What defines a nation - its people, or its leadership? It is a question that many of a country through human history have faced, just as much as today. If a leader rules with a ‘lifetime fiat’, is that nation merely an extension of the leader’s will? What happens to that nation once that leader passes away, or actually steps down? These are the sort of questions that come up when looking at the developments that have happened in Russia with Vladimir Putin. Yet, there are similar issues being talked about when looking at the political scene in the more ‘Democratic’ of areas – with examples of Angela Merkel in Germany or the Bush and Clinton Families in the United States. Lord knows, more than a few jokes have been used to describe the “family business” that has governed DPRK, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and dozens of other nations for the last half of the 20th and beginning of the 21st Centuries.

While more of the prominent pundits will either espouse the praises or curse the actions of such leadership, I have to give pause for the underlying populations that have given ground to allow this to happen to begin with. More often than naught, there seems to be the attitude that if there is the perception that “the trains run on time,” the people will allow a great and many terrible thing to occur. It is this perception that has allowed the likes from Caesar to Mussolini to rule without resistance. Yet has there ever been the case where the ‘bread and circuses’ never ended? One only has to look at the length and breath of human history to know that answer, whether gazing upon the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt, or the Great Wall of Imperial China.