Gaddafi’s Job Change

The decline of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya offers a lesson in roles and distinctions. There is no clear bright line between Gaddafi’s former position, as a tyrannical head of state, and his current one, that of a criminal gang leader on the run from the law. No one can say exactly what day that transition took place for Gaddafi, only that it did, at some point along the way. Society is based on recognizing roles such as these and the distinctions between them, yet paradoxically, the distinctions are not entirely real. They are to a significant and sometimes troubling degree imaginary.