Ten Signs You Might Be Turning Into an Evil Overlord
10. Everybody hates you.
9. The price of butter is sky-high, but there are guns everywhere.
8. You can’t go out the front door without the skies being dark with helicopter gunships and an escort of men in black whispering up their sleeves.
7. People publish annoying cartoon caricatures of you in foreign newspapers. Anonymously.
6. You’re maintaining military bases in 70% of all the independent nations on the planet, some of which out-number the host nation’s own armed forces.
5. Vladimir Putin tells you you’re one of his role models. (The other is Yuri Andropov.)
4. Osama bin Laden stops sending you birthday cards.
3. Orson Scott Card thinks you’re a swell president.
2. The History Channel’s "UFO Files" is doing a special on orbital mind control laser battle stations this month; you tell them you’ll take two.
1. Your receptionist pops in to say there’s a Mr. Mephistopheles waiting in the office to talk to you about your loan repayments …
(Stolen with slight modifications from Charles Stross’s blog.)
I just popped over to ask if you could explain the Orson Scott Card reference…
Is it because of that theory that Ender’s Game is apologetic of Hitler? Is it because he’s a Mormon? Is it because he’s overrated? I’m kind of not sure what it’s supposed to mean.
Also, I think something here is broken, because in google reader the post was fine, but here at the actual post, the body is nothing but:
Hi, Jer.
Card certainly is a Mormon, but I don’t fault him for that. Many fine people are Mormons. I got nothing against Mormons.
And yeah, he’s an overrated writer. I’ve got nothing against overrated writers, though, though sometimes they let their own overratedness get to their heads.
I enjoyed Ender’s Game, but I have to say I’ve never heard that it was apologetic of Hitler, and I didn’t get that impression myself.
No, this is me speaking as a Democrat and a pretty left wing liberal, the kind of guy who cheered when the Democrats regained control of Congress this past election, and who will very likely vote Democrat in the 2008 Presidential election. And it’s me speaking as an American who considers the Iraq invasion to be among the worst foreign policy blunders in our nation’s history, a dreadful mistake that will haunt our nation for decades to come. I hold President Bush responsible for that.
And Card, as an apologist for Bush, just bugs me in that regard. Check out this essay by Card which dates back to October 2006. He calls Bush “a wise and moderate politician”, which honestly makes me think he’s starting to lose it a little.
Hence the Orson Scott Card reference.
I can’t see the error you mention. If you go to the post from my front page, do you get the same error? Or is it only if you go to it from Google Reader?
Yeah, it looks like the it’s just when linking in from google reader. After my comment posted, it showed everything properly, and when linking in from gmail it looks fine as well.
So your only beef with Card is that he likes Bush? The rest of the things in your list are indeed villainous and signs of overlord-like behavior, but the inclusion of Card seems a little petty. I enjoyed Ender’s Game, but I’ve got no attachment to Card (and truth be told, I don’t like Dubya one bit), but the inclusion of Card seems to really dilute your list. I thought that surely there was something I just didn’t know about deeming him appropriate to put on such a list, but it really seems as if his only crime here is disagreeing with you…
What I initially enjoyed about your list is that it didn’t actually have to apply to Bush; there are a number of leaders that could qualify. The inclusion of Card’s Republicanism pretty much requires that it’s about Bush.
Anyway, I did a quick search to see if I could find the article I read re: Card’s Hitler apologism, and indeed I found it. I don’t really buy it entirely, but it sure has made me think about those books in a different light.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm