You may or may not be familiar with Niccolo di Bernardo Machiavelli, a citizen of Florence, Italy, circa 1500. Let's call him Bernie. When the Medici Family took control of Florence, Bernie was a political activist who sought a way to make himself viewed favorably by the new regime. So he wrote a book he titled, The Prince. It focused on advice for any ruler (Prince) who wished to be successful in maintaining his power.
Bernie gets a bad rap from critical historians who accuse him of being an immoral, brutal, atheist. He was only reporting what he observed over the decades of watching rulers come and go. The honest, compassionate, rulers would go. The brutal, lying, dishonest rulers would come. Bernie was not judgmental, he was a truth teller. And down through the centuries The Prince and a later work of his, The Art of War (not to be confused with the Sun Tzu book of the same title) became Bibles for despots. His basic belief was that individuals and nations will always act in ways that serve their own self interests and if lying, brutal, immoral, behavior is necessary to make that happen, so be it. It is better to be feared than it is to be loved, he wrote.
The recent travails of the 45th president of the United States brought Bernie to my mind. Donald Trump doesn't read books (he got part way through The Art of The Deal because he wanted to see what his ghost writer wrote about him) but his mentor, Roy Cohen, did find Bernie's books the perfect texts for his pupil's education. It was said Adolph Hitler also kept The Prince on his night table.
So we need to give Bad News Bernie a break here in judging his character. He was kind to his wife and both dogs while being generous to a fault. Yet he kept his prescient manuscripts at the top of the best sellers list.
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