That is it, but that does not preclude arrogance, and evil nature from being a primary driver of such person at the same time as rational desire for self preservation, and, sometimes, even a rare genuine brilliance in political matters.

Take a look at Bin Rasheed, or Li.

It kind of does preclude it. Your argument seems to be "they do bad things primarily because they're just evil" and mine is "they do bad things primarily because they can't bear losing control".

I feel like you just want to make a point about the CCP being evil. Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

> Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

Western critical thinking seem to be hell-bent on thinking that some grand totalitarian regime cannot be just "dumb evil," and it must always come with some kind of equally grand conspiracy, secret agenda, maybe even some semi-valid point, as they probably think "it must take some brains, complex motive, and talent to run you evil empire at such scale."

It's beyond them to concede that their grand political theories are not the case, and the man is driven just by your regular arrogance, greed, and cowardice, aka lust for power, even if his ways of achieving those may be quite sophisticated at the time.

Let's hope USA 2016-2020 adds "failing upwards" to the list of available OTC explanations.