Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. For this select I've chosen our twenty seventeen episode on Dictators, how much the world can change in just a few years. We mentioned a couple of times in this episode that authoritarianism was on the wane and that it was being replaced by good old democracy. I'm sad in the report that has changed in recent years as authoritarianism has come barreling back and in some surprising places. Listen to this episode to find out why that's a bad thing.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and it's twenty seventeen.
Jerry our benevolent dictator.
Yeah for real, she's got those lis that she wears all the time in sunglasses.
I was just commenting and I thought, this is a pretty good article here from How Stuff Works.
Yeah, yeah, I've heard that before.
Who wrote this one? Do you have that on there?
No?
I always have it on there, and you didn't have it today.
It might be a Shane of Freeman joint.
I think it may be that sounds familiar. Yeah, anyway, it's a good one. Yeah, and here it is.
That was word for word my intro that you just stole.
Well, my mind reading classes have been paying off, chuck.
Yes, have you ever lived under a dictatorship?
Not exactly.
No, No, I haven't either. Yeah, and I think we should kind of consider ourselves fairly lucky. Sure, 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 that argue that it is. Yeah, it's been for the last several years, 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 hard to find, comparatively speaking, because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled for thousands of years. Yeah, up until very recent times, around the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of individual liberties and the protection of those individual liberties became kind of widespread.
Yeah, and this article kind of starts off. I thought it was I thought it was interesting 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. Yeah, you're like, oh, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Then it's the guy who paces back and fourth in front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying.
Take dictation. Yeah, but they don't call themselves that very often, although it has happened before we get into the history. 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, they.
Will call themselves premier or president or chancellor or furer boss of you. Kim Jong Ill holds three titles, and I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth like as we.
Speak, well, he's in the ground his son.
Oh wait, I got this too confused, right, Yeah, well he held three titles, Yes he did. I imagine, Well, his son probably holds four. Then he probably found that fourth. Just made one up.
Did you know though, that there's like a you know, the Kim Jong un is 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. That was news to me.
Yeah. Those guys are called Keep Quiet one and Keep Quiet two.
Yeah. I was just looking up some of his greatest hits recently. Yeah, and 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 falling asleep at a meeting.
Holy cow, right, but do you hear stuff like imagine what that would do to a body?
Yeah, oh my god. But 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 not it was for falling asleep during a meeting or something like that, remains to be seen.
Yeah, you're saying, take any information with a grain of salt.
Yes, yes, it's good advice. Thanks.
But as Shana I believe. Shana points out that dictators do have some things in common, and one of the big ones is is almost one 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, well he was an electored though. Wasn't he named chancellor?
Yes, by the elected president though, right, but he still wasn't elected. No, 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'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 to Greece. But it seems to be Rome, classic Rome, classic Rome. Yeah, trips coming into the party and everybody's like, that's classic room.
He tried to walk through that screen door it wasn't open.
So classical Rome. How about that? It seems to be an invention of classical Rome. Right. There was a station called dictator. There was an office basically, and in ancient Rome the leadership was held by two men called councils, and they were equally powerful from what I understand, Consuls
council Console. Okay, sure, right, And when something went down and stuff hit the fan, the Romans had a tradition of appointing one of the councils dictator, which is basically an emergency investment of unparalleled power into this one person. And the whole thinking behind it was when you were faced with an emergency. See, when the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody who could basically get stuff done.
Yeah, like a single voice.
Yeah, it didn't have to go to the Senate to ask anything, didn't have to go worry about making the wrong move. The dictator couldn't be held criminally liable for their decisions.
Yeah, didn't have to worry about not being invited to the other consuls Christmas party the next year.
Right, the other council wanted to be invited to the dictators 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 it lasted for six months, and then the dictator would be like, wow, that was a while ride. I'm 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, right, big one It says, couldn't be in an office longer than six months, although I think I think they were there to handle the situation as kind of as long as that took. Yeah, for the most part.
But there were also guys who are like, whoa, I like the feel of this. Yeah, 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. Yeah, they could change Roman law and the constitution. They couldn't use public money and less other than what the Senate said you could use it for. So they supposedly still and these are the official rules, you know, as we see coming up here. People bent these rules and they couldn't leave Italy was the last one.
Oh, this is a good one. And they would have like Colombo come in and deliver that last bit we look, just don't leave Italy for a while.
Okay, that's your Colombo impression. Yeah, he sounded just like Josh Clark.
Thought it was spot on.
So this kind of happened here and there until about two two BC, and then about one hundred years after that gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I love all these Roman dictators sound like either seventies like black exploitation movie stars or Roman gladiators. Sure, 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.
Yeah, and he actually wanted Caesar dead. So Caesar ran off and joined the army Julius Caesar, I should say, and just basically laid low until Sulla died. And then Caesar came back and he was appointed counsel and then dictator himself. He succeeded Sola, right, Yes, and Caesar 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 benevolent dictator pretty much.
Yeah, among the middle and lower classes. He improved infrastructure, He 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 a he staged to coup to become a dictator, right, to gain power.
Yeah, 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, you know what I mean.
Back in nineteen seventy one.
Yeah, I mean, we've tossed out benevolent dictator a couple of times, kidding around, 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.
Well, yeah, exactly.
So, like the ruling elite found him very threatening, they would not have considered him benevolent at all. Right, But like say, the average plebeian would have been like, I love Caesar. Yeah, 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, sure, but again people say, no, it's perspective, it's a subjective term.
Basically.
Napoleon actually he came to power again like many dictators, in a state of emergency, and he was actually a benevolent dictator in a sense because he did a lot of great things for a while for the people.
Right. He was extremely popular. Yeah, he was undefeated at the time that he rose to power. He was appointed counsel and then he said, you know what, let's go a little further that I'm going to call myself emperor. And they said, oh, okay, Napoleon, what could possibly go wrong with that?
Yeah, well, first he was named consul. Then he was like, I think consul 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 undefeated as a military leader. He balanced the budget, he reformed government, he wrote the civil law, which a lot of his is still around today 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 a parliament who was thrown out of one of the windows of parliament. Right, he took over, You probably wouldn't be like, you're so benevolent. Right.
He also controlled had an iron thumb on the press, He controlled every fative government. He had a spies working for him. So it's not like he wasn't just you know, Buds of the Clown.
No, Boz 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 first modern dictator.
Yeah.
He checked basically every box there was. He had it figured out.
He drew new boxes and checked those.
Right, he said, all dictators to follow, here's your box. 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.
Yeah.
So in this article on dictators from How Stuff Works, there's a sidebar is what they're called in web print parlance. Yeah, just a little extra bit, and the title of the subbar is Darth Dictator.
That's all we need to say.
And it talks about Emperor Palpatine in his rise. And Chuck had his xt out ye and I independently Xi migne out as well. So we won't be talking about that today, everybody.
No, 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.
Definitely should now, Lars Chuck and Ryan.
Sk All, Right, so we're back. We talked about one of the things that dictators had in common is they generally aren't elected in it like a fair election. They are usually ruling autocracies. A lot of times they have what's called the totalitarian regime.
Yeah, we should talk about that.
That's a big one. That means you, like you were in control of all the news and all the media that gets out about everything.
Right, So there's a lot of confusion over the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. And a totalitarian regime is authoritarian, but not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian. Yeah. An authoritarian regime is where the government is headed by one single leader. Yeah, Okay, there's no parliament, there's no courts, there's no nothing that the 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 in the eye there.
They could. 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.
Personal freedoms might be vanquished, might be there might be police, secret police, there might be spies spying on citizens. It's not a good way to live.
No, And also you will probably be encouraged that 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 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, to 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 paranoi 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 bother with all that? Right, Like you know it's gonna end badly.
Just kickback and light of dooby instead? Why bother with all that?
Many times there they foster what's known as a cult of personality, and this is a big one. Yeah, 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 going to see a lot of posters and statues of these leaders everywhere.
Yeah, oh yeah, you're taught that 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. Yeah, so go make a painting of a kid, right, and we're going to put it 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 over in nineteen ninety one. His birth name was Supermarat Niyazov, but he changed his name to Turkmenbashi, and then he started naming everything in Turkmenistan Turkmenbashi, including the month of January. But he created that statue.
Yeah, and he had the 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, he said, quote. I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets, but it's what the people want.
We got that, I think from an ode list.
Actually, yeah, we'll probably pepper in more of those, Okay, But I mean, I hope this drives home the point that these totalitarian dictators, they're narcissists, their megalomaniacs. They are obviously paranoid, otherwise they wouldn't need to rule with an iron fist. And yeah, it's 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 wish we knew what it was because you can look around, especially in the world today and see country after country after country sliding down that rabbit hole.
Well, it's a mental disorder on their part, I think.
But it doesn't just have to be there, doesn't just have to be like a single leader. Like even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that hole where like they want all the information possible on everybody and ultimately to keep control. You know, but is it based on fear or is it based on paranoia, or is it based on that desire to hang on to power or what Witch's brew? Of all those things, is it that creates that? Why do we keep doing it over and
over and over again. Yeah, 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.
Yeah. But and we'll talk a little bit about how they end, but it always is badly. Like you see like Saddam Hussein and power like in these military uniforms, and then you see this like sad old man pulled out of a fox hole.
Yeah, it looks like she's washed up on Gilligan's Island or something.
Like that, or Noriega like wasting away in prison, like begging to get out in a wheelchair.
And I would like to know the story behind that, because Noega, Yeah, Panama on the UA, we're 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. Them went down that prison, is he Oh, that's right, and then they transferred him to uh.
Well outside the Panama Canal. Ironically, Oh really, yeah, he's in some 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 carry out another sentence down there. Oh really yeah, wow, yeah, but something went down that I don't know about. I'm intensely curious to know. If anybody knows out there, tell me.
I'm sure you could find that up pretty easy, right.
Apparently not.
I was just kidding. I bet it's highly guarded secret.
You think, even after all these years, I don't know. Noriega had motor he was a motormouth. I'm sure he told everybody who'd listened.
Uh, well, we mentioned Hitler earlier. He, like you said, although not elected, was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenberg, and then once Hindenburg died, Hitler said, you know what, there's this German word furor that means leader, and he went, 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 I'll just kill myself in a bunker.
Yeah.
Another I'd say sad end, but just pitiful end.
You know, that's a great word for.
Sad indicates that, you know what I mean. I don't have to over explain that due out.
So but Hitler he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein. Actually he was the general of the Iraqi Army and vice president, and then as the president came, I think he fell ill. 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. The point that this article is making is that there's a number of different ways a dictator can come to power.
They can come to power and a power vacuum. They can come to power and 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, Yeah, and they come they know how to basically work the populace and the circumstances are right, you know, like maybe there's fear of outsiders coming your way, or the economy's bad or something like that, then you can conceivably consolidate your power and 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 grabs power than it is on how they actually get into power.
Yeah, and whether or not the current leader just happens like be out of town or something.
Yeah, that's that's another big one too.
Sometimes. Yeah, that's just well, let's go ahead and talk about coups, should we? Okay, sure, So coup is There are different kinds of coup or coup d'eta, But a coup is different 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, right, and they come back and they're like, you're not in charge anymore.
Yeah, sorry to tell you. Yeah, And they're like, man, they discount of this dishwasher is not worth leaving the country for over this. Uh.
It can be Coups can be very bloody and violent, but they don't have to be. In fact, I think a lot of times they're not violent.
No, there's a term of bloodless coup.
Yeah.
And it's basically a couple of the things that make coups, uh or is it just coup like you were 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 the 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. Yeah, And they can be bloodless, where it can just be like you're not in charge any longer you were out of the country, stay out of the country. We're putting you in exile. Right. They can be bloody, especially if the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty
in the military as well. Yeah, then it can turn pretty pretty bad.
Yeah, but I get the feeling that a 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 or the people who tried that coup like just a few months back. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what happened to them. I think Airdwan said like the people were going to be punished, but not necessarily executed, But I don't know if that's
true or not. 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. Oh sorry Chile, Yeah, Chile, where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the
military to get rid of the old guy. Salvador, A Andde and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it, and then they executed A and D.
Yeah, and a coup doesn't always mean a dictator comes right in either. Sometimes a coup can just be temporary until they can elect a new national leader. Right, But it's just basically, uh, just a very small overthrowing of the current government.
All right, that's all, So you want to take another break, Yeah, let's do it, okay. Definitely large trials of each.
I asked, all right, we're back.
What's a junta?
Well, it's related to the Jacama root Hikkama.
No, that's not true at all. And I didn't really know this, but I've heard a military junta.
Well you know it's junta, is it really? Yeah, that's how I was making that joke. Okay, I wasn't sure because I called Hikkama jama Ya. Are you sure it's not Jacama?
You sure it's not junta?
I asked, it is? It's a military junta.
So the junta is is almost like a dictatorship by committee. And you find these a lot in Latin America, and it's a committee of military leaders who essentially act like a dictator.
Right, there's instead of one leader, yes, maybe three four top ranking military. Usually there's a If you like Fiji brand water, you're supporting a military hunt when you buy that. As of two thousand and six, the military rose up in Fiji and over through the government and now Military Hunt runs the show there.
Yeah, that's a bad scene over there.
Yeah. Thailand apparently had a coup that same year.
Oh yeah, that's right.
Yeah, they followed the typical coup where the president left the country. If I were a president and I were on shaky ground.
Yeah, don't go anywhere.
Nope, I'd be like I'm sitting right here.
You need scarface. You would just be like in your office with submachine guns. Right well, probably not the mountain of cocaine.
Right well, I could because I'd be a dictator. No one could say anything, do any want. But there was 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. Ye, secure the prisons, secure the infrastructure, secure like the local media. And as long as the president's there,
for some reason, physically it makes it exponentially harder. I don't know why. Yeah, 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 yeah, you say no you're not. We have the guns, get out of the military presidential palace.
Yeah, it's like very passive aggressive to just like change change the dead vaults when it really is sorry, can't get to your bedroom anymore.
But Thailand had the same thing, but their junta was the coup carried out by the junta was apparently popularly supported. Oh it was, Yeah, it was the president who's like I vote nay, everybody else said yay.
So sometimes when there's a dictatorship, they actually give the appearance that they might hold elections, oh yeah, 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 yeah, like farcical elections pageantry basically, yeah, to make it seem like the populace is all for them, but the elections will be like do you want to keep the leader. No one's running against the leader, right, But do you want to keep the leader? Yes? No, Please write your address down and include a picture of your most beloved person, right life.
Or in the case of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin abdul Aziz al Sad, that's a mouthful, he said. You know what, We're going to have elections for the first time since the sixties here in two thousand and five, and you can choose your local civic leaders and your local councils. 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 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. So you don't have IDs, so you can't vote, so you might as well not be allowed to vote.
Right, So since there's a hole an entire gender that's excluded from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a 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 is hilarious. It's called Dictatorships. It was on like kids Net in Australia, an Australian website, and like at the top there's like Teddy Bears and a sun and rainbow and blue skies and then in the text it says dictator and it's all about dictators It's just kind of a weird juxtaposition.
It had misspellings in it too, which is weird.
Yeah, but it made some pretty good points. If I were a if I had kids, I'd 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 they mentioned although, yeah, they got something horribly wrong. They mentioned dictator Charles King of Liberia. I
think they mean Charles Taylor. Oh yeah, yeah, who claimed to have won by such a landslide that apparently it was like fifteen percent larger than the actual total electorate of his entire country. But then I've also seen that he's done elections that were watched by outside poll watchers, right, and that they they just they said that this is a legitimate election.
Interesting. Well, we talked a little bit about them, the dictatorship ending badly or sadly. A lot of times it's just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody and they get sick and die. Lennon suffered strokes, Stalin suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. You know, all the power and money and influence in the world is not going to save you in the end, my friend, mister 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, you know, some go out with machine gun fire though.
Yeah. Yeah, just it doesn't stay the salad days forever.
No, it's true.
I think the message is that's no way to rule a people.
I hope we've gotten that across. You know, I don't know how many dictators listen to our podcast, but I hope that, if any do, we've really given them some pause to think about what are doing with their lives.
Should we read a few of these weird things done by dictators?
Sure, and we should say it's widely believed that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide.
What are there like seventy of them now?
The most I saw this was twenty four right, Oh yeah. And the reason why is again they think liberal democracy is like basically changing the game. But there was a big influx after the Cold War ended where 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's over, We're getting out of
the imperialism game. Good luck. And that those power vacuums allowed a lot of dictatorships to grow, and then 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 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, yeah, so they're hopefully going the way of the dinosaur. But we'll see.
Yeah, what was that last article you sent, the one it made a really good point about the United States could 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 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 do it all different now.
Yeah, 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, 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 doing is making the leader more powerful, whereas if we treat them like as kind of 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. They have to be run with an iron fist. Then that that person's probably going to eventually get deposed.
It's pretty interesting.
It was an interesting article. It was in Reason magazine. I think it was written by John Bay utterly. And if that guy's not British, no idea, who is?
All right? So we promised a few weird things. Where did you find this one?
Odie?
Strange things done by evil dictators? Kim Jong Ill those dude in South Korea named Shin sang Ok, and he was known as the orson Wells of South Korea, and he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically 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.
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, so They did remake Godzilla sort of a movie called Paul Gasari and I looked it up and he basically looks like Godzilla with a minotaur horns coming out the side.
Yeah, not the best.
What else This Beatles story was kind of nuts.
Yeah. The Marcos's member of Melda Marcos and all of her shoes. Yeah, who can forget Ferdinand and Amelda 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 shows on their 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 and the first Lady. Yeah, And the Beatles were like, look mate, we're really tired. We're going to just go to the hotel and crash because we've got two shows tonight. And that did not go 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, I got to either way, they didn't go, and Emmel de Marcos got on TV and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried 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. Wow, which was in ninety sixty four. When you're in the Beatles, this is not a good place, especially in the Philippines, right to find yourself.
Yeah, They basically had to escape to the 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 then had to like basically was shaken down to pay them back money wow from the concert to get on the plane. And then later on mister mister Lennon, give piece a chance. John Lennon said, yeah, if we go back to the Philippines, it's going to be with an H bomb.
Did you really say that?
Yeah?
Wow?
He said he won't even fly over it. So they did not have a good exp your answer, Wow, who's next? I think that ed I mean one was kind of interesting.
That sounds so Edie, I mean totally. He he declared himself President for life, p farrel, and he he said, you know what, I'm going to do this in high style. I'm going to 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, yep, and everybody loved it. He was an odd duck.
Yeah, if you if you look up white Man's Burden 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 its giant Ugandan man in the chair.
Have you ever read the Bukowski book that was the it was the basis for Barfly.
Yeah. Which one was that?
Hollywood? I think is what it's called.
I read Hollywood? Was that the one?
Yeah? He talks about watching a documentary about I mean, and how he d I mean, didn't have 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 of the line and just doing this over and over again to practice flying. Yeah, 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 mckelboy.
You know you can stay in Charles Bakowski's house that he grew up in an airbnb now really, yep, nice, it's been remodeled.
Oh, he wouldn't like that, but.
No, he would hate the whole thing.
I'm sure. How about Kadafi, we'll end with him. Sure, So, Momar Kadafi loved women apparently. Did you know that about him?
I did not.
He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and high heels while they were protecting him. And in the West, these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This is just off the rails at this point.
Yeah. Uh, and this podcast.
No is the whole Amazonian Guard, the whole thing.
Yeah.
So the Kadafi actually had some sort of legitimate thinking behind it. He thought that an assassin would have trouble shooting a woman.
Yeah, it stands to reason.
So he surrounded himself with female body guards. Who were also trained to kill. Yeah, but they weren't like the four more makeup and lipstick. Yeah.
Oh, actually, can we mention the Hitler thing, because.
Is this true? I don't know this is I walked past.
It sounds like urban legend. But supposedly Hitler came up with a synthetic blow up doll to comfort soldiers, and it was referred to as a synthetic comforter. Yep, blonde hair, blue eyes could fit in a batpack, 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 in fact, I am.
You'll see waka waka uh. If you want to know more about dictators, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot common Sense. They said, search bar, it's time for listening mail.
A quick correction beforehand, because this has to do with bottle feeding kittens. But in our feeding babies 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 can dump it in the bottle to use.
Oh no, yeah, pump pick up on it.
Well, I just I think I kind of threw that term around as just the general term for breast pumping. That's but dumping is dumping it down the drain for one reason or 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, that's right. I did notice a couple of people saying that, but I didn't get what they were saying.
Yeah, 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. Sure, very powerful feeling.
It's very stressful.
It is stressful, Hey, guys. When I was a kid, powerful you're like, you want this bottle or not?
Crisch you.
When I was a kid, my older sister had a habit of rescuing animals that became family pets. She rescued a pair of ferrets from drug abuse quote what quote? Drug abuse in quote? When the ferrets were being abused with drugs or themselves active users. I still don't know. That's a weird thing to say.
Yeah, it's a weird email.
The family ended up stuck with those smelly little weasels for years. What really I wanted to talk about THO was much more mundane. One day we rescued a random stray kitten from our gutters. 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 family members would take turns cradling the little kitten. Feeding
her with a dropper was pretty special. 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 that we pumped into that little kitten, that cat ended 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 went as she pleased, and was prone to swipe at you as if you tried to pet her. She hung around for the food, but after a few years, she just disappeared entirely.
Sounds like the cat was on drug abuse too.
Most of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the point is there are just some bad seeds out there. That is from Chris ps. The ferrets ended up living for years and years.
What that was a mysterious email in a lot of ways, like a it's like a David Lynch email. Thanks a lot, Chris with a K. I imagine no, okay, thanks a lot, Chris. We appreciate that. And if you out there want to get in touch with us like Chris did, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at house. Stuffworks dot Com has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com.
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