Geopolitical Braketology

There is a guessing game in which players place each famous subject, usually but not always a present or past political or geopolitical actor, into one of four categories, pretending any deceased subject is still alive and selecting the highest number that applies:

1)      Someone whom one would be willing to stop and help if one found him lying beside a road, choking

2)      Someone whom one would walk on by and let nature take its course if one found him lying beside a road, choking

3)       Someone whom one would wish to make the world a  better place  by suffering a fatal ruptured aortal aneurysm, preferably before the game’s next round

4)       Someone whom one would willingly shoot dead if one could do so (legally to be sure).

Once a subject’s name is selected, each player secretly marks whether he rates the subject as  a one, a two, a three, or a four. Players then guess which category the largest number of players picked. The player or players guessing right win the round. The strategy, such as it is, is in trying to figure out the other players’ attitudes about the subject. For example one might think that many people would give, say,  George H. W. Bush  a one, Justin Trudeau or Donald Trump a two, Chairman Xi a three, and Osama bin Laden a four. 

It is not much of a game,  but thinking about how people would answer its question can interesting. For example I would suppose that right now  a lot of people would bump Putin  up from a three to a four.