There is nothing more obnoxious than a spoiled child. Come to think of it, anything spoiled is equally insufferable. Food can be deadly when it spoils, limbs have to be hacked off when they spoil and become gangrenous, and grown individuals look silly and tactless when their spoiled childhood spills over into their later years. The worst thing about spoiled people is that they think they are never wrong and others are never right. This is a deadly equation no matter how you turn it.
What happens if a whole country is spoiled or thinks of itself as something special beyond the obvious facts and the reality on the ground? Well, nothing out of the ordinary happens. Like a child, the country will promise to do its homework and never gets to doing it. It will hunker down to eat its greens and shove them under the table instead; it will promise to take its medication but hide it under the tongue till the parent is gone and then spits it out. It will have a colossal sense of injustice and persecution, much as the child, in wanting his way forgets the other way and acts with veiled hostility toward peers and elders alike.
A spoiled country resembles the Queen of Hearts in “Alice In Wonderland”, shouting at poor little Alice that it is always “my way” that counts. It does not matter what the rules of the croquet game are, the Queen will introduce her own rules and make sure everyone around is on the same page. If anyone dares to disagree, the piercing scream of “off with their heads” is carried out.
Lewis Carroll put his finger (quill?) on a tender point in the human psyche. Who amongst us would not like to be the Queen of Hearts, getting his or her way every day and at every turn of the hour? The normal (if not the wise) among us will realize the impossibility of such a proposition. The demented, however, will go the other way and turn into ranters, demanding humanity accept and pay homage to their inflated sense of themselves. Democracy, with its turning wheel at given points in the human calendar, is supposed to be a protection against the breeding of Queens of Hearts or even Spades. For all his genius, Plato could not see this supremely important point, which might have turned his own philosopher into a queen of the said type. Margaret Thatcher infamously declared from the steps of Downing Street: “We are a grandmother!” Her party recognized the symptoms and sacked her. America is immune from this malady since no president can be re-elected more than twice. So what does that leave? I guess it leaves Mugabe.
