A prominent politician yesterday told the world that he was suffering from a psychological illness. George Galloway claims - according to top political correspondent Davina McCall - that the greatest man he's ever met is Fidel Castro.
Now let's ponder this. As an MP, Galloway will have met tens of thousands of people: war heroes, fighters of oppression around the world, voluntary workers, teachers, doctors, intellectuals. And, greater than any of these, he claims, is a petty tyrant.
Worse, a petty tyrant who seems to have learnt nothing since the early 1960s.
What sort of person thinks that greatness consists in oppressing one's fellow humans, and in imposing one's ego onto them, rather than in trying to understand the world, or to make small improvements to one's little platoon?
As I said yesterday, we should pity politicians for their troubled souls.
The kind of politician that is actively supportive of regimes involved in oppressing one's fellow humans, and the politician who is constantly imposing their ego onto them, and who doesn't try to understand the world, but rather tries to convince everyone else of their twisted understanding of the world.
The big question for me is whether he actually believes all this or whether he is just doing it for attention. So his illness is either delusionary or related to the need for adulation (or respect even, geddit?).
Posted by: angry_economist | January 06, 2006 at 10:38 AM
But George likes petty tyrants doesn't he? Maybe that's what he's always dreamed of being himself.
Posted by: Steve | January 06, 2006 at 02:27 PM
The term used is "greatest". Not nicest. Not most humanitarian. Not most appealing to the public. Castro, love him, loathe him, try to assassinate him, is a great figure in history. More will be written and remembered about him than people like Tony Blair, etc.
Great. Not necesarily nice.
Posted by: Max | January 06, 2006 at 02:34 PM
CAstro's a tyrant, and yes he doesn't have a popular mandate, although he did have one so its really just a question of the gap between the renewal.
But Castro does have good points, and he has had the odds stacked against him with an outrageous trade and capital embargo and accusations of WMD manufacture etc.
It should be remembered that the US tried illegally to invade Cuba 60 years ago and they don't seemed to have learned much either.
Posted by: Jeremy | January 06, 2006 at 03:38 PM
Of course we already know for years that Galloway is insane. He thought and thinks that the former Iraqi leader and the current Syrian one are great men aswell.
Posted by: ivan | January 08, 2006 at 02:05 PM