Nightmare Visions

     Is this true?

The world is run by people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom. They're all pathetic in ways that feel like satire, and monstrous beyond your wildest imagining.

— Alana McLaughlin🏳️‍⚧️ (@AlanaFeral) November 14, 2025

     Sometimes I can believe it. At other times I can’t.

     My first difficulty stems from “The world is run.” What does it mean to say that someone or some group runs the world? “The world” is a rather vague phrase, and “run” is the most overloaded word in the English language. One dictionary lists more than 800 meanings for “run.” Is it possible that “the world is run” has no exact meaning?

     George Carlin would have agreed:

     ...but George Carlin was an entertainer. If you let entertainers form your opinions, you’re fishing in a sewer. Entertainers aren't much good at anything but entertaining – and a lot of them aren’t even much good at that.

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     Let’s have a close look at that “the world is run” assertion. What do you suppose the speaker meant to express by it?

     She probably had big stuff in mind: the major institutions of our time. Big governments, big businesses, big media, and so forth. Yes, there are people, or small groups thereof, who control each such institution. And yes, they direct the large-scale orientations and policies of such institutions. However, they cannot control private citizen Smith. Though if Smith chooses to interact with their institution, his decisions will be influenced by theirs.

     But does that amount to running the world?

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     Let’s move on to “people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom.” I can fathom quite a lot, so omit the hyperbole. Are the people who control major institutions cruel and obscene? What evidence do we have for that proposition?

     In the usual case, a man must have control of himself before he can rise to the management or direction of others. But to say that Jones has control of himself does not automatically mean Jones is virtuous. He may simply be skilled at keeping his evil desires reined in until he’s safe to indulge them. And indeed, we have seen enough evil uncovered among the great and powerful to suspect that there’s much more we have yet to see.

     Moreover, we have the dynamic of power to cope with. That dynamic does favor the elevation of evil persons. But when the lust for power is opposed by another dynamic – e.g., in commerce, the constraints imposed by profit and loss – power-lust doesn’t always win.

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     Some large institutions are run by evil persons. It’s the case with most governments. But other large institutions, in which the desire for power over others is tempered by other considerations, are run by persons no worse than you or I. If their desires sometimes clash with ours, what of that? Is CEO Jones obligated to get private citizen Smith’s approval before he decides on Acme Corp.’s next venture?

     So the notion that “The world is run by people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom” isn’t uniformly true. Neither is George Carlin’s “big club” thesis. People move in and out of the seats of power: the positions from which they can “run” things. Those who fall aren’t always corrupt, and those who rise aren’t necessarily corruptible.

     Just some early-morning thoughts.