They’re a product of a flawed system, like litter or traffic jams. The people themselves are as inconsequential as the biographical specifics of a burglar who has been enabled to take all your stuff by lax security, poor law enforcement and a grim socio-economic environment. The rulers in this book inherited or acquired a lot of power. They did things that affected millions of people’s lives. But, if they hadn’t, someone else would have done. Unlike Shakespeare, they were not important. We had but mistook them all this while.
