“Scientists have discovered that humans are too stupid to choose a leader,” blares one of the leading Croatian newspapers today. Stalin’s black-and-white photograph is meant to prove the point, I guess. Therefore, the newspaper continues, democracy itself is in question. Not a bad point at all, but I still skipped the article itself. It can only show that scientists are too stupid to understand why humans choose leaders in the first place. The latter have been ahead of the game for about ten-thousand years already. Much more important, they are likely to stay ahead of the game for the foreseeable future. Scientists, eat your hearts out. Stalins of this world, unite!

Addendum (August 14, 2016)

Having come across this piece purely by chance, I cannot but sprout a wry smile upon reading the last sentence. A bit more than four years after it was penned, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump come readily to mind. Indeed, they have shown an undeniable affinity for each other in spite of all the differences between their two countries. Although I doubt that either of them has read this peppy piece of mine, they must be intuitively aware of its tongue-in-cheek punch line. This is the very least one would expect from Stalins of this world. One way or another, scientists are surely too stupid to understand affinities of this ilk, let alone the underlying intuition.