Robert Mugabe was voted number 1 on parade magazines worst dictators list. But that doesn’t always mean that he was like that from the start. He could have been a very honest person. People aren’t born corrupt, so why does power corrupt them.
The definition of corruption is the abuse of public power for your own private benefit. So as lord Acton’s quote says “All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” These people that have been brought into power appoint friends and family into easy jobs that aren’t really necessary. The usual reason for this is because they trust these people and want their judgement.
The empowered people usually begin as honest people because honestly no one would vote for someone who is sly and socially devious. They start out wanting to do good but the only way they can think of doing it is to impose more constricting laws.
The longer the empowered person stays in power the bigger the strain is on his morality. If this person stays on power long enough he/she will eventually conclude that power and wisdom are the same and he/she will lose their ability to distinguish between what is politically expedient to what is morally right. This I where the term “drunk with power” come from. Much like alcohol power makes you act to your lower inhibitions.
As I said before sometimes these people don’t understand right from wrong, but if they do they choose the morally wrong behaviour. They are also more likely to judge people on stereotypes and generalizations. For example Adolf Hitler judged people through generalization and stereotypes by discriminating any other religion besides his own and he strove for an “Aryan” people in Germany to be the dominant or only “race”.
So as an anonymous author once said “Politicians are like diapers. They need changing regularly and for the same reason. ” We need to watch carefully what the people in power of our world do so that we can change them when they get dirty.