Let’s say a garden is prone to attracting weeds. You can deweed the garden, but the weeds will come back.
This is because the garden’s conditions – the soil, the climate, the moisture – are conducive for weeds to thrive. Unless these conditions are fundamentally altered, weeds will continue to grow.
When you kill the tallest weed, in time, another one will take its place.
Several people today are hoping for Vladimir Putin to be assassinated, to end the Russian war in Ukraine. Adolf Hitler’s assassins thought that killing him would have ended the Second World War. Alas! Assasinating Julius Caeser did not save the Roman Republic, but only brought it to a swift end.
Assassinating a leader and expecting to end their legacy is like getting rid of the tallest weed in a garden and expecting it to be weed free.
It is easy to whack the tallest weed. It is hard to alter a garden’s soil composition. Sure, getting rid of the tallest weed helps, but it is merely the start.
Observations 