Great read on Slate - "The Dots Are Never Going to Connect"

[thucythucy]

2. Generally speaking, oligarchies and tyrannies are often "dysfunctional."

Albert Speer in "Inside the Third Reich" talks about the incompetence, the dysfunction, the incredible corruption, the hair-brained absurdity of the upper echelons of the Nazi state. Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess, Hitler himself were a toxic mix of arrogance, dysfunction, ignorance, delusion, and extreme narcissism--none of which kept them from pushing the entire world into a cataclysm as yet unmatched in human history.

It's also often the case that despite it all, such systems often give outsiders the impression of cool headed efficiency, of "making the trains run on time" even though the truth behind the façade is anything but.

It doesn't mean such governments can't cause enormous damage, or achieve some of their more far-fetched goals.

For all these reasons we do well to keep a close watch on Trump AND Putin.