Power Corrupts or does it?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The opposite form of this is:
Weakness corrupts, and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely.
I'll say these are not mutually exclusive. Quite commonly the former leads to the second, as there is the common saying...
Good men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak mean create bad times. Bad times create good men.
In that quote, you can substitute good with powerful, and the meaning is preserved-- AND! It turns the dichotomy of the Master morality and the Slave morality as Nietzsche observes into a cycle. That Master morality is the morality of the noblemen, and slave morality the reaction to that, from the inability to express the self properly.
With Christianity, it is a religion for the Gentiles built upon the imitation of Christ-- that they could not be equals to the Jews or to the Romans, and so they denigrate the material world in favour of a spiritual world, and create the moral facts(out of the Parables and Gospels of Christ) that with Hume's Guillotine leads to what is considered good and evil. But this Good and Evil is plainly the good and evil palatable to slaves.
So why then, do dictatorships appear to corrupt and fail? Ideology? Structure? Bias? Consider also, that only recently, democracy came into full force with the Americans(a democracy is quite different from a republic). I pin this upon Conway's law about the hierarchy of an organisation(government) representing the hierarchy of its system(the political system). As a result, you have a system that depends upon one element, one party, one person... and as a consequence if that one person cultivates and structures the system in a terrible vision or ideal, such as the ideal of communism, it cultivates multiple generations of weakness... multiple generations of Dostoevsky's "Underground man"... the spiteful and sick men. So in this effect, dictatorship under a poor dictator corrupts the system and grows weakness in the people, and this weakness is the fundamental corruption and element of decay.
Consider China, the fundamental weakness of its citizens is present, and it will take a long time for a truly powerful and good man to wrestle control again of China- so much longer from so much worse their generations are- corrupted. While the instigator may not have had that corruption, may have had the virility, power and strength... the will to power, they certainly did not cultivate power in others. And then there's the competitive nature of humans, why share power? After all, it leaves you only to be challenged in your power. This open challenge present in both republics and democracies(Weimar Republic, Roman Republic et al) is the weakness(after all it only takes one man to cross the Rubicon) and its strength. It makes it very tricky to poison a system and poison the people.
As a result, this leads us to the following phrase: Power tends to poison the system, and absolute power poisons the system absolutely. A poisonous and hostile system, leads to weakness, and and absolutely poisoned system leads to an absolutely weak citizenry. Weakness corrupts, and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely.
There is a reason behind my use of the terms poison. The modern day dictators, are technocrats. They have poisoned the minds of many in social media-- poisoned not in terms of "content", "agenda" or some other politicised element, but even on the fundamental health of the people. Mental illness is rampant. Poor attention span is rampant. Now they are both the expressions of power- taking for themselves as the modern men of nobility, what they wish- the deliverers of perfect poison.
It is not like there is much you can do to exact Justice against them. To quote Pascal here:
Justice, might.—It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might, and for this end make what is just strong, or what is strong just.
Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
And so what is Just, comes from what is Mighty. The powerful protect and cultivate their environment, and so what is Just in China particularly is what breeds weakness. Western civilisation in America, Britain, Western Europe is a Petri Dish of so many strains of weakness.
Expanding upon this, these elements of weakness, align with the "seven deadly sins". The very worst, are those who's hearts are hardened with Wrath and Envy... Jealousy. They see what good you attempt, what power you express, and they become as the Underground Man...
I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease...