> Did you really read the words of a guy who has been to those death pits just to tell him he imagined them as worse than they really were?? That is not what I

> Did you really read the words of a guy who has been to those death pits just to tell him he imagined them as worse than they really were?? That is not what I said at all. I said most don't have, which of course implies that some do. Many strongmen rulers are relatively bloodless and "only" target inconvenient people with prison sentences and the like, and perhaps the occasional targetted killing. And other have genocide of some group or the other as an explicit goal, and/or have widespread killings of people with undesirable opinions. There is a lot of variety. The idea that widespread killings are at the core of strongman rule or dictatorships is just wrong.