It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of
strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military
precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the
harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is
not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship
has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the
incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in
sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically
unable to bear.