Chapter 9. The Number Game
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Michel de Montaigne
Imperialists, anti‐imperialists, capitalists, communists—as soon as they get a grand scheme into their heads, a pet project for world improvement, they all seem to end up in the same place—bungling, botching, and butchering. It is not a matter of intelligence or ability. Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse‐tung—none of them were stupid men in the ordinary sense of the word. President Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. Even our Texas Tiberius, George Bush, apparently possesses enough cunning to conduct his personal life with a modicum of success.
But put them at a head of a country or an army, then they are off on some fool mission—bringing civilization to the barbarians, making the world safe for democracy, or ushering in the proletarian revolution. Competent beings suddenly turn into cretins who wander from one disaster into the next with hardly a pause in between, never learning from any of them.
Why is the human brain so prone to error when it steps out of the charmed circle of things and people close to it?
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