Chapter 860 Doom
Doctor Doom, or he can be called Doom the Mage of Destruction in the future. This is a very smart and bold guy. He has a thick skin and is extremely narcissistic. You can tell from the way he names the countries he controls.
The place names of various places always like to have Dum as the front stamp. He made his mark on Latvia. But he is such a narcissistic person, but he has his own persistence, humility and pride.
Doom puts his name on various scenic spots across the country, as if he created the landscapes formed over millions of years (such as Dumelin, Dume Valley). But he gave another name to the university he really created: the Latvian University of Science.
Science is science, and its essence belongs to no one. We just occasionally found some directions and laws of water flow in the vast vast sea, which is not worth mentioning compared with the entire vast sea. Be humble in front of science, never think that you already know all the knowledge in this world, always be a student and always on the way. Only in this way can you benefit endlessly on the road of science - from the school manifesto of the Latvian University of Science, this passage is written by Dum.
Because of Dum's awe of science, his surprising desire to explore, and he is also an excellent scientist. Although the Latvian University of Science has only been established for twenty years, it is already a first-class institution. Although the international university rankings will not include Latvia (because of political relations).
But the last time Li Jie and Dr. Banner visited Latvia, Dr. Banner visited the University of Science. He expressed his high appreciation for the software and hardware level of this university: "It is not inferior to New York University or the University of California, Berkeley."
Before Doom came to power, Latvia was a small and poor country with no technology industry, and the whole country basically relied on agriculture. Technology and culture are extremely underdeveloped. Although Dum came to power, he ruled the country in a dictatorial way (Dr. Banner: it was actually a bit brutal). But the national power has improved.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the per capita annual disposable income in Latvia rose from 300 U.S. dollars to more than 38,000 U.S. dollars today, almost 20 years after Dum came to power. Residents' living income has more than doubled by more than a hundred times.
The per capita annual intake of meat, dairy products and other materials has also increased from 3.75 kg and 13 kg per year during the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the current per capita annual intake of 115 kg of meat products and 200 kg of dairy products. Fifteen kilograms (Latvia has the habit of eating cheese, and the conversion ratio of cheese to raw milk is very high).
And Latvia's per capita power generation has soared from more than 700 degrees per capita 20 years ago to 12,000 degrees per capita per year now.
Latvia under Doom was indeed not free. He used his secret police to control the public opinion of the entire country and made anyone who dared to oppose him disappear. He is a truly great dictator.
But what if we look at the problem from another angle? After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, countries including Russia are not considered developed countries. Everyone's quality of life is deteriorating. The Eastern European countries are even more miserable, with constant coups and civil wars, and the lives of ordinary people are really not easy.
Although Latvia is said to be a dictatorship, the standard of living is improving every year. By standards, Latvia is well within the ranks of an advanced developed country. The per capita consumption of daily necessities such as meat, milk, electricity, etc. is among the best in the world.
Although it is a small country, it is alive and well. However, almost all Western media will deliberately ignore this when evaluating Latvia.
They don't list these numbers to compare Latvia twenty years ago with Latvia today. They also don't care if the residents of Latvia like to come home from get off work every day and open the refrigerator, which is full of cheese sausage and butter.
I still prefer the days when I ate the last meal every day and didn’t know where to find the next piece of black bread.
Of course, none of this matters to the politically charged media. After all, political correctness is what matters. Most of Li Jie's images of Latvia came from the propaganda of these media. The propaganda portrays Doom as a militaristic dictatorial war criminal who is simply a heinous super villain who is coercing and exploiting his own people!
Until the Super Highway project started, Li Jie and Dr. Banner personally went to Latvia, and after the first calm conversation with Dum, Li Jie felt that the media could not always be trusted.
Doom has indeed gone too far in some respects, and is indeed very authoritarian. But in another respect he is good and right. At least one point, if Latvia did not come to power 20 years ago, but a "democratic leader" favored by the Western media came to power instead.
Li Jie guessed that the average living standard of the people of Latvia is probably not as good as it is now under Doom's administration. Maybe it will fall into civil strife?
And now Doom has begun to be a little addicted to magic. For the status of the monarch of Latvia, Dum now wants to become the supreme mage!
He has already begun to slowly delegate power to Latvia.
Because the more he knew about Doom, Li Jie felt that this person was actually believable. He's not a big villain in the traditional sense. Or Doom and Lee Jay have a lot in common. They are all people who can do whatever it takes to achieve a certain goal.
It's just that Dum is much more extreme than Li Jie's, and at the same time more stubborn. Is Doom bad? Maybe, his badness is not bad in the traditional sense. It is the difference in his standard of conduct that caused the deviation in value perception.
So it was Li Jie's idea for Radum to enter the Illuminati. But at the same time, this idea also requires some risks, after all, Dum is not a particularly easy-going person. Others in the Illuminati said that Dr. Banner would have no problem joining directly. But Dr. Doom needs a probationary period, like an intern.
And Dum, who was practicing magic in Kamateki, was sitting on a Zen chair. And Li Jie was sitting opposite him, and said with a serious face: "Do you want to join a secret underground organization, and then launch a secret plan to control the world?"