What happens to people when they get power

1. They get Greedy

They want more power, and they want it for longer. Sure, there is the burden of responsibility, but this is greatly eased Shortly after acquiring any kind of power people often realize that the only thing standing between them and accomplishing their ambitions are those little things we call “ethics”by the pleasure of not having to answer to anybody. Being feared by your enemies, also, is a wonderful thing, more addictive than crack, but like crack, what you have is never enough, there is always more power to chase, the ability to do one more thing unilaterally being what you need right now.
Being able to ruin your life on a whim is not enough for your average cop, he needs more, he needs you defenseless, hurt, begging, nor is being able to kill foreigners at will enough for many soldiers, they need to rape somebody who speaks their language.

2. They want you to bow

You can’t tell you are powerful unless you have something to compare it to, like, say, a weak person, and even that’s no good unless they know that they are weak. You want to see the fear in their eyes, hear them address you as “sir”, make them crawl. Another reason is that power comes with a strong sense of having deserved it, having earned it, and with the feeling of having earned comes the need for recognition, accolades, yes-men and humbled enemies serve this purpose well, which is why there will always be a need for them, everybody with real power retains at least one person for the sole purpose of being servile and reminding them how cool they are.

3. They get selfish

Remember they earned their position by being so cool, they fully deserve certain privileges that the rest of mediocre humanity is not allowed. They deserve to have their yes-men and lackeys promoted so that they can be even more grateful, they have earned the right to break rules, and to ignore all other needs but their own.
When you have the means and the authority, you can and will do whatever you can to make yourself happy, that compulsion being more important to you than what anybody else needs or wants. It’s natural.

4. The power to rationalize anything

In other words, the power to be a sociopath. Shortly after acquiring any kind of power people often realize that the only thing standing between them and accomplishing their ambitions are those little things we call “ethics”. Do away with them and the world is your oyster, but it’s not so easy, you have to be willing to challenge them, and you have to be able to find loopholes. Thankfully power and time are all you need to challenge even the most rock-hard ethics. If you think about it enough and you crave it enough, pretty soon everything becomes permissible. In addition to being able to crack morality, you also need to be able to stop thinking when necessary. If you find your way through something, simply stop thinking and avoid the pitfall of second-guessing yourself.

5. The need for secrecy

Which means that as you stop yourself from thinking about the unethical nature of your actions you also have to stop other people from thinking about it as well. You do not want your rationalizing arguments held up for the scrutiny of anybody else, if they are, you will have to think about them. Along with the scrutiny and judgment from people who have no idea how much you deserve your power, comes the possibility of your power being curtailed, which is simply unacceptable, therefore you want all of your dealings hidden, not just from the world, but from anybody who is not benefiting from your rule, meaning all the non-lackeys.

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