Selects: How Dictators Work

SPEAKER_08: Amazon wants to help you share joy this holiday season. And as we all know, the holidays are all about these joyful moments. That's right. I remember when my family drove up to Helen, Georgia when I was a kid SPEAKER_06: and bought one of those very first Cabbage Patch Kids for my sister. This was way ahead of the nationwide craze. This may have been one of the first hundred or so of these dolls that were ever made, actually. And of course, it was a huge hit. She still has it all these many years later to this day. And you know what? I hope one day the gods will smile on me and I can find something like that for a loved one before it breaks out. It's these types of moments that Amazon helps create during the holidays. SPEAKER_08: However you share joy, make it happen with Amazon. The one thing we can never get more of is time. SPEAKER_00: Or can we? This is Watson X Orchestrate. AI designed to multiply productivity by automating tasks. When you Watson X your business, you can build digital skills to help human resources spend less time generating offer letters, writing job recs and managing schedules, and spend more time on humans. Let's create more time for your business with Watson X Orchestrate. Learn more at ibm.com slash orchestrate IBM. Let's create. SPEAKER_08: Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this Select, I've chosen our 2017 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 saddened to 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. SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. SPEAKER_08: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And it's 2017. Jerry, our benevolent dictator. Yeah, for real. She's got those epaulets that she wears all the time and sunglasses. SPEAKER_06: I was just commenting. I thought this is a pretty good article here from how stuff works. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I've heard that before. Who wrote this one? SPEAKER_06: Do you have that on there? SPEAKER_08: No. I always have it on there. You didn't have it today? SPEAKER_06: It might be a Shana Freeman joint. SPEAKER_06: I think it may be. That sounds familiar. Anyway, it's a good one. Yeah. And here it is. SPEAKER_08: That was word for word my intro that you just stole. Oh, well, my mind reading classes have been paying off. SPEAKER_08: Chuck. Yes. Have you ever lived under a dictatorship? SPEAKER_06: Not exactly. No? SPEAKER_08: 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 SPEAKER_08: is not a dictatorship, although you can find plenty of websites that argue that it is, has been for the last several years possibly even, for the most part, most people would SPEAKER_08: 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 were 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. And this article kind of starts off, I thought it was interesting that you don't often, well, first of all, the word dictator is just 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. SPEAKER_08: It's the guy who paces back and forth in front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying. Take dictation. SPEAKER_06: But they don't call themselves that very often, although it has happened. Before we get into the history, we should point out that Castro and Saddam Hussein, you never hear them say dictator as a bad rap, you know? I'm the dictator Fidel Castro. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. It's like how propaganda got turned into PR. Yeah. They will call themselves premier or president or chancellor or Fuhrer. SPEAKER_06: Boss of you. Kim Jong-il holds three titles. I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth, like as we speak. SPEAKER_08: Well, he's in the ground. His son. Oh, wait, I got this too confused, right? SPEAKER_06: 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. SPEAKER_08: Did you know that there's like a, you know, 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 triumvirate going there. It was news to me. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, those guys are called keep quiet one and keep quiet two. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: 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, a pretty high ranking official was executed with an anti-aircraft machine gun for slouching or falling asleep at a meeting. Holy cow. Right. SPEAKER_06: But you hear stuff like that. Can you imagine what that would do to a body? Yeah. SPEAKER_08: 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. You're saying take any information with a grain of salt. Yes. SPEAKER_08: Yes. It's good advice. Thanks. SPEAKER_06: But as Shana, I believe, Shana points out that the dictators do have some things in common and one of the big ones is almost 100% of the time a dictator doesn't come to power through an election. They're usually not freely elected to that position. SPEAKER_08: No, but they have been. They have been. Yeah. Pretty prominently like Hitler. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. He wasn't elected though. Wasn't he named Chancellor? SPEAKER_08: Yes, by the elected president though. SPEAKER_06: Right. But he still wasn't elected. SPEAKER_08: No, I guess that's true. Okay. SPEAKER_06: Fine. Well, let's get into history then. All right. SPEAKER_08: So you say dictators got a bad rap over the years, right? As far as calling yourself that, I think so. But it officially originally, and I saw a couple references to Greece, but it seems to be Rome, classic Rome. Classic Rome. Yeah. It trips coming into the party and everybody's like, that's classic Rome. SPEAKER_06: He tried to walk through that screen door. It wasn't open. SPEAKER_08: So classical Rome. How about that? It seems to be an invention of classical Rome, right? There is a station called dictator. There's an office basically. And in ancient Rome, the leadership was held by two men called councils. Yeah. And they were equally powerful from what I understand. Consuls? Council, consul. Okay. Sure. All 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, when the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody who could basically get stuff done. Yeah, like a single voice. Yeah. 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. Didn't have to worry about not being invited to the other consul's Christmas party the next year. SPEAKER_08: Right. 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 it lasted for six months. And then the dictator would be like, well, that was a wild ride. I'm going back to my normal life. The rebellion has been quelled or the siege is over or something like that. SPEAKER_06: 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 an office longer than six months, although I think they were there to handle the situation as long as that took. Yeah. For the most part. But there were also guys who were like, oh, I like the feel of this. SPEAKER_08: 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. They could change Roman law and the constitution. They couldn't use public money unless 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. SPEAKER_08: That was just 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. SPEAKER_06: He sounded just like Josh Clark. Thought it was spot on. SPEAKER_06: So this kind of happened here and there until about 202 BC. And then about 100 years after that, a gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Love all these Roman dictators sound like either 70s like blaxploitation 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. SPEAKER_08: 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 council and then dictator himself. He succeeded Sulla, 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 basically went to bat for the lower classes, which threatened the elite because it made him immensely popular. Plus he was a dictator. So he actually staged a 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. Well, long time before my birthday, but you know what I mean. Back in 1971. SPEAKER_06: 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. SPEAKER_08: 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean, followers of Castro still after his death say he was a benevolent dictator. Sure. But again, other people say no. It's perspective. SPEAKER_08: It's a subjective term, basically. SPEAKER_06: 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. SPEAKER_08: He was extremely popular. Yeah. He was undefeated at the time that he rose to power. He was appointed council. 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, oh, okay, Napoleon, what could possibly go wrong with that? SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, first he was named council. Then he was like, I think council for life has a better ring to it. And then that wasn't enough. Right. 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 us is still around today in France. Yeah. The civil law. Right. Not too bad. He had a lasting impact for sure. SPEAKER_08: 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 when he took over, you probably wouldn't be like, you're so benevolent. SPEAKER_06: Right. He also had an iron thumb on the press. He controlled every facet of government. He had spies working for him. So it's not like he wasn't just, you know, Bose of the Clown. SPEAKER_06: No. SPEAKER_08: Bose of the Clown was super shady. No. If you put all that together, though, Chuck, you get the impression of why historians consider 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 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? SPEAKER_08: I think you should see this. Yeah. So in this article on dictators from HowStuffWorks, there's a sidebar is what they're called in Web Print Parlance. Yeah, just a little extra bit. And the title of the sub bar is Darth Dictator. That's all we need to say. And it talks about Emperor Palpatine and his rise. And Chuck had his X'd out and I independently X'd mine 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 SPEAKER_06: know about it. And we'll be right back. SPEAKER_08: Every person living with a rare autoimmune condition navigates their own unique journey. That's why in season two of Untold Stories, life with a severe autoimmune condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, they are sharing even more empowering stories. SPEAKER_06: That's right. From myasthenia gravis to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP. Learn about the daily challenges and triumphs of those with these conditions. Yep. SPEAKER_08: Host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by these conditions. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with an autoimmune condition has a story to tell. By featuring these real life experiences, the podcast hopes to inspire each community, SPEAKER_06: educate others about these severe conditions and let those living with them know that they are not alone. 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Renter by all of your favorites, add on hundreds of streamers, and find classics or new releases like Candy Cane Lane starring Eddie Murphy and Tracee Ellis Ross included with Prime in one app with one password. Prime Video, find your holiday happy place. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com slash Amazon Prime for details. SPEAKER_06: 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 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. SPEAKER_08: 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. 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 that leader doesn't either control or just doesn't exist to counter that leader's decisions. Right. A totalitarian regime is like you were saying. I think you're missing an I there. They could, it's like deleterious. 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. SPEAKER_06: Personal freedoms might be vanquished. Might be. There might be police, secret police. There might be spies spying on citizens. Yeah. It's not a good way to live. No, and also- As a citizen. SPEAKER_08: You will probably be encouraged 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, they're going to behave themselves more. And if you can get your citizens to kind of keep an eye on one another, everybody's going to behave even further. That's a terrible way to live. SPEAKER_06: Well, and you know what? It sounds like a totalitarian ruler would be... I bet there's a lot of paranoia 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, oh, I rule everything so it's all good. At that point, you don't know who to trust. Right. You're probably always looking over your shoulder. SPEAKER_06: You know, it's not like, why bother with all that? Right. Like, you know it's going to end badly. SPEAKER_08: Just kick back and light a doobie instead. Why bother with all that? SPEAKER_06: Many times they foster what's known as a cult of personality. And this is a big one. 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. SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah. Like, it's just ubiquitous. SPEAKER_06: You're taught that the leader is basically the state. SPEAKER_08: 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 to say, by the way, the leader is descended directly from God. So go make a painting of him, kid. Right. And we're going to put it up in the town square. SPEAKER_06: Who was the one who had the statue rotated to face the sun? SPEAKER_08: He was the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name when he took over in 1991. His birth name was Saparmurat 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. SPEAKER_06: And he had this golden statue rotated to always face the sun. So, yeah, he was always facing the sun. SPEAKER_08: And he said, read that quote, man. That quote is awesome. Oh, right. SPEAKER_06: He said, quote, I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets, but it's what the people want. SPEAKER_08: We got that, I think, from an OD list, actually. Yeah, we'll probably pepper in more of those. SPEAKER_06: Okay. But I mean, I hope this drives home the point that these totalitarian dictators, they're narcissists, they're megalomaniacs. They are obviously paranoid. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to rule with an iron fist. Yeah. And yeah, it's just not a good way to run a country. SPEAKER_06: Like I said, it always ends badly. And I guess they get caught up in the power, and they don't see what history has taught us time and time again. Again, I wish we knew what it was, because you can look around, especially in the world SPEAKER_08: today, and see country after country after country sliding down that rabbit hole. Well, it's a mental disorder on their part, I think, genuinely. SPEAKER_06: But it doesn't just have to be like a single leader. SPEAKER_08: Even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that hole, where they want all the information possible on everybody, and it's ultimately to keep control. 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? Because it always is the death knell for a civilization when the leadership starts doing that. It's unsustainable. SPEAKER_07: SPEAKER_06: And we'll talk a little bit about how they end, but it always is badly. You see Saddam Hussein in power in these military uniforms, and then you see this sad old man pulled out of a foxhole. Yeah, it looks like he washed up on Gilligan's Island or something like that. SPEAKER_08: Or Noriega wasting away in prison. SPEAKER_06: Begging to get out in a wheelchair. I would like to know the story behind that. SPEAKER_08: Who, Noriega? Yeah, Panama and 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 30 years. Like something went down. That prison. Is he? Oh, that's right. And then they transferred him to... SPEAKER_06: Well, outside the Panama Canal, ironically. Oh, really? Yeah, he's in some prison there. He's like in a wheelchair in his early 80s and just not doing so hot. SPEAKER_06: But he served his whole sentence, I think, in Miami, and then they transferred him to SPEAKER_08: Panama 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. SPEAKER_06: I'm sure you could find that out pretty easy, right? Apparently not. I was just kidding. I bet it's a highly guarded secret. You think? SPEAKER_08: Even after all these years? I don't know. Noriega had motor... He was a motor mouth. I'm sure he told everybody who'd listen. SPEAKER_06: Well, we mentioned Hitler earlier. Like you said, although not elected, was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. And then once Hindenburg died, Hitler said, you know what? There's this German word, Führer. 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. Right. And then eventually I'll just kill myself in a bunker. Another, I was about to say sad end, but just pitiful end, you know? That's a great word for it. Sad indicates that it, you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't have to over explain that, do I? No. SPEAKER_08: So, but Hitler, he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein, actually. He was the general of the Iraqi army and vice president. Yeah. 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? Yeah. 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. They can come to power in 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. Yeah. And they come, they know how to basically work the populace. Sure. 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. Right. 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. SPEAKER_07: SPEAKER_06: Yeah. And whether or not the current leader just happens like be out of town or something. Yeah, that's another big one too. Like sometimes, yeah, that's, well, let's go ahead and talk about coups, should we? Okay, sure. So a coup is, there are different kinds of coup or coup d'etat, 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. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. And they're like, man, the discount on this dishwasher was not worth leaving the country for over this. SPEAKER_06: 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. SPEAKER_08: No, there's a term, a bloodless coup. Yeah. And it's basically like a couple of the things that make coups, or is it just coup like you were saying? There's no S? No, there's an S. Is it silent? No, I don't know that. So we're going to go with coups. Okay. A couple of hallmarks of coups that you were saying, like 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're 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 bad. SPEAKER_06: 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 SPEAKER_08: back. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what happened to them. I think Erdogan said like the people were going to be punished, but not necessarily executed, but I don't know if that's true or not. And that's another thing that can make a coup bloody is that it can fail. And then the people who were 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, right. No, I'm sorry, Chile. Yeah, Chile. Where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the military to get rid of the old guy, Salvador Allende, and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it. And then they executed Allende. SPEAKER_06: 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 just a very small overthrowing of the current government. Right, that's all. SPEAKER_08: So you want to take another break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. SPEAKER_08: Every person living with a rare autoimmune condition navigates their own unique journey. That's why in season two of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, they are sharing even more empowering stories. SPEAKER_06: That's right. From myasthenia gravis to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP, learn about the daily challenges and triumphs of those with these conditions. Yep, host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the SPEAKER_08: debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by these conditions. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with an autoimmune condition has a story to tell. By featuring these real life experiences, the podcast hopes to inspire each community, SPEAKER_06: educate others about these severe conditions, and let those living with them know that they are not alone. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_08: with one password. Find your holiday happy place. Prime Video. Restrictions apply. See amazon.com slash amazon prime for details. SPEAKER_00: All right, we're back. SPEAKER_06: What's a junta? SPEAKER_08: Well, it's related to the jacama root. The jicama? SPEAKER_06: No, that's not true at all. And I didn't really know this, but I've heard a military junta. SPEAKER_08: Wait, you know it's junta. Is it really? Yeah, that's how I was making that joke. Yeah, okay, I wasn't sure. Because I called jicama jacama. Right. Yeah. Are you sure it's not jacama? You sure it's not junta? SPEAKER_06: Ah, yes. It is. It's a military junta. So the junta is almost like a dictatorship by committee. You find these a lot in Latin America, and it's a committee of military leaders who essentially act like a dictator. SPEAKER_08: Right. Instead of one leader, it's maybe three, four top-ranking military usually. If you like Fiji brand water, you're supporting a military junta when you buy that. As of 2006, the military rose up in Fiji and over through the government, and now military junta runs the show there. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's a bad scene over there. SPEAKER_08: 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 president and I were on shaky ground... Yeah, don't go anywhere. Nope, I'd be like, I'm sitting right here. SPEAKER_06: You'd be scarface. You'd just be like in your office with submachine guns. Right. Well, probably not the mountain of cocaine. Right. SPEAKER_08: Although I could because I'd be a dictator and no one could say anything. Do anything you want. 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 as long as the president's there for some reason physically, it makes it 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 can say, yes, I am. You say, no, you're not. We have the guns. Get out of the military. You're right though. It is weird. Get out of the presidential palace. Yeah, it's very passive aggressive to just like change the deadbolts when they leave. SPEAKER_06: It is. It really is. Say sorry, can't get to your bedroom anymore. SPEAKER_08: But Thailand had the same thing, but their hoon-ta was, the coup carried out by the hoon-ta was apparently popularly supported. Oh, it was? Yeah. It was the president who was like, I vote nay. Everybody else said yay. SPEAKER_06: 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. SPEAKER_08: That's a big deal though, actually, because I mean, democracy or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate that dictators will hold like farcical elections. It's 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 in your life. SPEAKER_06: SPEAKER_06: 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 60s here in 2005. And you can choose your local civic leaders and your local councils. But women can't vote. SPEAKER_06: Like technically they can, but you don't have the ID 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 saying you don't have ID, so you can't vote, so you might as well not be allowed to vote. SPEAKER_08: Right. So since there's an entire gender that's excluded from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a little less farcical than say, one where it's like... Where you have no opposition. Yeah. Yeah. And I found this article, it's hilarious. It's called Dictatorships. It was on like Kidsnet in Australia. Did you see that thing? I did. 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 was just kind of a weird juxtaposition. It had misspellings in it too, which was weird. SPEAKER_08: 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 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 15% 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, and that they just said that this was a legitimate election. Interesting. SPEAKER_06: Well, we talked a little bit about 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. Lenin suffered stroke, Stalin suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. All the power and money and influence in the world is not going to save you in the end, my friend, Mr. Dictator. Only paranoia will save you and keep you alive. SPEAKER_06: It's always just kind of pitiful though, I don't know. SPEAKER_08: I disagree. Oh, really? Yeah, I think it's worth dancing on their graves over. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't mean pitiful for them. SPEAKER_06: It's just they never... It seems like they always go out with a whimper. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. You know? Some go out with machine gun fire though. Yeah? Yeah. SPEAKER_06: It just 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. SPEAKER_08: 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 they're doing with their lives. Should we read a few of these weird things done by dictators? SPEAKER_08: Sure. And we should say it's widely believed that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide. What are there, like 70 of them now? The most I saw was 24 right now. Oh. And the reason why is, again, I think liberal democracy is basically changing the game. But there was a big influx after the Cold War ended where the... I'm sorry. The Cold War began. There was a big influx. Because a lot of the old colonial powers that had colonies in, say, Africa and Asia, suddenly said, World War II's over. We're getting out of the imperialism game. Good luck. And 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 a 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 to 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? SPEAKER_07: SPEAKER_06: The one that 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... Enough of pointers. 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. SPEAKER_08: Here's a book on liberal democracies. Read it and do it. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: And that we might have a more successful approach to foreign policy if there was a little bit more understanding on how these systems work. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: And that a lot of 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. Yeah. So when we actually threaten other countries that are autocratic, all we're doing is making the leader more powerful. Right. Whereas if we treat them like as kind of a weak leader of a weak state that is run in a way that suggests that the people aren't really behind it because they have to be run with an iron fist, then that person's probably going to eventually get deposed. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. It was an interesting article. It was in Reason Magazine, I think. It was written by John Basil Utley. And if that guy's not British, no idea who is. SPEAKER_07: SPEAKER_06: All right. So we promised a few weird things. Where did you find this one? Ode. Strange things done by evil dictators. Kim Jong Il, those dude in South Korea named Shin Sang-ok. And he was known as the Orson Welles of South Korea. And he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically, Kim Jong Il 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. SPEAKER_08: It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollock in the early 50s, but Jackson Pollock wasn't aware that he was being propped up. Because he was drunk. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: So they did remake Godzilla sort of in a movie called Polgasari. And I looked it up and he basically looks like Godzilla with like minotaur horns coming out the side. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Not the best. SPEAKER_06: What else? This Beatles story was kind of nuts. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. The Markoses. Remember Imelda Marcos and Oliver Shoes? Yeah. Who can forget? Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, they ruled the Philippines for a while. And apparently they loved the Beatles back in the 60s. 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. 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. SPEAKER_06: 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 accept these formal state invitations really as a rule. I gotcha. Either way, they didn't go. And Imelda 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 1964 when you're in the Beatles, it's not a good place, especially in the Philippines, to find yourself. Yeah. SPEAKER_08: They basically had to escape to the airport and just run out to the plane and head off. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: And one of their dudes was beaten really badly and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane and then had to basically was shaken down to pay them back money from the concert to get on the plane. And then later on, Mr. Lennon gave peace a chance, John Lennon said, yeah, if we go back to the Philippines, it's going to be with an H-bomb. Geez. Did he really say that? Yeah. Wow. He said he won't even fly over it. So they did not have a good experience here. Wow. SPEAKER_06: Who's next? I think the Idi Amin one was kind of interesting. SPEAKER_08: That sounds so Idi Amin. Totally. He declared himself president for life. Yeah, P4L. And 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. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. If you look up white man's burden and Amin in Google images, there's a couple of really great pictures of these kind of blonde white men in suits carrying around this giant Ugandan man in a chair. SPEAKER_08: Have you ever read the Bukowski book that was the basis for Barfly? SPEAKER_06: Yeah. SPEAKER_08: Which one was that? Hollywood, I think is what it's called. I read Hollywood. SPEAKER_06: Was that the one? Yeah. SPEAKER_08: He talks about watching a documentary about Idi Amin and how Idi Amin 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 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. SPEAKER_06: The Forest Whitaker movie. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. The Last King of Scotland. Yeah. Great movie. Poor James McAvoy. SPEAKER_06: You know, you can stay in Charles Bukowski's house that he grew up in an Airbnb now. Oh, really? Yep. Nice. It's been remodeled. No, he wouldn't like that. But no, he would hate the whole thing. I'm sure. SPEAKER_08: How about Gaddafi? We'll end with him. Sure. So Muammar Gaddafi 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. And apparently... What, this podcast? No, Gaddafi is the whole Amazonian Guard, the whole thing. Yeah. So Gaddafi 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, I guess. SPEAKER_06: So he surrounded himself with female bodyguards who were also trained to kill. SPEAKER_08: Yeah. But they weren't like the Finbots. Wore makeup and lipstick. Yeah. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: Oh, actually, can we mention the Hitler thing? Because is this true? I don't know. That's why I walked past it. It sounds like urban legend, but supposedly Hitler came up with a synthetic blow up doll SPEAKER_06: to comfort soldiers. And it was referred to as a synthetic comforter. SPEAKER_07: Yep. SPEAKER_06: Blonde hair, blue eyes, could fit in a backpack. And they only made about 50 of them because the soldiers were like, I'm not carrying that thing around. Right. What are you crazy? And he went, in fact, I am. You'll see. Waka waka. SPEAKER_08: If you want to know more about dictators, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. SPEAKER_06: 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. It's 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, breast milk and dump it in the bottle to use. Oh, no. You were saying that I didn't pick up on it. SPEAKER_08: Well, I just I think I've kind of threw that term around as just the general term for breast SPEAKER_06: pumping. That's fine. But dumping is dumping it down the drain for one reason or another. Like you maybe have had some alcohol or whatever. Dumping it straight to hell. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. So, yeah, pump and dump. It sort of just kind of went wild there. That's okay, Chuck. SPEAKER_08: 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. SPEAKER_06: Huh. All right. So it feels weird. I promise the story about bottle feeding kittens, which you ever done that? A little baby animal that you got to 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. You're like, you want this bottle or not? Breakfast. SPEAKER_08: I could crush you. SPEAKER_06: 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, quote, drug abuse, end 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. SPEAKER_08: Yeah, this is a weird email. SPEAKER_06: 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 stray kitten from our gutter. It's a 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. It was pretty special. I was maybe nine at the time, but gladly took time away from playing Zelda to feed the kitten. Playing Zelda. SPEAKER_08: I forget it. SPEAKER_06: 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. P.S. The ferrets ended up living for years and years. SPEAKER_08: That was a mysterious email in a lot of ways. It's like a David Lynch email. Thanks a lot, Chris, with a K, I imagine? No. Oh, OK. 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.com stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. SPEAKER_05: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. SPEAKER_04: Have you heard about Vivgard? F-Guard, TIGAMOD, Alpha, F-Cab? Ask your neurologist if Vivgard could be right for you. And learn more at vivgard.com slash learn. That's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T dot com slash learn. Brought to you by Archenex. 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