Most people are aware of the saying that all power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Lord Acton went on: ‘Great men are almost always bad men.’

Australians tend to think that of the rich.  But the remark shows that the word ‘great’ is confined to appearance.  ‘Great’ men like Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon killed people for their own political purposes.

Miss C V Wedgwood said that powerless also affects us – it can be demoralizing.

More men are undermined by frustration than by success.  Since we cannot attain to greatness…let us have our revenge by railing at it….Since power corrupts, we, who have none, are not corrupted…

That is all very Australian – and MAGA – the salute to mediocrity.

Suspicion of power and suspicion of motive, valuable if held in control, paralyse all human action if they themselves take control.

We are nearing that point here.

It is absurd to confine a gentlemanly distaste for the vulgarity of the political scene with a call to abandon the world… We forget in the smug condemnation of the political world that its standards depend, and always will depend, on the moral quality of the men who go into it.  It is true that saints are rarely found in politics.  But it does not follow that only scoundrels are.

That is plain good sense.  The author remarks that fascism took hold ‘in its most violent forms among those populations which were least politically adult.’  That is a good way to describe Trump and the conspiracy theorists.

The person most to be feared in modern society is the Common Man.  He is, like the Average Man …a figment of the imagination.  It does not make him any the less dangerous…Since the common people came into their own, emphasis on uncommon people has come to be regarded as bad taste. All that was written in England.

Politics – fallacies – fascism – Trump – MAGA – populism.