We are all Guilty of war crimes.

ETHICS AND MORALITY
The Tyrant's Handbook
We must learn to recognize a tyrant's easy and alluring bag of tricks.
KEY POINTS
Becoming a tyrannical jerk is easy since arrogance breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds arrogance.
To become a tyrant in any context, however local or global, part-time or full-time, people simply pose as heroic no matter what.
Tyrants demand that other people attend to the meaning of their words, though they ignore their meanings focused only on connotations.
Tyrants are deliberately tone deaf to criticism because they translate all responses to them into evidence of their heroism.
You may be surprised to learn that becoming a tyrant is simple. You don’t have to learn new skills; you just have to remove your conscience and you don’t have to do it all at once.Show more

No lobotomy required. Once you start becoming a tyrant, your self-awareness, conscience, and powers of reasoning will atrophy and disappear. They’ll no longer be necessary. In fact, they’ll only get in the way. Arrogance breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds arrogance.

You’ll have to pretend that you have more self-awareness, conscience, and rationality than everyone else. Don’t worry. Your posture will be a substitute for having them.

Being a tyrant is fun and easy so long as people let you get away with it, which many will—if you do it right. Here’s all there is to it.

Raise the loudest false alarms. Since desperate times call for desperate measures, declare holy ware and you can get away with murder. Pretend the world is in crisis and you have to save it. Or to keep it local, pretend that your spouse has become evil and you have to heroically rescue yourself from their treachery. One way or another, turn on all the emergency alarms you can imagine. People will back away at the sound of your siren, and your siren will help drown out your conscience.
Fake objectivity. Talk like you know for certain and everyone else is just guessing (wrongly): Flatly assume that your rivals are biased. Only you see clearly, objectively. The writing on the wall can only be interpreted one way—your way. Everyone else is delusional. Even if your interpretation is a desperate lie, remember that anything’s possible. Your interpretation could still be true. Therefore it is true.
Spin to the max. Exaggerate your fake crisis. Use superlatives. If you say your rivals are the absolute worst, they can’t say you’re worse. Declare your holy war crisis first and loudest. If they retaliate in kind, you can dismiss them as being defensive, just trying to wriggle out of facing facts. Use loaded terms that make you sound perfect and your rivals sound stupid, evil, biased, and weak. Spin their strengths as weaknesses and your weaknesses as strengths. If they succeed in landing an insult, interpret it as a compliment. If they call you an a**hole, wear it like a badge of honor. No matter what, comb all virtue to you and all vice to anyone who doesn’t align with you.
Ignore what words mean. Don’t ever think about what words mean, just whether they sound positive or negative. Everything positive is about you. Everything negative is about your rivals. If you have residues of conscience, this may not come naturally. Don’t worry. Once tyranny becomes a reliable habit you’ll stop thinking.
Align with the good name against the bad name. Label yourself with the most popular virtue against the most unpopular vice. You’re a patriot; your rivals are traitors. You’re mindful, your rivals are narcissists. You’re with God; your rivals are with the devil. That way, anyone who challenges your authority is attacking virtue itself.
Act heroic no matter what. You must keep up the appearance of invincibility always. Never apologize. You are like a God, eternally right, righteous, and mighty. Even when you’re losing, you’re mighty—the martyr hero who is destined to rise again because you’re right and righteous.
Cosplay and method act. Dress and act the part of the hero surrounded by evil stupid fools. No matter what your temperament or lifestyle, you can method-act the part. It’s easy. No matter who you are, there’s some Blockbuster movie hero you can pretend you are if you just stop looking at who you really are.
Never look at yourself. Tyrants are mindless swellheads, braindead megaphones, robotic crusaders. They take up the most space but no one is home. They can’t see themselves and they refuse to accept that others see them. So speak like you are the absolute authority on your character.
Or let others look at you. Pretend that the biggest sin is personal attacks. Never tolerate anyone calling you on your behavior. You are the authority on yourself and on everyone else too. You get to psychologize others; they don’t get to psychologize you. And why? Because you’re objective about everything including yourself. Your rivals are just biased.
Remember, you are the supreme judge. You don’t just get to give the authoritative account of what’s true. You are the unbiased supreme judge presiding over all debates you enter. You get to decide what’s permissible evidence in your court. You get to decide what’s being debated and who wins every debate: you.
Shame relentlessly. As the one who declares holy war, you are holy and therefore never have to face consequences. No matter how beastly you act, you remain the moral authority. This is the key to getting away with being a tyrant. So long as your rivals still have consciences, you’ll be able to shame them into backing off and giving you free rein.
It's all about who gets to lead. People still burdened by conscience will try to reason with you. They’ll enable you by treating you as though you mean what you say. A tyrant’s power comes from getting to steer the debate. You’ll look like a winner if you’ve got the steering wheel and can lead your rivals to any topic you want.
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If you follow these simple steps, most people will despise you but they won’t be able to beat you, and some people, maybe a lot, will align with you because you’ll appear powerful, indomitable. You’ll beat the folks who care about substance and you’ll win the folks who only follow power.

You’ll gain more confidence as you go, and soon you’ll be a clueless total jerk who gets away with murder. You’ll be freed from self-doubt, conscience, and introspection. You’ll have faith that the fates have destined you for greatness.

Being a tyrant makes you feel like God, which is much more fun than being human, so long as people let you get away with it.