January 24, 2017 • 45 mins
There are many types of dictators, from so called "benevolent" ones to the kind who rule with an iron fist. There are also many ways they can come into power, and they don't all include violence. Learn all about dictators past and present in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. Uh,
and it's two thousand seventeen. Jerry or Benevolent Dictator? Yeah
(00:24):
for real. She's got those epaulets that she wears all
the time and sunglasses. I was just commenting. I thought
this is a pretty good article here from how Stuff Works. Yeah,
I've heard that before. Who wrote this one? Do you
have that on there? I always have it on there.
You didn't have it today. It might be a Shane
(00:45):
of Freeman joint. I think it. Maybe that sounds familiar. Anyway,
it's a good one. Yeah, and here it is. That
was that was the word for word my intro that
you just stole. Well, my mind reading class has been
paying off, Chuck. Have you ever lived under a dictatorship? Uh?
(01:06):
Not exactly. No, No, I haven't either, And I think
we should kind of consider ourselves fairly lucky because it
turns out that not only were we born in a
country that most people would argue is not a dictatorship.
Although you can find plenty of websites to argue that
it is. It has been for the last several years,
(01:28):
possibly even for the most part, most people would say,
it's not a dictatorship. So we were lucky to be
born in a country that isn't a dictatorship. But not
only that, we're lucky to be born in a time
when dictatorships have become fairly um hard to find comparatively speaking,
because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled
(01:52):
for thousands of years up until very recent times, around
the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of individual
liberties and the protection of those individual liberties um became
kind of widespread. Yeah, and this article kind of starts off.
I thought it was um. I thought it was interesting
(02:13):
that you don't often Well, first of all, the word
dictator is just one like the one who dictates the thing.
It's kind of funny when you break down the actual definition,
you're like, oh, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Then it's the guy who paces back and forth in
front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying
take dictation. But they don't call themselves that very often,
(02:34):
although it has happened before. We get into the history. Um,
it's it's we should point out that like Castro and
Saddam Hussein, you never hear them say I'm dictator as
a bad rap. You know, I'm the dictator Fidel Castro. Yeah,
it's like how propaganda got turned into pr Yeah, that
(02:54):
will call themselves premier or president or chancellor or pure
boss of view. Uh. Kim Kim jong ill holds three titles.
I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth like
as we speak, Well, he's in the ground and his
son Oh wait, I got this too confused, right, Well
he held three titles, Yes he did. I imagine, Well,
(03:16):
his son probably holds four. Then he probably found that
fourth just made one up. Did you know that? There's
like I I you know that Kim jong un is
h the supreme leader of North Korea, but he actually
technically shares power with two other officials as well. They
have basically a triumvirt going there. It was news to me. Yeah,
those guys are called keep Quiet one and keep quiet too.
(03:40):
I was just looking up some of his greatest hits recently,
and um Kim Jong un alone has already started to
amass several but one was a North Korean leader, pretty
high ranking official was executed with an anti aircraft machine
gun for slouching or following asleep at a at a meeting.
(04:02):
Holy cow, right, but do you hear stuff like imagine
what that would do to a body? Yeah, oh my god,
But you should. You should take that kind of stuff
with a grain of salt, especially when it's coming out
of North Korea, because we have really virtually no idea
what's going on day to day over there, even big
events like that. Even if it is true that that
guy was executed with an anti aircraft gun, whether or
(04:23):
not it was for falling asleep during a meeting or
something like that, remains to be seen. Yeah, you're saying
to take any information with a grain of salt. Yes, yes,
it's good advice. Thanks. Uh. But um as Shana, I believe.
Shana points out that that dictators do have some things
in common, and one of the big ones is is
(04:44):
almost a hundred percent of the time a dictator doesn't
come to power through an election. They're usually not freely
elected to that position. No, but they have been. They
have been, yeah, pretty prominently like Hitler, Yeah, he was
an elector. That wouldn't he named ancelor. Yes, by the
elected president though, right, but he still wasn't elected. No,
(05:07):
I guess that's true. Okay, fine, well let's get into
history then. All right, so you say dictator's got a
bad it got it's gotten a bad rap over the years,
right as far as calling yourself that, I think so.
But it officially originally and I couldn't. I saw a
couple of references degrease. But it seems to be Rome,
classic rome Um, classic Rome. Yeah, it trips coming into
(05:33):
the party and everybody's like, that's classic Rome. He tried
to walk through that screen door wasn't open, So classical Rome.
How about that? It seems to be an invention of
classical Rome. Right. Um, there was a station called dictator.
There's an office basically, and in ancient rome Um the
(05:54):
leadership was held by two men called councils, and they
were equally powerful from what I understands, council console um.
And when something went down and stuff hit the fan,
the Romans tided tradition of appointing one of the council's
uh dictator, which is basically an emergency investment of unparalleled
(06:20):
power into this one person and the whole thinking behind
it was when you were faced with an emergency, When
the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody
who could basically get stuff done, like a single voice. Yeah,
I didn't have to go to the Senate to ask anything,
didn't have to go um worry about making the wrong move.
The dictator couldn't be held um criminally liable for their decisions,
(06:43):
didn't have to worry about not being invited to the
other console's Christmas party the next year. The other council
wanted to be invited to the dictator's Christmas party. That's right.
So there was an investment of these emergency powers in
this one person. And usually I saw one year. This
article says sasted for six months, and then the dictator
would be like, wow, that was a wild ride. I'm
(07:04):
going back to my normal life. The rebellion has been
quelled or the siege is over, something like that. Yeah.
And interestingly, there were a few rules. They couldn't be
held legally responsible for their actions. Big one. Uh, it
says couldn't be an office longer than six months. Although
I think is I think they were there to handle
the situation as kind of as long as that took
(07:26):
for the most part. But there were also guys who
are like, whoa, I like the feel of this. I'm
not giving this up. And they'll say, well you have to,
we say, and then they said, well I'm the dictator.
And they said, we hadn't thought this all the way through. Yeah,
that's true. They could change Roman law and the constitution.
They couldn't use public money, uh and less other than
(07:48):
what the Senate said you could use it for. So
they supposedly still and these are the official rules, you know,
as we see um coming up here. People bent these rules. Uh.
And they couldn't leave Italy was the last one. It's
just a good one. And they would have like Colombo
come in and deliver that last bit. We look, just
don't even in Italy for a while. Okay, that's your Colombo, impressman. Yeah,
(08:14):
he sounded just like Josh Clark thought it was spot on.
Uh So this kind of happened here and there until
about two o two b c um. And then about
a hundred years after that, a gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sula.
I love all these Roman dictators sound like either seventies
(08:35):
like Black Exploitation movie stars or Roman gladiators. Uh, so
he was appointed dictator without a term limit and didn't
have these restrictions, and so this sort of changed the
game from here on out. And he actually wanted Caesar dead.
So Caesar ran off and joined the army Julius Caesar,
I should say, um, and and just basically laid low
(08:58):
until Sela died. And then Caesar came back and he
was appointed counsel and then dictator himself. He succeeded Sola,
right and Caesar um is very well known to be
a dictator, but he actually if you look at the
stuff he did, he was a friend to the people.
He forgave debts among the pretty much among the middle
(09:22):
and lower classes. Um. He improved infrastructure he um. He
basically went to bat for the lower classes, which threatened
the elite because he made him immensely popular. Plus he
was a dictator, so he actually created it. He staged
a coup to become a dictator right to gain power,
(09:43):
which we'll talk about a little more. And then a
coup was plotted against him and he was assassinated by
the ruling elite of the Senate on my birthday. Yeah,
well a long time before my birthday. But you know
what I mean back in Uh, yeah, I mean we've
tossed out benevolent dictator a couple of times getting around.
(10:05):
But that's a real term, and that generally means a
dictator who for the most part isn't just in it
for themselves and they are trying to make things better
for the people. Right. But it depends on your perspective. Yeah, exactly. So,
like the ruling elite found him very threatening, they would
not have considered him benevolent at all. But like say,
the average plebeian would have been like, I love Caesar. Yeah,
(10:26):
give me some more of the coins with his face
on it. Yeah. I mean, followers of Castro still after
his death say he was a benevolent dictator, but people say, no,
it's perspective. It's a subjective term. Basically. Napoleon actually, um,
he came to power again like many dictators, in a
state of emergency, and he was actually a benevolent dictator
(10:50):
in a sense because he he did a lot of
great things for a while for the people. Right. He
was extremely popular. Yeah, he was undef he did at
the time that he rose to power. Um, he was
appointed counsel and then he said, you know what, let's
go a little further than that. I'm going to call
myself emperor. And they said, okay, Napoleon. What could possibly
(11:10):
go wrong with that? Yeah? Well, first he was named
counseled and he was like, I think council for life
has a better ring to it. And then that wasn't enough,
so he's like, let's just shorten that. Like you said, though,
he was super popular because he was he was undefeated
as a military leader. He balanced the budget, he reformed government,
He wrote the civil law, which a lot of is
(11:32):
still around the day in France. Yeah, civil law, right,
not too bad. He had a lasting impact, for sure,
he did. But again again to call him benevolent, if
you remember parliament who was thrown out of one of
the windows of Parliament when he took over, you probably
wouldn't be like, you're so benevolent, right. He also control
(11:52):
had an iron thumb on the press. Uh. He controlled um,
every facetive government. He had spies working for him. So
it's not like and he wasn't just you know, buzz
of the clown. No, both Buzz of the Clown was
super shady. No. If you put all that together, though, Chuck,
you get the impression of why historians considered Napoleon the
(12:16):
first modern dictator. He checked basically every box there was.
He had it figured out. He drew new boxes and
check those. He said, all dictators to follow. Here's your boxes.
I just looked down at your notes and I want
to show you something. I think we should take a break.
But before then, okay, Chuck, I think you should see this.
(12:38):
So in this article UM on dictators from how Stuff Works,
there's a a sidebar is what they're called, and web
print parlance just a little extra bit and the title
of the subbar is dark Dictator. That's all we need
to say. And it talks about Emperor Palpatine in his rise.
And Chuck had his xed out and I independently x
(13:01):
mine out as well. So we won't be talking about
that today everybody, now, but let's do take that break
and we'll discuss that in private so you don't get
to know about it, and we'll be right back. Sk alright,
(13:33):
So we're back. Um. We talked about one of the
things that dictators had in common, as they generally aren't
elected and it like a fair election. Um, they are
usually ruling autocracies. Um, A lot of times they have
what's called the totalitarian regime. Yeah, we should talk about that.
(13:54):
That's a big one. That means you like you were
in control of all the news and all the meat
that gets out about everything. Right, So there there's a
there's a lot of confusion over the difference between authoritarianism
and totalitarianism. Uh. And a totalitarian regime is authoritarian, but
(14:15):
not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian. An authoritarian regime is
where the government is headed by one single leader. Okay,
there's no parliament, there's no courts, there's no nothing that
that that leader doesn't either control or just doesn't exist
to counter that leader's decisions. A totalitarian regime is, like
you were saying, I think you're missing it. Either they could.
(14:37):
It's like deletrious. They control everything, not just the government.
They control the social aspects of life in that country.
They control the economy of that country, they control the media,
they control everything. It's totalitarian. Uh. Personal freedoms might be vanquished,
(14:57):
might be Um, there might be police, secret police, there
might be spies spying on citizens. Uh. It's not a
good way to live. No. And and also, um, you
will probably be encouraged at as a citizen to spy
on your fellow citizens, because authoritarian regimes quickly learn that
if you have a large population, it's kind of tough
(15:19):
and very expensive to keep tabs on everybody. So if
you have a secret police going around and people are
aware that there is a secret police, they're gonna behave
themselves more. And if you can get your citizens to
kind of keep an eye on one another, everybody's gonna
behave even further. That's a terrible way to live. Well,
and you know what, like it sounds like a totalitarian
ruler would be I bet there's a lot of paranoia
(15:42):
that goes along with that. Like when you're in that
kind of position. Oh, if you're the ruler, Yeah, it's
not just like rule everything. So it's all good. Like
at that point, you don't know who to trust you, right,
you're probably always looking over your shoulder, you know, it's
not like why why bother with all that? Right, Like
you know it's gonna end badly? Just kick back and
light adobie instead, Well, I bother with all that? Uh,
(16:07):
many times they're there, they foster what's known as a
cult of personality. And this is a big one. Um,
if you went into and saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or
you go to North Korea or in the times of
like Lenin and Stalin, you're gonna see a lot of
posters and statues of these leaders everywhere. Yeah, oh yeah,
(16:28):
like it's your ubiquitous you're taught that the um the
leader is basically the state. Who is this the leader? Right,
and the state is the most important thing. But the
state is personified by the leader. And sometimes they'll even
go so far as the state. By the way, the
leader is descended directly from God. So go make a
painting of a kid, right, and we're gonna put it
(16:51):
up in the town square. Who was the one who
had the statue rotated to face the sun. He was
the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name when he
took go over his His birth name was supper Murat Niyazov,
but he changed his name to Turkmenbashi, and then he
started naming everything in Turkmenistan Turkmenbashi, including the month of January.
(17:16):
But he created that statue. Yeah, and he had this
golden statue rotated to always face the sun. So yeah,
he was always facing the sun, and he said, read
that quote. Man, that quote is awesome. Oh right, uh,
he said, quote, I'm personally against seeing my pictures and
statues in the streets, but it's what the people want.
(17:36):
We got that, I think from an od list. Actually, yeah,
we'll probably pepper in more of those. Um. But I mean,
I hope this drives home the point that these um
totalitarian dictators they're narcissists there, uh, megalomaniacs. They are obviously
paranoid um otherwise they wouldn't need to rule with an
(17:57):
iron fist. And um yeah, it's just not it's not
a good way to run a country. Like I said,
it always ends badly, I guess, to get caught up
in the power and they don't see what history has
taught us time and time again. I I wish we
knew what it was, because you can look around, especially
in the world today, and see country after country after
(18:19):
country sliding down that rabbit holes. Mental disorder on their part,
I think. But it doesn't just have to be be there,
doesn't just have to be like a single leader, like
even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that that
whole where like they want all the information possible on everybody,
and it's ultimately to keep control, you know. But is
it based on fear or is it based on paranoia,
(18:40):
or is it based on that desire to hang on
to power or what which is brew of all those things?
Is it that creates that? Why do we keep doing
it over and over and over again because it always
is the it's the it's the death knell for a civilization.
When it's when the leadership starts doing that, it's unsustainable. Bowl. Yeah,
(19:01):
but and we'll talk a little bit about how they end,
but um, it always is badly. Like you see like
Saddam Hussein in power, like in these military uniforms, and
then you see this like sad old man pulled out
of a foxhole. Yeah, it looks like he washed up
on Gilligan's Island or something like. Or Noriega like wasting
away in prison, like begging to get out in a wheelchair.
(19:22):
And I would like to know the story behind that,
because yeah, Panama in the US were pretty good friends.
Then all of a sudden, the US invades and now
Manuel Noriega is in prison in Miami and has been
for thirty years. Like sometimes went down that prison is he, oh,
that's right, and then they transferred him to uh well,
outside the Panama Canal ironically. Oh yeah, he's in some
(19:44):
prison there. He's like in a wheelchair and in his
early eighties and just yeah, not doing so hot. But
he served his whole sentence I think in Miami, and
then they transferred him to Panama to phil to to
carry out another sentence down there. Yeah. Yeah, but m
went down that I don't know about. I'm intensely curious
to know. If anybody knows out there, tell me. I'm
(20:06):
sure you can find that out pretty easy, right apparently not.
I was just kidding. I bet it's highly guarded secret.
Do you think even after all these years, I don't know,
Noriega had motor He was a motor mouth. I'm sure
he told everybody who would listen. Uh well, we mentioned
Hitler earlier. Um he like he said, although not elected,
(20:29):
was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor by President Paul
van Hendenburg. And then once Hendenberg died, Hitler said, you
know what, there's this German word, uh feer, It means leader,
and he why don't we just make that my new title?
Which is because we don't really need a president and
a chancellor. I can be both dudes, and then eventually
(20:51):
I'll just kill myself and a bunker another let's say
sad end, but just pitiful end. You know. The great
word for sad indicates that, you know what I mean,
I don't have to over explain that doing so. But
Hitler he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein.
(21:11):
Actually he was the general of the Iraqi Army and
vice president and then as the president came, but I
think he fell ill um. Saddam Hussein started to take
on more and more power and finally was just like
I'm president forever now, okay. And I think that's the case. Like,
the point that this article is making is that there's
a number of different ways a dictator can come to power.
(21:34):
They can come to power and a power vacuum. They
can come to power in a coup, which we'll talk about.
They can come to power democratically. But if it's the
kind of person who wants to rule unfettered and they
come they know how to basically work the populace and
(21:55):
the circumstances are right, you know, like maybe there's fear
of of outsiders coming your way, or the economy is
bad or something like that, then you can conceivably consolidate
your power in turn whatever situation into a dictatorship. Yeah.
I think it's more it's based on the person and
the circumstances that the nation is in when that person
(22:18):
grabs power than it is on how they actually get
into power. Yeah, and whether or not the current leader
just happens like the out of town or something. Yeah,
that's another big one too. Sometimes. Yeah, that's just well,
let's go ahead and talk about coup, should we, Okay, sure,
So a coup is um. There are different kinds of
coup or coup deta, but um, a coup is different
(22:39):
than a revolution in that there is it's generally a
smaller affair. It's not some big mass uprising of people.
It's a dude gets a smallish band of his military
cohorts together and, like we were talking about, either someone
is sick or they're dying, or they're just out of
the country on business and they come back and they're like,
(23:00):
you're not in charge anymore. Yeah, sorry to tell you,
And they're like, man, the discount of this dishwasher was
not worth leaving the country for over this Uh, it
can be cous can be very bloody and violent, but
they don't have to be um. In fact, I think
a lot of times they're not violent. No, there's a
term a bloodless coup, and it's basically, uh, like a
(23:23):
couple of the things that make coups uh or is
it just coup Like you're saying, there's no s No,
there's an s. Is it silent? I don't know that,
So we're gonna go with coups. Okay, A couple of
hallmarks of coups that you were saying, like they're they're
not popular uprisings. It's a small elite group that decided
to do it, usually the higher ups in the military,
(23:44):
and h they can be blood That's where it can
just be like you're not in charge any longer you're
out of the country. Stay out of the country. We're
putting you in exile. They can be bloody, especially if
the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty
in the military as well. Then it can turn pretty
pretty bad. Yeah, But I get the feeling that a
(24:05):
lot of times the coup isn't attempted unless they feel
like they have the support to pull it. Off. Well,
I mean, look at Turkey. They the people who tried
that coup, like it's a few months, but um, I
don't know what happened to them. I think air Tuan
said like the people were going to be punished but
not necessarily executed, But I don't know if that's true
(24:25):
or not. And that's another thing that can make a
coup bloody is that it can fail and then the
people who are carrying out the coup get executed, or
it can succeed, and sometimes, just for good measure, the
people carrying out the coup execute the former president, which
was the case in Peru with Pinochet. I'm sorry Chili
(24:48):
where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the
military to get rid of the old guy SALVADORI and
A and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it,
and then they executed A and A. Yeah, and aku
doesn't always mean a dictator comes right in either. Sometimes
a ku can just be temporary until they can elect
a new national leader. But it's just basically, uh, just
(25:11):
a very small overthrowing of the current government. That's all.
Do you want to take another break, Yeah, let's do it, okay.
Sk alright, we're back. What's agenda? Oh, it's related to
(25:46):
the Jacama um route Hima. No, that's not true at all.
Uh And I didn't really know this, but I've heard
a military junta. Wait, you know it's junta? Is it really? Yeah,
that's how I was making that joke. Okay, I wasn't
sure because I I called Hikama Jacamaya. Are you sure
(26:08):
it's not Jakoma? You sure it's not Jenta, Yes, it is.
It's a military junta. So the junta is a is
almost like a dictatorship by committee. And you find these
lat in Latin America, and it's a committee of military
leaders who essentially act like a dictator right there. It's
instead of one leader, maybe three four top ranking military usually.
(26:32):
Um there's a If you like Fiji brand water, you're
supporting a military junta when you buy that. As of
two thousand and six, the military rose up in Fiji
and overthrew the government and now military hunta runs the
show there. Yeah, that's a bad scene over there. Yeah.
Thailand apparently had a um A coup that same year.
(26:53):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, they there. They followed the
typical coup where the president left the country. If I
were a president and I run shaky ground anywhere, I'd
be like, I'm sitting right here, you're not scarface. You
would just be like in your office with submachine guns right. Well,
probably not the Mountain of Cocaine, although I could, because
I'd be a dictator. No one could say anything. Um.
(27:16):
But there's one other thing that's really important too. Not
only would I not leave the country, I wouldn't even
leave the presidential palace because that's like one of the
number one things you do in a coup is you
secure the presidential palace, secure the prisons, secure the infrastructure,
secure like the local media, and um, as long as
the president's there. For some reason, physically it makes it
(27:39):
exponentially harder. I don't know why. But couldn't if you
were the military. Couldn't you just go up to the
president and be like, you're not president anymore? And they
could say, yes I am. You say no, you're not.
We have the guns. Get out of the military the
presidential palace. Yeah, it's very passive aggressive to just like
change change the dead volts is it really is? Say sorry,
(28:01):
I can't get to your bedroom anymore. But Thailand had
the same thing, but but there junta was the the
coup carried out by the junta was um apparently popularly supported. Yeah,
it was the president who's like, I vote in ay,
everybody else said yea. So sometimes when there's a dictatorship,
(28:22):
they actually give the appearance that they might hold elections
oh yeah, um, when in fact it's just sort of
a farce. That's a big deal though, actually, because I
mean democracy or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate
that dictators will hold like like farcical elections pageantry basically
(28:43):
to make it seem like the the populace is all forum,
but the the elections will be like do you want
to keep the leader? No, one's running against the leader.
But do you want to keep the leader? Yes? No,
Please write your address down and include a picture of
your most beloved person or in the case of Saudi
Arabia King Abdullah bin abdul Aziz al Sad. That's a mouthful. Uh.
(29:10):
He said. You know what, We're gonna have elections for
the first time since the sixties here in two thousand five. Uh.
And you can choose your local civic leaders and your
local councils. Um but women can't vote, Like technically they can,
but you don't have the idea to vote because you're
a woman, so you can't vote. And a man can't
(29:31):
register your register you to vote because you're a woman,
and there just aren't enough women poll workers to register you,
so you also can't vote. So it's classic voter disenfranchisement
saying you don't have I D, so you can't vote,
so you might as well not be allowed to vote.
So since there's a whole an entire gender that's excluded
from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a
(29:52):
little less farcical than say, you know one where it's
like where you have no opposition. Yeah. Yeah, And I
found this article. It's hilarious. It's called um Dictatorships. It
was on like kids net in Australia, an Australian website,
and like at the top there's like Teddy Bears and
a son and rainbow and blue skies and then in
(30:15):
the text that says dictator and it's all about dictators
It's just kind of a weird juxtaposition. They had misspellings
in it too, which is weird. Yeah, but it made
some pretty good points. If I were a kid. If
I had kids, I would be like, you read this website.
They know what they're talking about. Read it every day,
every day. Just read the dictator entry. That's it. But
(30:36):
they mentioned although, yeah, they got something horribly wrong. They
mentioned Dictator Charles King of Liberia. I think they mean
Charles Taylor. Oh yeah, uh who um claimed to have
won by such a landslide that apparently it was like
fift larger than the actual total electorate of his entire country. Mhm.
(31:00):
But then I've also seen that he's done um elections
that were watched by outside pole watchers, and um that
they just they said that, no, this is a legitimate election. Interesting. Well,
we talked a little bit about them the dictatorship ending
badly or sadly. UM. A lot of times it is
(31:23):
just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody,
um and they get sick and die. Lennon suffered strokes,
Stalin suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. Uh. You know,
all the power and money and influence in the world
is not going to save you in the end, my friend,
(31:44):
Mr dictatory paranoia will save you and keep you alive.
It's always just kind of pitiful though, I don't know.
I disagree. Oh really, yeah, I think it's worth dancing
on their graves over Oh no, no, no, I don't
mean I mean pitiful for them. It's just they never
it seems like they always go out with a whimper. Yeah,
some go out with machine gun fire though. Yeah. It
(32:09):
just it doesn't say the salad days forever. No, it's true.
I think the messages that's no way to rule the people.
I hope we've gotten that across. You know, I don't
know how many dictators listened to our podcast, but I
hope that, if any do, we've really given them some
some pause to think about what they're doing with their lives.
Should we read a few of these uh weird things
(32:30):
done by dictators and we should say it's widely believed
that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide, where they're like
seventy of them now, the most I saw was twenty four, right, yeah. Uh.
And the reason why it again, they think liberal democracy
is like basically changing the game. But there was a
big influx after the the Cold War ended, where um,
(32:57):
the a lot of no, I'm sorry, the Cold War began.
There was a big influx because a lot of the
old colonial powers that had colonies and say, like Africa
and Asia suddenly said World War two is over, We're
getting out of the imperialism game. Good luck. And that
those power vacuums allowed a lot of dictatorships to to
(33:17):
um grow, and then the the polarization of the Cold
War allowed them to thrive because a dictator could say, hey,
I'm strategically necessary United States. Don't you like me? Don't
you want to look the other way on all of
my human rights atrocities? And then someone else would say
the same thing. That the USSR and the superpowers would
(33:37):
prop up these dictators throughout the world. When the Cold
War ended, that actually led to a huge and almost
immediate decline in dictatorships around the world. Yeah, so they're
they're hopefully going the way of the dinosaur. But we'll see.
What was that last article you sent, the one it
made a really good point about the United States could
(33:58):
learn a little bit about these dictatorships and how they work.
Not to be like that, but to learn that you
can't not for pointers and not for pointers, but for
pointers and maybe not necessarily saying hey, we can just
go into a country that's been run a certain way
for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and just say
(34:19):
do it all different now. Yeah, here, here's here's a
book on liberal democracies, Read it and do it. Yeah,
And that we might have a more successful approach to
foreign policy if there was a little bit more understanding
on how these systems worked. Yeah, And that a lot
of these, uh, these dictatorships are not totalitarian but autocratic,
(34:42):
which makes them inherently weaker. But if we threaten them,
if we're belligerent to them, we give those people a
reason to be afraid and to line up behind their leader.
So when we actually threaten other countries that are that
are autocratic, we we're all we're due ing is making
the leader more powerful, right, Whereas if we treat him
(35:03):
like as kind of a a week a week leader
of a weak state that that is run in a
way that suggests that the people aren't really behind it,
but they have to be run with an iron fist,
then that that person is probably gonna eventually get deposed.
It's pretty interesting. It was an interesting article. It was
in Reason magazine, I think um it was written by
(35:25):
John Basil utly, and if that guy is not British
no idea. Who is alright, So we promised a few
weird things. Um, where did you find this one? Odie?
Strange things done by evil dictators Kim Jong Ill those
dude in South Korea named Shin sang Uh and he
(35:47):
was known as the orson Wells of South Korea and
he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically, Uh,
Kim Jong Ill was like, you know, we show the
world that we are creative artists, like start making movies, right,
we've kidnapped you and brought you here. Make good movies.
In fact, remake Godzilla because we just need our own Godzilla.
(36:07):
It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollock in
the early fifties. But Jackson Pollock wasn't aware that he
was being propped up because he was drunk. Yeah, so
they did remake Godzilla a sort of in a movie
called poul Gas Sorry, and um, I looked it up
and he basically looks like Godzilla with like minotaur horns
(36:28):
right coming out in the side. Not the best. What
else This Beatles story was kind of nuts. Yeah, the
marcos Is, remember Amelda Marcos and Oliver Shoes. Yeah, who
can forget Ferdinand and Emelda Marcos. They ruled the Philippines
for a while and apparently they loved the Beatles back
in the sixties, and so they invited the Beatles to
the Philippines to play a couple of shows on their
(36:49):
world tour. And when the Beatles got there, the military
met them at the airport and said, hey, before you
go to your hotel, you're scheduled for a lunch, private
lunch with the president it and the first Lady. And
the Beatles were like, look mate, we're really tired. We're
gonna just go to the hotel and crash because we've
got two shows tonight. And uh they did not go
(37:11):
over very well. Yeah, they were acting through their manager
of course, Brian Epstein, and supposedly the story isn't so
much that, but he said that they don't they don't
accept these formal like state invitations really as a rule.
Either way, they didn't go and uh mL Demarcos got
on TV and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried
(37:32):
to apologize on TV and they blacked him out and
people got really upset. The police, basically their private police
escort was removed and the Beatles were on their own,
which was in the nineties or four. When you're the Beatles,
isn't not a good place, especially in the Philippines to
find yourself. Yeah, they basically had to escape to the
(37:52):
airport and just run out to the plane and head off. Yeah,
and one of their dudes was like beaten really badly
and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane
and had to like basically shaken down to pay them
back money from the concert to get on the plane.
And then later on Mr Mr Lennon give piece a chance,
(38:13):
John Lynn and said, yeah, if we go back to
the Philippines, it's gonna be with an H bomb. Did
he really say that? Yeah, he said he won't even
fly over it. So they did not have a good
experience here. Who's next? I think that e D I
mean one was kind of interesting. That sounds so eaty,
(38:34):
I mean he uh. He declared himself President for Life
p f L and he um. He said, you know what,
I'm gonna do this in high style. I'm gonna get
four white men to carry me around in a chair
to celebrate being President for life. And he called it
the white Man's Burden, And everybody loved it he was
(38:56):
an odd duck. Yeah, if you if you look up
white Man's and I mean and google images, there's a
couple of really great pictures of these kind of blonde
white men in suits carrying around this giant you ugandan
man and chair. Have you ever read the Bukowski book
that was the it was the basis for Barfly. Yeah,
(39:20):
which one was at Hollywood? I think it's what it
was called. I read Hollywood? Was that the one? Yeah?
He talks about watching a documentary about e. D I
mean and how he um I mean, didn't have uh
the money for an air force, but he had pilots
that really wanted to fly. So like in the documentary,
they're showing these pilots running down a runway and then
jumping and then going back to the to the end
(39:42):
of the line and and just doing this over and
over again to practice flying even though they didn't have planes.
That movie was good. The Forest Whitaker movie, Yeah, The
Last King of Scotland. Yeah, great movie where James mckel boy.
You know, you can stay in Charles Bokowski's house that
he grew up in an airbnb now been remodeled. No,
(40:04):
he wouldn't like that, but no, he would hate the
whole thing. Sure, how about Kadafi will end with him? So, momar,
Kadafi loved women apparently, did you know that about him?
He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female
bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and
(40:26):
high heels while they were protecting him and the In
the West, these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This
is just off the rails at this point. Uh and
this no, k the whole Amazonian Guard, the whole thing.
So um. The Kadafi actually had some sort of legitimate
(40:49):
thinking behind it. He thought that an assassin would have
trouble shooting a woman, so he surrounded himself with female
bodyguards who were also trained to kill. But they weren't
like the four but more makeup and lipstick. Yeah. Oh, actually,
can we mention the hitler thing because is this true?
I don't know, I walked past it. Sounds like urban legend,
(41:12):
but supposedly hitler Um came up with a synthetic blow
up doll to um comfort soldiers, and it was referred
to as a synthetic comforter Yep. Blonde hair, blue eyes,
could fit in a backpack and they only made about
fifty of them because the soldiers were like, I'm not
carrying that thing around. What are you crazy? And he went,
(41:35):
in fact, I am. You'll see waka waka uh. If
you want to know more about dictators, you can type
that word into uh the search bar how stuff works
dot com since they said search parts. Time for listener.
Now a quick correction beforehand, because this has to do
(41:55):
with bottle feeding kittens. But in our feeding baby these episodes,
which by the way, thanks for all the support on those,
which really made us feel good to know we did
a pretty good job there. But I erroneously many times
said pump and dump as like, you know, pump breast
milk and dump it in the bottle to use. Oh yeah,
(42:16):
pump pup on it. Well, I just I think I've
kind of threw that term around as just the general
term for breast pumping. But dumping is dumping it down
the drain for one reason another like you maybe have
had some alcohol or dumping it straight to hell. Yeah,
So yeah, pump and dump. It sort of just kind
of went wild there. That's okay, Chuck. I did notice
(42:38):
a couple of people saying that, but I didn't get
what they were saying. I was wrong. Huh, all right,
so it feels weird. I promised the story about bottle
feeding kittens. Which have you ever done that? A little
baby animal that you gotta care for at that young age,
Pretty darn cute, very powerful feeling. It's very stressful. It
is stressful. Hey, guys. When I was a kid, you're like,
(43:05):
you want this bottle or not? Breakfast? When I was
a kid, my older sister had a habit of rescuing
animals that became family pets. Um She rescued a pair
of ferrets from drug abuse quote quote drug abuse quote
when the ferrets were being abused with drugs or themselves
active users. I still don't know. That's a weird thing
(43:25):
to say. Yeah, this is a weird email. The family
ended up stuck with those smelly little weasels for years.
What really I wanted to talk about? That was much
more mundane. One day we rescued a random straight kitten
from our gutter. It's beautiful little thing, fluffy and snowy, white,
practically newborn, too young to lap milk. She became a
family project of sorts. Throughout the day, almost all the
(43:46):
family members would take turns cradling the little kitten. Feeding
her with a dropper was pretty special. It was maybe
nine at the time, but gladly took time away from
playing Zelda to feed the kitten playing Zelda. I forget it.
Here's the kicker. Though. As much as pure love uh
that we pumped into that little kitten, that cat ended
(44:06):
up being one of the most purely mean and different
cats we ever had. Sounds about right. She grew up
to be beyond ungrateful. She came and when as she pleased,
and was prone to swipe at you if it's if
you tried to bet her. She hung around for the food,
but after a few years she just disappeared entirely. It
sounds like the cat was on drug abuse too. Most
of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the point
(44:27):
is there just some bad seats out there. That is
from chrisps. The ferrets ended up living for years and years.
That was a mysterious email. In a lot of ways,
It's like a it's like a David Lynch email. Huh
uh thanks a lot, Chris, with a K I imagine no, okay, uh,
thanks a lot, Chris. We appreciate that and uh If
(44:49):
you out there want to get in touch with us,
like Chris did, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff Podcast. How stuff Works dot
Com has always joined us. Start a home on the
web Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on
(45:10):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com m
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. Uh,
and it's two thousand seventeen. Jerry or Benevolent Dictator? Yeah
(00:24):
for real. She's got those epaulets that she wears all
the time and sunglasses. I was just commenting. I thought
this is a pretty good article here from how Stuff Works. Yeah,
I've heard that before. Who wrote this one? Do you
have that on there? I always have it on there.
You didn't have it today. It might be a Shane
(00:45):
of Freeman joint. I think it. Maybe that sounds familiar. Anyway,
it's a good one. Yeah, and here it is. That
was that was the word for word my intro that
you just stole. Well, my mind reading class has been
paying off, Chuck. Have you ever lived under a dictatorship? Uh?
(01:06):
Not exactly. No, No, I haven't either, And I think
we should kind of consider ourselves fairly lucky because it
turns out that not only were we born in a
country that most people would argue is not a dictatorship.
Although you can find plenty of websites to argue that
it is. It has been for the last several years,
(01:28):
possibly even for the most part, most people would say,
it's not a dictatorship. So we were lucky to be
born in a country that isn't a dictatorship. But not
only that, we're lucky to be born in a time
when dictatorships have become fairly um hard to find comparatively speaking,
because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled
(01:52):
for thousands of years up until very recent times, around
the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of individual
liberties and the protection of those individual liberties um became
kind of widespread. Yeah, and this article kind of starts off.
I thought it was um. I thought it was interesting
(02:13):
that you don't often Well, first of all, the word
dictator is just one like the one who dictates the thing.
It's kind of funny when you break down the actual definition,
you're like, oh, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Then it's the guy who paces back and forth in
front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying
take dictation. But they don't call themselves that very often,
(02:34):
although it has happened before. We get into the history. Um,
it's it's we should point out that like Castro and
Saddam Hussein, you never hear them say I'm dictator as
a bad rap. You know, I'm the dictator Fidel Castro. Yeah,
it's like how propaganda got turned into pr Yeah, that
(02:54):
will call themselves premier or president or chancellor or pure
boss of view. Uh. Kim Kim jong ill holds three titles.
I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth like
as we speak, Well, he's in the ground and his
son Oh wait, I got this too confused, right, Well
he held three titles, Yes he did. I imagine, Well,
(03:16):
his son probably holds four. Then he probably found that
fourth just made one up. Did you know that? There's
like I I you know that Kim jong un is
h the supreme leader of North Korea, but he actually
technically shares power with two other officials as well. They
have basically a triumvirt going there. It was news to me. Yeah,
those guys are called keep Quiet one and keep quiet too.
(03:40):
I was just looking up some of his greatest hits recently,
and um Kim Jong un alone has already started to
amass several but one was a North Korean leader, pretty
high ranking official was executed with an anti aircraft machine
gun for slouching or following asleep at a at a meeting.
(04:02):
Holy cow, right, but do you hear stuff like imagine
what that would do to a body? Yeah, oh my god,
But you should. You should take that kind of stuff
with a grain of salt, especially when it's coming out
of North Korea, because we have really virtually no idea
what's going on day to day over there, even big
events like that. Even if it is true that that
guy was executed with an anti aircraft gun, whether or
(04:23):
not it was for falling asleep during a meeting or
something like that, remains to be seen. Yeah, you're saying
to take any information with a grain of salt. Yes, yes,
it's good advice. Thanks. Uh. But um as Shana, I believe.
Shana points out that that dictators do have some things
in common, and one of the big ones is is
(04:44):
almost a hundred percent of the time a dictator doesn't
come to power through an election. They're usually not freely
elected to that position. No, but they have been. They
have been, yeah, pretty prominently like Hitler, Yeah, he was
an elector. That wouldn't he named ancelor. Yes, by the
elected president though, right, but he still wasn't elected. No,
(05:07):
I guess that's true. Okay, fine, well let's get into
history then. All right, so you say dictator's got a
bad it got it's gotten a bad rap over the years,
right as far as calling yourself that, I think so.
But it officially originally and I couldn't. I saw a
couple of references degrease. But it seems to be Rome,
classic rome Um, classic Rome. Yeah, it trips coming into
(05:33):
the party and everybody's like, that's classic Rome. He tried
to walk through that screen door wasn't open, So classical Rome.
How about that? It seems to be an invention of
classical Rome. Right. Um, there was a station called dictator.
There's an office basically, and in ancient rome Um the
(05:54):
leadership was held by two men called councils, and they
were equally powerful from what I understands, council console um.
And when something went down and stuff hit the fan,
the Romans tided tradition of appointing one of the council's
uh dictator, which is basically an emergency investment of unparalleled
(06:20):
power into this one person and the whole thinking behind
it was when you were faced with an emergency, When
the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody
who could basically get stuff done, like a single voice. Yeah,
I didn't have to go to the Senate to ask anything,
didn't have to go um worry about making the wrong move.
The dictator couldn't be held um criminally liable for their decisions,
(06:43):
didn't have to worry about not being invited to the
other console's Christmas party the next year. The other council
wanted to be invited to the dictator's Christmas party. That's right.
So there was an investment of these emergency powers in
this one person. And usually I saw one year. This
article says sasted for six months, and then the dictator
would be like, wow, that was a wild ride. I'm
(07:04):
going back to my normal life. The rebellion has been
quelled or the siege is over, something like that. Yeah.
And interestingly, there were a few rules. They couldn't be
held legally responsible for their actions. Big one. Uh, it
says couldn't be an office longer than six months. Although
I think is I think they were there to handle
the situation as kind of as long as that took
(07:26):
for the most part. But there were also guys who
are like, whoa, I like the feel of this. I'm
not giving this up. And they'll say, well you have to,
we say, and then they said, well I'm the dictator.
And they said, we hadn't thought this all the way through. Yeah,
that's true. They could change Roman law and the constitution.
They couldn't use public money, uh and less other than
(07:48):
what the Senate said you could use it for. So
they supposedly still and these are the official rules, you know,
as we see um coming up here. People bent these rules. Uh.
And they couldn't leave Italy was the last one. It's
just a good one. And they would have like Colombo
come in and deliver that last bit. We look, just
don't even in Italy for a while. Okay, that's your Colombo, impressman. Yeah,
(08:14):
he sounded just like Josh Clark thought it was spot on.
Uh So this kind of happened here and there until
about two o two b c um. And then about
a hundred years after that, a gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sula.
I love all these Roman dictators sound like either seventies
(08:35):
like Black Exploitation movie stars or Roman gladiators. Uh, so
he was appointed dictator without a term limit and didn't
have these restrictions, and so this sort of changed the
game from here on out. And he actually wanted Caesar dead.
So Caesar ran off and joined the army Julius Caesar,
I should say, um, and and just basically laid low
(08:58):
until Sela died. And then Caesar came back and he
was appointed counsel and then dictator himself. He succeeded Sola,
right and Caesar um is very well known to be
a dictator, but he actually if you look at the
stuff he did, he was a friend to the people.
He forgave debts among the pretty much among the middle
(09:22):
and lower classes. Um. He improved infrastructure he um. He
basically went to bat for the lower classes, which threatened
the elite because he made him immensely popular. Plus he
was a dictator, so he actually created it. He staged
a coup to become a dictator right to gain power,
(09:43):
which we'll talk about a little more. And then a
coup was plotted against him and he was assassinated by
the ruling elite of the Senate on my birthday. Yeah,
well a long time before my birthday. But you know
what I mean back in Uh, yeah, I mean we've
tossed out benevolent dictator a couple of times getting around.
(10:05):
But that's a real term, and that generally means a
dictator who for the most part isn't just in it
for themselves and they are trying to make things better
for the people. Right. But it depends on your perspective. Yeah, exactly. So,
like the ruling elite found him very threatening, they would
not have considered him benevolent at all. But like say,
the average plebeian would have been like, I love Caesar. Yeah,
(10:26):
give me some more of the coins with his face
on it. Yeah. I mean, followers of Castro still after
his death say he was a benevolent dictator, but people say, no,
it's perspective. It's a subjective term. Basically. Napoleon actually, um,
he came to power again like many dictators, in a
state of emergency, and he was actually a benevolent dictator
(10:50):
in a sense because he he did a lot of
great things for a while for the people. Right. He
was extremely popular. Yeah, he was undef he did at
the time that he rose to power. Um, he was
appointed counsel and then he said, you know what, let's
go a little further than that. I'm going to call
myself emperor. And they said, okay, Napoleon. What could possibly
(11:10):
go wrong with that? Yeah? Well, first he was named
counseled and he was like, I think council for life
has a better ring to it. And then that wasn't enough,
so he's like, let's just shorten that. Like you said, though,
he was super popular because he was he was undefeated
as a military leader. He balanced the budget, he reformed government,
He wrote the civil law, which a lot of is
(11:32):
still around the day in France. Yeah, civil law, right,
not too bad. He had a lasting impact, for sure,
he did. But again again to call him benevolent, if
you remember parliament who was thrown out of one of
the windows of Parliament when he took over, you probably
wouldn't be like, you're so benevolent, right. He also control
(11:52):
had an iron thumb on the press. Uh. He controlled um,
every facetive government. He had spies working for him. So
it's not like and he wasn't just you know, buzz
of the clown. No, both Buzz of the Clown was
super shady. No. If you put all that together, though, Chuck,
you get the impression of why historians considered Napoleon the
(12:16):
first modern dictator. He checked basically every box there was.
He had it figured out. He drew new boxes and
check those. He said, all dictators to follow. Here's your boxes.
I just looked down at your notes and I want
to show you something. I think we should take a break.
But before then, okay, Chuck, I think you should see this.
(12:38):
So in this article UM on dictators from how Stuff Works,
there's a a sidebar is what they're called, and web
print parlance just a little extra bit and the title
of the subbar is dark Dictator. That's all we need
to say. And it talks about Emperor Palpatine in his rise.
And Chuck had his xed out and I independently x
(13:01):
mine out as well. So we won't be talking about
that today everybody, now, but let's do take that break
and we'll discuss that in private so you don't get
to know about it, and we'll be right back. Sk alright,
(13:33):
So we're back. Um. We talked about one of the
things that dictators had in common, as they generally aren't
elected and it like a fair election. Um, they are
usually ruling autocracies. Um, A lot of times they have
what's called the totalitarian regime. Yeah, we should talk about that.
(13:54):
That's a big one. That means you like you were
in control of all the news and all the meat
that gets out about everything. Right, So there there's a
there's a lot of confusion over the difference between authoritarianism
and totalitarianism. Uh. And a totalitarian regime is authoritarian, but
(14:15):
not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian. An authoritarian regime is
where the government is headed by one single leader. Okay,
there's no parliament, there's no courts, there's no nothing that
that that leader doesn't either control or just doesn't exist
to counter that leader's decisions. A totalitarian regime is, like
you were saying, I think you're missing it. Either they could.
(14:37):
It's like deletrious. They control everything, not just the government.
They control the social aspects of life in that country.
They control the economy of that country, they control the media,
they control everything. It's totalitarian. Uh. Personal freedoms might be vanquished,
(14:57):
might be Um, there might be police, secret police, there
might be spies spying on citizens. Uh. It's not a
good way to live. No. And and also, um, you
will probably be encouraged at as a citizen to spy
on your fellow citizens, because authoritarian regimes quickly learn that
if you have a large population, it's kind of tough
(15:19):
and very expensive to keep tabs on everybody. So if
you have a secret police going around and people are
aware that there is a secret police, they're gonna behave
themselves more. And if you can get your citizens to
kind of keep an eye on one another, everybody's gonna
behave even further. That's a terrible way to live. Well,
and you know what, like it sounds like a totalitarian
ruler would be I bet there's a lot of paranoia
(15:42):
that goes along with that. Like when you're in that
kind of position. Oh, if you're the ruler, Yeah, it's
not just like rule everything. So it's all good. Like
at that point, you don't know who to trust you, right,
you're probably always looking over your shoulder, you know, it's
not like why why bother with all that? Right, Like
you know it's gonna end badly? Just kick back and
light adobie instead, Well, I bother with all that? Uh,
(16:07):
many times they're there, they foster what's known as a
cult of personality. And this is a big one. Um,
if you went into and saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or
you go to North Korea or in the times of
like Lenin and Stalin, you're gonna see a lot of
posters and statues of these leaders everywhere. Yeah, oh yeah,
(16:28):
like it's your ubiquitous you're taught that the um the
leader is basically the state. Who is this the leader? Right,
and the state is the most important thing. But the
state is personified by the leader. And sometimes they'll even
go so far as the state. By the way, the
leader is descended directly from God. So go make a
painting of a kid, right, and we're gonna put it
(16:51):
up in the town square. Who was the one who
had the statue rotated to face the sun. He was
the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name when he
took go over his His birth name was supper Murat Niyazov,
but he changed his name to Turkmenbashi, and then he
started naming everything in Turkmenistan Turkmenbashi, including the month of January.
(17:16):
But he created that statue. Yeah, and he had this
golden statue rotated to always face the sun. So yeah,
he was always facing the sun, and he said, read
that quote. Man, that quote is awesome. Oh right, uh,
he said, quote, I'm personally against seeing my pictures and
statues in the streets, but it's what the people want.
(17:36):
We got that, I think from an od list. Actually, yeah,
we'll probably pepper in more of those. Um. But I mean,
I hope this drives home the point that these um
totalitarian dictators they're narcissists there, uh, megalomaniacs. They are obviously
paranoid um otherwise they wouldn't need to rule with an
(17:57):
iron fist. And um yeah, it's just not it's not
a good way to run a country. Like I said,
it always ends badly, I guess, to get caught up
in the power and they don't see what history has
taught us time and time again. I I wish we
knew what it was, because you can look around, especially
in the world today, and see country after country after
(18:19):
country sliding down that rabbit holes. Mental disorder on their part,
I think. But it doesn't just have to be be there,
doesn't just have to be like a single leader, like
even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that that
whole where like they want all the information possible on everybody,
and it's ultimately to keep control, you know. But is
it based on fear or is it based on paranoia,
(18:40):
or is it based on that desire to hang on
to power or what which is brew of all those things?
Is it that creates that? Why do we keep doing
it over and over and over again because it always
is the it's the it's the death knell for a civilization.
When it's when the leadership starts doing that, it's unsustainable. Bowl. Yeah,
(19:01):
but and we'll talk a little bit about how they end,
but um, it always is badly. Like you see like
Saddam Hussein in power, like in these military uniforms, and
then you see this like sad old man pulled out
of a foxhole. Yeah, it looks like he washed up
on Gilligan's Island or something like. Or Noriega like wasting
away in prison, like begging to get out in a wheelchair.
(19:22):
And I would like to know the story behind that,
because yeah, Panama in the US were pretty good friends.
Then all of a sudden, the US invades and now
Manuel Noriega is in prison in Miami and has been
for thirty years. Like sometimes went down that prison is he, oh,
that's right, and then they transferred him to uh well,
outside the Panama Canal ironically. Oh yeah, he's in some
(19:44):
prison there. He's like in a wheelchair and in his
early eighties and just yeah, not doing so hot. But
he served his whole sentence I think in Miami, and
then they transferred him to Panama to phil to to
carry out another sentence down there. Yeah. Yeah, but m
went down that I don't know about. I'm intensely curious
to know. If anybody knows out there, tell me. I'm
(20:06):
sure you can find that out pretty easy, right apparently not.
I was just kidding. I bet it's highly guarded secret.
Do you think even after all these years, I don't know,
Noriega had motor He was a motor mouth. I'm sure
he told everybody who would listen. Uh well, we mentioned
Hitler earlier. Um he like he said, although not elected,
(20:29):
was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor by President Paul
van Hendenburg. And then once Hendenberg died, Hitler said, you
know what, there's this German word, uh feer, It means leader,
and he why don't we just make that my new title?
Which is because we don't really need a president and
a chancellor. I can be both dudes, and then eventually
(20:51):
I'll just kill myself and a bunker another let's say
sad end, but just pitiful end. You know. The great
word for sad indicates that, you know what I mean,
I don't have to over explain that doing so. But
Hitler he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein.
(21:11):
Actually he was the general of the Iraqi Army and
vice president and then as the president came, but I
think he fell ill um. Saddam Hussein started to take
on more and more power and finally was just like
I'm president forever now, okay. And I think that's the case. Like,
the point that this article is making is that there's
a number of different ways a dictator can come to power.
(21:34):
They can come to power and a power vacuum. They
can come to power in a coup, which we'll talk about.
They can come to power democratically. But if it's the
kind of person who wants to rule unfettered and they
come they know how to basically work the populace and
(21:55):
the circumstances are right, you know, like maybe there's fear
of of outsiders coming your way, or the economy is
bad or something like that, then you can conceivably consolidate
your power in turn whatever situation into a dictatorship. Yeah.
I think it's more it's based on the person and
the circumstances that the nation is in when that person
(22:18):
grabs power than it is on how they actually get
into power. Yeah, and whether or not the current leader
just happens like the out of town or something. Yeah,
that's another big one too. Sometimes. Yeah, that's just well,
let's go ahead and talk about coup, should we, Okay, sure,
So a coup is um. There are different kinds of
coup or coup deta, but um, a coup is different
(22:39):
than a revolution in that there is it's generally a
smaller affair. It's not some big mass uprising of people.
It's a dude gets a smallish band of his military
cohorts together and, like we were talking about, either someone
is sick or they're dying, or they're just out of
the country on business and they come back and they're like,
(23:00):
you're not in charge anymore. Yeah, sorry to tell you,
And they're like, man, the discount of this dishwasher was
not worth leaving the country for over this Uh, it
can be cous can be very bloody and violent, but
they don't have to be um. In fact, I think
a lot of times they're not violent. No, there's a
term a bloodless coup, and it's basically, uh, like a
(23:23):
couple of the things that make coups uh or is
it just coup Like you're saying, there's no s No,
there's an s. Is it silent? I don't know that,
So we're gonna go with coups. Okay, A couple of
hallmarks of coups that you were saying, like they're they're
not popular uprisings. It's a small elite group that decided
to do it, usually the higher ups in the military,
(23:44):
and h they can be blood That's where it can
just be like you're not in charge any longer you're
out of the country. Stay out of the country. We're
putting you in exile. They can be bloody, especially if
the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty
in the military as well. Then it can turn pretty
pretty bad. Yeah, But I get the feeling that a
(24:05):
lot of times the coup isn't attempted unless they feel
like they have the support to pull it. Off. Well,
I mean, look at Turkey. They the people who tried
that coup, like it's a few months, but um, I
don't know what happened to them. I think air Tuan
said like the people were going to be punished but
not necessarily executed, But I don't know if that's true
(24:25):
or not. And that's another thing that can make a
coup bloody is that it can fail and then the
people who are carrying out the coup get executed, or
it can succeed, and sometimes, just for good measure, the
people carrying out the coup execute the former president, which
was the case in Peru with Pinochet. I'm sorry Chili
(24:48):
where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the
military to get rid of the old guy SALVADORI and
A and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it,
and then they executed A and A. Yeah, and aku
doesn't always mean a dictator comes right in either. Sometimes
a ku can just be temporary until they can elect
a new national leader. But it's just basically, uh, just
(25:11):
a very small overthrowing of the current government. That's all.
Do you want to take another break, Yeah, let's do it, okay.
Sk alright, we're back. What's agenda? Oh, it's related to
(25:46):
the Jacama um route Hima. No, that's not true at all.
Uh And I didn't really know this, but I've heard
a military junta. Wait, you know it's junta? Is it really? Yeah,
that's how I was making that joke. Okay, I wasn't
sure because I I called Hikama Jacamaya. Are you sure
(26:08):
it's not Jakoma? You sure it's not Jenta, Yes, it is.
It's a military junta. So the junta is a is
almost like a dictatorship by committee. And you find these
lat in Latin America, and it's a committee of military
leaders who essentially act like a dictator right there. It's
instead of one leader, maybe three four top ranking military usually.
(26:32):
Um there's a If you like Fiji brand water, you're
supporting a military junta when you buy that. As of
two thousand and six, the military rose up in Fiji
and overthrew the government and now military hunta runs the
show there. Yeah, that's a bad scene over there. Yeah.
Thailand apparently had a um A coup that same year.
(26:53):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, they there. They followed the
typical coup where the president left the country. If I
were a president and I run shaky ground anywhere, I'd
be like, I'm sitting right here, you're not scarface. You
would just be like in your office with submachine guns right. Well,
probably not the Mountain of Cocaine, although I could, because
I'd be a dictator. No one could say anything. Um.
(27:16):
But there's one other thing that's really important too. Not
only would I not leave the country, I wouldn't even
leave the presidential palace because that's like one of the
number one things you do in a coup is you
secure the presidential palace, secure the prisons, secure the infrastructure,
secure like the local media, and um, as long as
the president's there. For some reason, physically it makes it
(27:39):
exponentially harder. I don't know why. But couldn't if you
were the military. Couldn't you just go up to the
president and be like, you're not president anymore? And they
could say, yes I am. You say no, you're not.
We have the guns. Get out of the military the
presidential palace. Yeah, it's very passive aggressive to just like
change change the dead volts is it really is? Say sorry,
(28:01):
I can't get to your bedroom anymore. But Thailand had
the same thing, but but there junta was the the
coup carried out by the junta was um apparently popularly supported. Yeah,
it was the president who's like, I vote in ay,
everybody else said yea. So sometimes when there's a dictatorship,
(28:22):
they actually give the appearance that they might hold elections
oh yeah, um, when in fact it's just sort of
a farce. That's a big deal though, actually, because I
mean democracy or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate
that dictators will hold like like farcical elections pageantry basically
(28:43):
to make it seem like the the populace is all forum,
but the the elections will be like do you want
to keep the leader? No, one's running against the leader.
But do you want to keep the leader? Yes? No,
Please write your address down and include a picture of
your most beloved person or in the case of Saudi
Arabia King Abdullah bin abdul Aziz al Sad. That's a mouthful. Uh.
(29:10):
He said. You know what, We're gonna have elections for
the first time since the sixties here in two thousand five. Uh.
And you can choose your local civic leaders and your
local councils. Um but women can't vote, Like technically they can,
but you don't have the idea to vote because you're
a woman, so you can't vote. And a man can't
(29:31):
register your register you to vote because you're a woman,
and there just aren't enough women poll workers to register you,
so you also can't vote. So it's classic voter disenfranchisement
saying you don't have I D, so you can't vote,
so you might as well not be allowed to vote.
So since there's a whole an entire gender that's excluded
from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a
(29:52):
little less farcical than say, you know one where it's
like where you have no opposition. Yeah. Yeah, And I
found this article. It's hilarious. It's called um Dictatorships. It
was on like kids net in Australia, an Australian website,
and like at the top there's like Teddy Bears and
a son and rainbow and blue skies and then in
(30:15):
the text that says dictator and it's all about dictators
It's just kind of a weird juxtaposition. They had misspellings
in it too, which is weird. Yeah, but it made
some pretty good points. If I were a kid. If
I had kids, I would be like, you read this website.
They know what they're talking about. Read it every day,
every day. Just read the dictator entry. That's it. But
(30:36):
they mentioned although, yeah, they got something horribly wrong. They
mentioned Dictator Charles King of Liberia. I think they mean
Charles Taylor. Oh yeah, uh who um claimed to have
won by such a landslide that apparently it was like
fift larger than the actual total electorate of his entire country. Mhm.
(31:00):
But then I've also seen that he's done um elections
that were watched by outside pole watchers, and um that
they just they said that, no, this is a legitimate election. Interesting. Well,
we talked a little bit about them the dictatorship ending
badly or sadly. UM. A lot of times it is
(31:23):
just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody,
um and they get sick and die. Lennon suffered strokes,
Stalin suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. Uh. You know,
all the power and money and influence in the world
is not going to save you in the end, my friend,
(31:44):
Mr dictatory paranoia will save you and keep you alive.
It's always just kind of pitiful though, I don't know.
I disagree. Oh really, yeah, I think it's worth dancing
on their graves over Oh no, no, no, I don't
mean I mean pitiful for them. It's just they never
it seems like they always go out with a whimper. Yeah,
some go out with machine gun fire though. Yeah. It
(32:09):
just it doesn't say the salad days forever. No, it's true.
I think the messages that's no way to rule the people.
I hope we've gotten that across. You know, I don't
know how many dictators listened to our podcast, but I
hope that, if any do, we've really given them some
some pause to think about what they're doing with their lives.
Should we read a few of these uh weird things
(32:30):
done by dictators and we should say it's widely believed
that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide, where they're like
seventy of them now, the most I saw was twenty four, right, yeah. Uh.
And the reason why it again, they think liberal democracy
is like basically changing the game. But there was a
big influx after the the Cold War ended, where um,
(32:57):
the a lot of no, I'm sorry, the Cold War began.
There was a big influx because a lot of the
old colonial powers that had colonies and say, like Africa
and Asia suddenly said World War two is over, We're
getting out of the imperialism game. Good luck. And that
those power vacuums allowed a lot of dictatorships to to
(33:17):
um grow, and then the the polarization of the Cold
War allowed them to thrive because a dictator could say, hey,
I'm strategically necessary United States. Don't you like me? Don't
you want to look the other way on all of
my human rights atrocities? And then someone else would say
the same thing. That the USSR and the superpowers would
(33:37):
prop up these dictators throughout the world. When the Cold
War ended, that actually led to a huge and almost
immediate decline in dictatorships around the world. Yeah, so they're
they're hopefully going the way of the dinosaur. But we'll see.
What was that last article you sent, the one it
made a really good point about the United States could
(33:58):
learn a little bit about these dictatorships and how they work.
Not to be like that, but to learn that you
can't not for pointers and not for pointers, but for
pointers and maybe not necessarily saying hey, we can just
go into a country that's been run a certain way
for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and just say
(34:19):
do it all different now. Yeah, here, here's here's a
book on liberal democracies, Read it and do it. Yeah,
And that we might have a more successful approach to
foreign policy if there was a little bit more understanding
on how these systems worked. Yeah, And that a lot
of these, uh, these dictatorships are not totalitarian but autocratic,
(34:42):
which makes them inherently weaker. But if we threaten them,
if we're belligerent to them, we give those people a
reason to be afraid and to line up behind their leader.
So when we actually threaten other countries that are that
are autocratic, we we're all we're due ing is making
the leader more powerful, right, Whereas if we treat him
(35:03):
like as kind of a a week a week leader
of a weak state that that is run in a
way that suggests that the people aren't really behind it,
but they have to be run with an iron fist,
then that that person is probably gonna eventually get deposed.
It's pretty interesting. It was an interesting article. It was
in Reason magazine, I think um it was written by
(35:25):
John Basil utly, and if that guy is not British
no idea. Who is alright, So we promised a few
weird things. Um, where did you find this one? Odie?
Strange things done by evil dictators Kim Jong Ill those
dude in South Korea named Shin sang Uh and he
(35:47):
was known as the orson Wells of South Korea and
he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically, Uh,
Kim Jong Ill was like, you know, we show the
world that we are creative artists, like start making movies, right,
we've kidnapped you and brought you here. Make good movies.
In fact, remake Godzilla because we just need our own Godzilla.
(36:07):
It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollock in
the early fifties. But Jackson Pollock wasn't aware that he
was being propped up because he was drunk. Yeah, so
they did remake Godzilla a sort of in a movie
called poul Gas Sorry, and um, I looked it up
and he basically looks like Godzilla with like minotaur horns
(36:28):
right coming out in the side. Not the best. What
else This Beatles story was kind of nuts. Yeah, the
marcos Is, remember Amelda Marcos and Oliver Shoes. Yeah, who
can forget Ferdinand and Emelda Marcos. They ruled the Philippines
for a while and apparently they loved the Beatles back
in the sixties, and so they invited the Beatles to
the Philippines to play a couple of shows on their
(36:49):
world tour. And when the Beatles got there, the military
met them at the airport and said, hey, before you
go to your hotel, you're scheduled for a lunch, private
lunch with the president it and the first Lady. And
the Beatles were like, look mate, we're really tired. We're
gonna just go to the hotel and crash because we've
got two shows tonight. And uh they did not go
(37:11):
over very well. Yeah, they were acting through their manager
of course, Brian Epstein, and supposedly the story isn't so
much that, but he said that they don't they don't
accept these formal like state invitations really as a rule.
Either way, they didn't go and uh mL Demarcos got
on TV and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried
(37:32):
to apologize on TV and they blacked him out and
people got really upset. The police, basically their private police
escort was removed and the Beatles were on their own,
which was in the nineties or four. When you're the Beatles,
isn't not a good place, especially in the Philippines to
find yourself. Yeah, they basically had to escape to the
(37:52):
airport and just run out to the plane and head off. Yeah,
and one of their dudes was like beaten really badly
and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane
and had to like basically shaken down to pay them
back money from the concert to get on the plane.
And then later on Mr Mr Lennon give piece a chance,
(38:13):
John Lynn and said, yeah, if we go back to
the Philippines, it's gonna be with an H bomb. Did
he really say that? Yeah, he said he won't even
fly over it. So they did not have a good
experience here. Who's next? I think that e D I
mean one was kind of interesting. That sounds so eaty,
(38:34):
I mean he uh. He declared himself President for Life
p f L and he um. He said, you know what,
I'm gonna do this in high style. I'm gonna get
four white men to carry me around in a chair
to celebrate being President for life. And he called it
the white Man's Burden, And everybody loved it he was
(38:56):
an odd duck. Yeah, if you if you look up
white Man's and I mean and google images, there's a
couple of really great pictures of these kind of blonde
white men in suits carrying around this giant you ugandan
man and chair. Have you ever read the Bukowski book
that was the it was the basis for Barfly. Yeah,
(39:20):
which one was at Hollywood? I think it's what it
was called. I read Hollywood? Was that the one? Yeah?
He talks about watching a documentary about e. D I
mean and how he um I mean, didn't have uh
the money for an air force, but he had pilots
that really wanted to fly. So like in the documentary,
they're showing these pilots running down a runway and then
jumping and then going back to the to the end
(39:42):
of the line and and just doing this over and
over again to practice flying even though they didn't have planes.
That movie was good. The Forest Whitaker movie, Yeah, The
Last King of Scotland. Yeah, great movie where James mckel boy.
You know, you can stay in Charles Bokowski's house that
he grew up in an airbnb now been remodeled. No,
(40:04):
he wouldn't like that, but no, he would hate the
whole thing. Sure, how about Kadafi will end with him? So, momar,
Kadafi loved women apparently, did you know that about him?
He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female
bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and
(40:26):
high heels while they were protecting him and the In
the West, these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This
is just off the rails at this point. Uh and
this no, k the whole Amazonian Guard, the whole thing.
So um. The Kadafi actually had some sort of legitimate
(40:49):
thinking behind it. He thought that an assassin would have
trouble shooting a woman, so he surrounded himself with female
bodyguards who were also trained to kill. But they weren't
like the four but more makeup and lipstick. Yeah. Oh, actually,
can we mention the hitler thing because is this true?
I don't know, I walked past it. Sounds like urban legend,
(41:12):
but supposedly hitler Um came up with a synthetic blow
up doll to um comfort soldiers, and it was referred
to as a synthetic comforter Yep. Blonde hair, blue eyes,
could fit in a backpack and they only made about
fifty of them because the soldiers were like, I'm not
carrying that thing around. What are you crazy? And he went,
(41:35):
in fact, I am. You'll see waka waka uh. If
you want to know more about dictators, you can type
that word into uh the search bar how stuff works
dot com since they said search parts. Time for listener.
Now a quick correction beforehand, because this has to do
(41:55):
with bottle feeding kittens. But in our feeding baby these episodes,
which by the way, thanks for all the support on those,
which really made us feel good to know we did
a pretty good job there. But I erroneously many times
said pump and dump as like, you know, pump breast
milk and dump it in the bottle to use. Oh yeah,
(42:16):
pump pup on it. Well, I just I think I've
kind of threw that term around as just the general
term for breast pumping. But dumping is dumping it down
the drain for one reason another like you maybe have
had some alcohol or dumping it straight to hell. Yeah,
So yeah, pump and dump. It sort of just kind
of went wild there. That's okay, Chuck. I did notice
(42:38):
a couple of people saying that, but I didn't get
what they were saying. I was wrong. Huh, all right,
so it feels weird. I promised the story about bottle
feeding kittens. Which have you ever done that? A little
baby animal that you gotta care for at that young age,
Pretty darn cute, very powerful feeling. It's very stressful. It
is stressful. Hey, guys. When I was a kid, you're like,
(43:05):
you want this bottle or not? Breakfast? When I was
a kid, my older sister had a habit of rescuing
animals that became family pets. Um She rescued a pair
of ferrets from drug abuse quote quote drug abuse quote
when the ferrets were being abused with drugs or themselves
active users. I still don't know. That's a weird thing
(43:25):
to say. Yeah, this is a weird email. The family
ended up stuck with those smelly little weasels for years.
What really I wanted to talk about? That was much
more mundane. One day we rescued a random straight kitten
from our gutter. It's beautiful little thing, fluffy and snowy, white,
practically newborn, too young to lap milk. She became a
family project of sorts. Throughout the day, almost all the
(43:46):
family members would take turns cradling the little kitten. Feeding
her with a dropper was pretty special. It was maybe
nine at the time, but gladly took time away from
playing Zelda to feed the kitten playing Zelda. I forget it.
Here's the kicker. Though. As much as pure love uh
that we pumped into that little kitten, that cat ended
(44:06):
up being one of the most purely mean and different
cats we ever had. Sounds about right. She grew up
to be beyond ungrateful. She came and when as she pleased,
and was prone to swipe at you if it's if
you tried to bet her. She hung around for the food,
but after a few years she just disappeared entirely. It
sounds like the cat was on drug abuse too. Most
of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the point
(44:27):
is there just some bad seats out there. That is
from chrisps. The ferrets ended up living for years and years.
That was a mysterious email. In a lot of ways,
It's like a it's like a David Lynch email. Huh
uh thanks a lot, Chris, with a K I imagine no, okay, uh,
thanks a lot, Chris. We appreciate that and uh If
(44:49):
you out there want to get in touch with us,
like Chris did, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff Podcast. How stuff Works dot
Com has always joined us. Start a home on the
web Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on
(45:10):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com m
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