How widespread is sadism among the ruling cles?

By "sadism" I don't mean dressing up in latex/leather/chains/etc and playing strange little games with some other consenting adult in the privacy of one's own boudoir. I mean sadism in the psychopathological sense - truly enjoying causing and/or witnessing the suffering of others. And I am not implying by any means that *everyone* in the ruling cles is sadistic - there are clearly compionate people within those ranks. But there have been certain things going on for which the easiest explanation is the existence of what we might call a "sadistocracy"... After all, wouldn't a psychopathological sadist *try* to get as much power as possible, in order to inflict pain on the greatest number of people possible, even entire nations? I'm also not suggesting that there aren't other sadists operating under other guises in other cultures, there clearly are. But here, we might have unwittingly elected some of them to office...