if things are "bad enough" that killing a key person (or a few key people) will help - horribly repressive and corrupt systems are just that, systemic. We have hydra legends for a reason.
What keeps the allies of UnbearablePolitician from killing KnownReplacement?
Advocating for assassination seems like another instance of the "but what if there's a ticking bomb?!" justification of torture.
In any system where a single person is seen as the linch-pin of awfulness, there's a whole lot of institutionalized support for that corruption. Shooting Pik Botha would not have ended apartheid. Shooting Hitler doesn't change the disaffection and resentment about WWI reparations that aided the rise of Nazis and support for genocide.
What *is* effectively squashed by assassination is attempts to overthrow the status quo, where mobilizing the timid against the complacency of "common sense" and "tradition" and power requires charisma combined with compassion in a way that's not common.
This entry is cross-posted at http://trinker.dreamwidth.org/6161.html for the convenience of DW users. There are slightly different conversations happening at each. Currently
comments at DW.
I have just said elsewhere that there's also no reason to think that if things are "bad enough" that killing a key person (or a few key people) will help - horribly repressive and corrupt systems are just that, systemic. We have hydra legends for a reason.
What keeps the allies of UnbearablePolitician from killing KnownReplacement?
Advocating for assassination seems like another instance of the "but what if there's a ticking bomb?!" justification of torture.
In any system where a single person is seen as the linch-pin of awfulness, there's a whole lot of institutionalized support for that corruption. Shooting Pik Botha would not have ended apartheid. Shooting Hitler doesn't change the disaffection and resentment about WWI reparations that aided the rise of Nazis and support for genocide.
What *is* effectively squashed by assassination is attempts to overthrow the status quo, where mobilizing the timid against the complacency of "common sense" and "tradition" and power requires charisma combined with compassion in a way that's not common.
This entry is cross-posted at http://trinker.dreamwidth.org/6161.html for the convenience of DW users. There are slightly different conversations happening at each. Currently
comments at DW.