It has been couple months since I finished all seasons of Game of Throne. The TV show was great: it was entertaining, thought provoking, educational and challenging. The dynamics of power struggle are so realistic which the author said he took the insipriations from the history books. TV as an art brings can be so magical. It let me access history without reading books which is less accessible. Here, I'm going to talk about a piece: rule with fear that is carried out by the lord of Dreadfort, which was deeply challenging and disturbing for me to see and think.
Dreadfort is place where there are harsh tortures to enemies / dissidents, and poor treatment to subordinates. The torture and poor treatments is their method of inspiring fear on people to exerting control. The banner of the faction says it all: upside down person with skin peel off, which shows pride of the lord on the method. When I watched Theon Greyjoy was tortured to become a broken man by Ramsay Bolton, I was deeply conformtable. When the torture ends, Theon Greyjoy was some freedom, but the fear of the torture has been his will, and he became a puppet of Ramsay Bolton. Sometimes, Theon Greyjoy had chance to escape or revenge on Ramsay by taking his life, but he was paralyzed by the fear, and could not do any of that (Even though Theon Greyjoy is the victim, it is impossible to be sympathetic towards him given his coward behaviors). When Ramsay Bolton showed how "well train" of Theon Greyjoy to his father (the lord of Dreadfort), Ramsay was awarded by more power, which strengths the use of torture as method to archive obedience. Awarding cruelty resulted in more cruelty, which at some point, Ramsay's father was killed by him ironically.
Dreadfort is fictional, but throughout the history and now, fear was and is used to exert control to different extend. Fear is helpful tool, says dictators and rulers. To much less extend, today, layoffs in companies has been used to drive fear. Elon Musk, as an asshole with huge economic power, is good and pride at this. Look how he layoff people when he took over Twitter. Dreadfort is at the extreme extend. In ancient times, dynasties in China like Yuan and Qing is oppressed with fear to rule to exert control over lower class. Nowadays China ruled under CCP is moving towards that, with powers concerntrated in Xi. Humorously, Trump made a joke after meeting Xi and his officials in 2025:
```
I made a comment to one of them (a Chinese official) and I got no response. I said, "Are you going to answer me?" I got no response (the Chinese official said). And President Xi didn't let him have any… So, if there's any question, I said, "I want my cabinet to behave like that." I'm demanding that my cabinet… I want them sitting up like that, Tim, just nice and straight. I never saw a posture like that. I've never seen men so scared in their lives. I said, "What's wrong with this guy?" "I will answer all questions." (Xi said) Why don't you behave like that? JD doesn't behave like that. JD butts into conversations. I want to have that for at least a couple of days, okay, JD? We'll keep you long-term, but a couple of days of that would be very, very nice.
```
I pray that China does not descend into the abyss of rule with fear.
## Chinese translation 中文翻译
自从我看完《权力的游戏》全部几季，已经过去了好几个月。这部电视剧非常精彩：它既娱乐性十足，又引人深思，同时具有教育意义和挑战性。剧中对权力斗争的刻画非常真实，正如作者所说，他的灵感来源于历史书籍。作为一种艺术形式，电视剧可以如此魔幻，它让我在不必阅读那些不太容易接近的历史书籍的情况下，直接“进入”历史。在这里，我想讨论其中的一个主题：以恐惧进行统治——这一点在恐怖堡领主的行为中体现得淋漓尽致，也让我在观看和思考时感到极度震撼和不安。
恐怖堡（Dreadfort）是一个对敌人和异见者施以残酷酷刑、对下属极端苛待的地方。酷刑和虐待正是他们通过制造恐惧来实施控制的手段。这个家族的旗帜本身就说明了这点：一个被倒吊、剥了皮的人图案，彰显了领主对这种统治方式的骄傲。当我看到拉姆齐·波顿将席恩·葛雷乔伊折磨成一个精神彻底崩溃的人时，我感到极度不适。酷刑结束后，席恩获得了一些自由，但对酷刑的恐惧已经摧毁了他的意志，他成了拉姆齐·波顿的傀儡。有时，席恩其实有机会逃走，甚至可以通过杀死拉姆齐来复仇，但他被恐惧彻底麻痹，什么都做不了。（尽管席恩是受害者，但由于他表现出的懦弱行为，人们几乎无法对他产生同情。）当拉姆齐向他的父亲（恐怖堡的领主）展示他是如何“训练”席恩时，拉姆齐反而获得了更多权力，这进一步强化了“通过酷刑来换取服从”的逻辑。对残酷的奖赏只会带来更多残酷，而讽刺的是，最终拉姆齐的父亲也死在了他手中。
恐怖堡是虚构的，但纵观历史，直到今天，恐惧一直被用来在不同程度上实施统治。“恐惧是一种有用的工具，”独裁者这样说。在程度轻得多的情况下，如今企业中的裁员也被用来制造恐惧。埃隆·马斯克——一个拥有巨大经济权力的垃圾——对此颇为擅长，甚至引以为傲。看看他接管推特（X）后是如何裁员的。恐怖堡是这种逻辑的极端体现。在古代，中国的元朝和清朝就曾通过擅长用恐惧来实施统治，奴化下级。如今，在权力不断向习近平集中的背景下，中国在中共统治下也正朝着这个方向移动。特朗普在2025年与习近平及其官员会面后还开了这样一个玩笑：
```
我对其中一位（中国官员）说了一句话，却没有得到任何回应。我说：“你要回答我吗？”还是没有回应。（那位中国官员没有说话。）而习主席也没有让他有任何反应。所以如果有什么疑问的话，我说：“我希望我的内阁也能这样表现。”我要求我的内阁……我希望他们能像那样坐着，蒂姆，笔直端正。我从没见过那样的坐姿，我从没见过一群人一生中那么害怕。我说：“这家伙怎么了？”“我会回答所有问题。”（习说。）你们为什么不能这样？JD 就不是这样，JD 总爱插话。我希望你至少能这样几天，好吗，JD？我们会长期留着你，但有那么几天这样真的会非常、非常好。
```
我祈祷，中国不会坠入“以恐惧统治”的深渊。