If I were an optimist, I'd likely have ended up a proponent of authoritarian political systems. It would then be natural to believe that only noble and enlightened individuals would end up in positions of authority. The world would be run by the best of us, and guided in a manner that would benefit the vast majority of us.

However, as a pessimist I tend to believe the corrupt or maliciously incompetent will assume positions of authority. The world will often be run by those were either born into it, took power by subterfuge or force, or simply wandered into it by chance, and they will be guided in manner that will benefit only themselves and their associates.

I'm strangely comfortable with this.

The current level of pre-revolutionary France style mob rule mentality in the U.S. is both strangely refreshing and outright frightening at the same time. The problem being that an angry populist revolution can be the stuff of legend, either good or bad.

Currently, What worries me the most is the focus of that anger, the executives over at AIG who have received millions in bonus money after our government bailed them out. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of those parasitic and obviously useless corporate slugs over at AIG. They collectively failed to provide the leadership needed to keep that company sound, so in my humble opinion they are about as far from top executive talent as you can get.

However, to be outraged at a group of people who have already proven their incompetence who then fail to suddenly become competent seems unreasonable. The parable of the turtle and the snake comes to mind here; to expect these people to behave any differently now, than they have for the past several years is at best wish thinking, or at worst delusional.

From the stories I've seen reported, these bonus's were part of legal employment contracts between AIG and the executives, meaning they had no choice but to honor these agreements or risk being taken to court.

So I invite people to place the blame where I think it belongs, with our own government who decided that handing over billions of our tax dollars to AIG with few (if any) strings attached was a good idea.