While some of it may be from authorial design, many elements here are distressingly familiar. I bet every human language has idioms like "playing with fire", a

While some of it may be from authorial design, many elements here are distressingly familiar. I bet every human language has idioms like "playing with fire", and a lot of people seem to have believed they could accelerate the might-makes-right boulder for some profitable distance and then it would just stop rolling before disaster. > In the ’20s and early ’30s, the Hitler “brand” was anathema to capitalists and corporate elites. [... Yet by 1933] The New York Times expressed astonishment that Hugenberg, an “arch-capitalist” who stood “in strongest discord with economic doctrines of the Nazi movement,” was suddenly in charge of the country’s finances. Hitler’s “socialist mask” had fallen, the Communist daily Red Banner proclaimed, arguing that “Hugenberg is in charge, not Hitler!” > As self-proclaimed “economic dictator,” Hugenberg kept pace with Hitler in outraging political opponents and much of the public. [...] Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for economic growth through territorial expansion.