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