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Selects: How Dictators Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. For this select I've chosen
0:03
Speaker 1: our twenty seventeen episode on Dictators, how much the world
0:08
Speaker 1: can change in just a few years. We mentioned a
0:11
Speaker 1: couple of times in this episode that authoritarianism was on
0:14
Speaker 1: the wane and that it was being replaced by good
0:17
Speaker 1: old democracy. I'm sad in the report that has changed
0:20
Speaker 1: in recent years as authoritarianism has come barreling back and
0:24
Speaker 1: in some surprising places. Listen to this episode to find
0:27
Speaker 1: out why that's a bad thing.
0:34
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:44
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
0:47
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and it's
0:52
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen.
0:54
Speaker 2: Jerry our benevolent dictator.
0:57
Speaker 1: Yeah for real, she's got those lis that she wears
1:01
Speaker 1: all the time in sunglasses.
1:06
Speaker 2: I was just commenting and I thought, this is a
1:07
Speaker 2: pretty good article here from How Stuff Works.
1:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've heard that before.
1:13
Speaker 2: Who wrote this one? Do you have that on there?
1:14
Speaker 1: No?
1:15
Speaker 2: I always have it on there, and you didn't have
1:17
Speaker 2: it today.
1:17
Speaker 1: It might be a Shane of Freeman joint.
1:19
Speaker 2: I think it may be that sounds familiar. Yeah, anyway,
1:23
Speaker 2: it's a good one. Yeah, and here it is.
1:27
Speaker 1: That was word for word my intro that you just stole.
1:31
Speaker 2: Well, my mind reading classes have been paying off, chuck.
1:35
Speaker 1: Yes, have you ever lived under a dictatorship?
1:39
Speaker 2: Not exactly.
1:40
Speaker 1: No, No, I haven't either. Yeah, and I think we
1:44
Speaker 1: should kind of consider ourselves fairly lucky. Sure, because it
1:47
Speaker 1: turns out that not only were we born in a
1:53
Speaker 1: country that most people would argue is not a dictatorship,
1:56
Speaker 1: although you can find plenty of websites that argue that
1:58
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it's been for the last several years,
2:01
Speaker 1: possibly even for the most part, most people would say
2:05
Speaker 1: it's not a dictatorship. So we were lucky to be
2:07
Speaker 1: born in a country that isn't a dictatorship. But not
2:09
Speaker 1: only that, we're lucky to be born in a time
2:12
Speaker 1: when dictatorships have become fairly hard to find, comparatively speaking,
2:19
Speaker 1: because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled
2:25
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. Yeah, up until very recent times,
2:29
Speaker 1: around the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of
2:33
Speaker 1: individual liberties and the protection of those individual liberties became
2:39
Speaker 1: kind of widespread.
2:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this article kind of starts off. I thought
2:43
Speaker 2: it was I thought it was interesting that you don't often. Well,
2:48
Speaker 2: first of all, the word dictator is just one like
2:51
Speaker 2: the one who dictates the thing. It's kind of funny
2:53
Speaker 2: when you break down the actual definition. Yeah, you're like, oh, well, yeah,
2:57
Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense.
2:58
Speaker 1: Then it's the guy who paces back and fourth in
3:00
Speaker 1: front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying.
3:03
Speaker 2: Take dictation. Yeah, but they don't call themselves that very often,
3:07
Speaker 2: although it has happened before we get into the history.
3:11
Speaker 2: It's we should point out that like Castro and Saddam Hussein,
3:16
Speaker 2: you never hear them say I'm dictator as a bad rap,
3:21
Speaker 2: you know, I'm the dictator Fidel Castro.
3:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like how propaganda got turned into pr Yeah, they.
3:27
Speaker 2: Will call themselves premier or president or chancellor or furer
3:32
Speaker 2: boss of you. Kim Jong Ill holds three titles, and
3:38
Speaker 2: I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth like
3:40
Speaker 2: as we.
3:41
Speaker 1: Speak, well, he's in the ground his son.
3:44
Speaker 2: Oh wait, I got this too confused, right, Yeah, well
3:46
Speaker 2: he held three titles, Yes he did. I imagine, Well,
3:49
Speaker 2: his son probably holds four. Then he probably found that fourth.
3:53
Speaker 2: Just made one up.
3:54
Speaker 1: Did you know though, that there's like a you know,
3:56
Speaker 1: the Kim Jong un is the supreme leader of North Korea,
4:01
Speaker 1: but he actually technically shares power with two other officials
4:05
Speaker 1: as well. They have basically a triumvirt going there. That
4:08
Speaker 1: was news to me.
4:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. Those guys are called Keep Quiet one and Keep
4:11
Speaker 2: Quiet two.
4:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was just looking up some of his greatest
4:15
Speaker 1: hits recently. Yeah, and Kim Jong un alone has already
4:20
Speaker 1: started to amass several but one was a North Korean leader,
4:25
Speaker 1: pretty high ranking official was executed with an anti aircraft
4:29
Speaker 1: machine gun for slouching or falling asleep at a meeting.
4:35
Speaker 2: Holy cow, right, but do you hear stuff like imagine
4:37
Speaker 2: what that would do to a body?
4:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god. But you should take that kind
4:42
Speaker 1: of stuff with a grain of salt, especially when it's
4:43
Speaker 1: coming out of North Korea, because we have really virtually
4:47
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on day to day over there,
4:50
Speaker 1: even big events like that. Even if it is true
4:52
Speaker 1: that that guy was executed with an anti aircraft gun,
4:56
Speaker 1: whether or not it was for falling asleep during a
5:00
Speaker 1: meeting or something like that, remains to be seen.
5:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're saying, take any information with a grain of salt.
5:05
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's good advice. Thanks.
5:09
Speaker 2: But as Shana I believe. Shana points out that dictators
5:14
Speaker 2: do have some things in common, and one of the
5:16
Speaker 2: big ones is is almost one hundred percent of the
5:19
Speaker 2: time a dictator doesn't come to power through an election.
5:22
Speaker 2: They're usually not freely elected to that position.
5:25
Speaker 1: No, but they have been. They have been, yeah, pretty
5:28
Speaker 1: prominently like Hitler.
5:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he was an electored though. Wasn't he named chancellor?
5:34
Speaker 1: Yes, by the elected president though, right, but he still
5:39
Speaker 1: wasn't elected. No, I guess that's true. Okay, fine, well.
5:44
Speaker 2: Let's get into history then.
5:45
Speaker 1: All right, so you say dictator's got a bad it's
5:50
Speaker 1: gotten a bad rap over the years, right.
5:51
Speaker 2: As far as calling yourself that, I think so.
5:53
Speaker 1: But it officially originally and I couldn't. I saw a
5:57
Speaker 1: couple of references to Greece. But it seems to be Rome,
6:00
Speaker 1: classic Rome, classic Rome. Yeah, trips coming into the party
6:07
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, that's classic room.
6:09
Speaker 2: He tried to walk through that screen door it wasn't open.
6:13
Speaker 1: So classical Rome. How about that? It seems to be
6:17
Speaker 1: an invention of classical Rome. Right. There was a station
6:22
Speaker 1: called dictator. There was an office basically, and in ancient
6:26
Speaker 1: Rome the leadership was held by two men called councils,
6:32
Speaker 1: and they were equally powerful from what I understand, Consuls
6:35
Speaker 1: council Console. Okay, sure, right, And when something went down
6:41
Speaker 1: and stuff hit the fan, the Romans had a tradition
6:45
Speaker 1: of appointing one of the councils dictator, which is basically
6:50
Speaker 1: an emergency investment of unparalleled power into this one person.
6:55
Speaker 1: And the whole thinking behind it was when you were
6:58
Speaker 1: faced with an emergency. See, when the state was faced
7:01
Speaker 1: with an emergency, you needed somebody who could basically get
7:03
Speaker 1: stuff done.
7:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a single voice.
7:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't have to go to the Senate to
7:06
Speaker 1: ask anything, didn't have to go worry about making the
7:10
Speaker 1: wrong move. The dictator couldn't be held criminally liable for
7:15
Speaker 1: their decisions.
7:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't have to worry about not being invited to
7:18
Speaker 2: the other consuls Christmas party the next year.
7:21
Speaker 1: Right, the other council wanted to be invited to the
7:24
Speaker 1: dictators Christmas party. That's right. So there was an investment
7:28
Speaker 1: of these emergency powers in this one person. And usually
7:30
Speaker 1: I saw one year. This article says it lasted for
7:33
Speaker 1: six months, and then the dictator would be like, wow,
7:36
Speaker 1: that was a while ride. I'm going back to my
7:37
Speaker 1: normal life. The rebellion has been quelled or the siege
7:41
Speaker 1: is over, something like that.
7:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, And interestingly, there were a few rules. They couldn't
7:46
Speaker 2: be held legally responsible for their actions, right, big one
7:51
Speaker 2: It says, couldn't be in an office longer than six months,
7:53
Speaker 2: although I think I think they were there to handle
7:56
Speaker 2: the situation as kind of as long as that took. Yeah,
7:59
Speaker 2: for the most part.
8:00
Speaker 1: But there were also guys who are like, whoa, I
8:03
Speaker 1: like the feel of this. Yeah, I'm not giving this up.
8:06
Speaker 1: And they'll say, well you have to, we say, and
8:08
Speaker 1: then they said, well I'm the dictator and they said
8:11
Speaker 1: we hadn't thought this all the way through.
8:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they could change Roman law and
8:17
Speaker 2: the constitution. They couldn't use public money and less other
8:21
Speaker 2: than what the Senate said you could use it for.
8:23
Speaker 2: So they supposedly still and these are the official rules,
8:26
Speaker 2: you know, as we see coming up here. People bent
8:30
Speaker 2: these rules and they couldn't leave Italy was the last one.
8:33
Speaker 1: Oh, this is a good one. And they would have
8:35
Speaker 1: like Colombo come in and deliver that last bit we look,
8:40
Speaker 1: just don't leave Italy for a while.
8:42
Speaker 2: Okay, that's your Colombo impression. Yeah, he sounded just like
8:47
Speaker 2: Josh Clark.
8:48
Speaker 1: Thought it was spot on.
8:51
Speaker 2: So this kind of happened here and there until about
8:54
Speaker 2: two two BC, and then about one hundred years after
8:59
Speaker 2: that gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I love all these
9:05
Speaker 2: Roman dictators sound like either seventies like black exploitation movie
9:10
Speaker 2: stars or Roman gladiators. Sure, so he was appointed dictator
9:15
Speaker 2: without a term limit and didn't have these restrictions, and
9:18
Speaker 2: so this sort of changed the game from here on out.
9:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he actually wanted Caesar dead. So Caesar ran
9:25
Speaker 1: off and joined the army Julius Caesar, I should say,
9:29
Speaker 1: and just basically laid low until Sulla died. And then
9:33
Speaker 1: Caesar came back and he was appointed counsel and then
9:36
Speaker 1: dictator himself. He succeeded Sola, right, Yes, and Caesar is
9:42
Speaker 1: very well known to be a dictator. But he actually,
9:46
Speaker 1: if you look at the stuff he did, he was
9:49
Speaker 1: a friend to the people. He forgave debts among.
9:52
Speaker 2: The benevolent dictator pretty much.
9:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, among the middle and lower classes. He improved infrastructure,
9:59
Speaker 1: He he basically went to bat for the lower classes,
10:04
Speaker 1: which threatened the elite because he made him immensely popular.
10:07
Speaker 1: Plus he was a dictator, so he actually created a
10:11
Speaker 1: he staged to coup to become a dictator, right, to
10:15
Speaker 1: gain power.
10:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, which we'll talk about a little more.
10:18
Speaker 1: And then a coup was plotted against him and he
10:20
Speaker 1: was assassinated by the ruling elite of the Senate.
10:25
Speaker 2: On my birthday. Yeah, well a long time before my birthday,
10:30
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
10:31
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy one.
10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we've tossed out benevolent dictator a couple
10:37
Speaker 2: of times, kidding around, but that's a real term, and
10:39
Speaker 2: that generally means a dictator who for the most part,
10:42
Speaker 2: isn't just in it for themselves and they are trying
10:44
Speaker 2: to make things better for the people.
10:46
Speaker 1: Right, But it depends on your perspective.
10:49
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly.
10:49
Speaker 1: So, like the ruling elite found him very threatening, they
10:53
Speaker 1: would not have considered him benevolent at all. Right, But
10:55
Speaker 1: like say, the average plebeian would have been like, I
10:57
Speaker 1: love Caesar. Yeah, give me some more of the coins
11:00
Speaker 1: with his face on it.
11:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean followers of Castro still after his death
11:06
Speaker 2: say he was a benevolent dictator, sure, but again people say, no,
11:09
Speaker 2: it's perspective, it's a subjective term.
11:11
Speaker 1: Basically.
11:12
Speaker 2: Napoleon actually he came to power again like many dictators,
11:18
Speaker 2: in a state of emergency, and he was actually a
11:21
Speaker 2: benevolent dictator in a sense because he did a lot
11:26
Speaker 2: of great things for a while for the people.
11:29
Speaker 1: Right. He was extremely popular. Yeah, he was undefeated at
11:33
Speaker 1: the time that he rose to power. He was appointed
11:36
Speaker 1: counsel and then he said, you know what, let's go
11:38
Speaker 1: a little further that I'm going to call myself emperor.
11:41
Speaker 1: And they said, oh, okay, Napoleon, what could possibly go
11:43
Speaker 1: wrong with that?
11:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, first he was named consul. Then he was like,
11:47
Speaker 2: I think consul for life has a better ring to it.
11:49
Speaker 2: And then that wasn't enough, so he's like, let's just
11:52
Speaker 2: shorten that. Like you said, though, he was super popular
11:56
Speaker 2: because he was undefeated as a military leader. He balanced
12:01
Speaker 2: the budget, he reformed government, he wrote the civil law,
12:04
Speaker 2: which a lot of his is still around today in France.
12:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, civil law, right, not too bad. He had a
12:10
Speaker 1: lasting impact, for sure, he did. But again again to
12:14
Speaker 1: call him benevolent. If you remember a parliament who was
12:17
Speaker 1: thrown out of one of the windows of parliament. Right,
12:20
Speaker 1: he took over, You probably wouldn't be like, you're so benevolent. Right.
12:25
Speaker 2: He also controlled had an iron thumb on the press,
12:28
Speaker 2: He controlled every fative government. He had a spies working
12:32
Speaker 2: for him. So it's not like he wasn't just you know,
12:37
Speaker 2: Buds of the Clown.
12:38
Speaker 1: No, Boz of the Clown was super shady. No. If
12:42
Speaker 1: you put all that together, though, Chuck, you get the
12:44
Speaker 1: impression of why historians considered Napoleon the first modern dictator.
12:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
12:51
Speaker 1: He checked basically every box there was. He had it
12:53
Speaker 1: figured out.
12:54
Speaker 2: He drew new boxes and checked those.
12:56
Speaker 1: Right, he said, all dictators to follow, here's your box.
13:00
Speaker 1: I just looked down at your notes and I want
13:02
Speaker 1: to show you something. I think we should take a break.
13:04
Speaker 1: But before then, okay, Chuck, I think you should see this.
13:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
13:11
Speaker 1: So in this article on dictators from How Stuff Works,
13:16
Speaker 1: there's a sidebar is what they're called in web print parlance. Yeah,
13:21
Speaker 1: just a little extra bit, and the title of the
13:24
Speaker 1: subbar is Darth Dictator.
13:26
Speaker 2: That's all we need to say.
13:27
Speaker 1: And it talks about Emperor Palpatine in his rise. And
13:30
Speaker 1: Chuck had his xt out ye and I independently Xi
13:34
Speaker 1: migne out as well. So we won't be talking about
13:36
Speaker 1: that today, everybody.
13:37
Speaker 2: No, but let's do take that break and we'll discuss
13:40
Speaker 2: that in private, so you don't get to know about it,
13:42
Speaker 2: and we'll be right back.
13:43
Speaker 1: Definitely should now, Lars Chuck and Ryan.
13:51
Speaker 2: Sk All, Right, so we're back. We talked about one
14:08
Speaker 2: of the things that dictators had in common is they
14:11
Speaker 2: generally aren't elected in it like a fair election. They
14:17
Speaker 2: are usually ruling autocracies. A lot of times they have
14:23
Speaker 2: what's called the totalitarian regime.
14:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should talk about that.
14:27
Speaker 2: That's a big one. That means you, like you were
14:30
Speaker 2: in control of all the news and all the media
14:33
Speaker 2: that gets out about everything.
14:34
Speaker 1: Right, So there's a lot of confusion over the difference
14:39
Speaker 1: between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. And a totalitarian regime is authoritarian,
14:48
Speaker 1: but not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian. Yeah. An authoritarian
14:52
Speaker 1: regime is where the government is headed by one single leader. Yeah, Okay,
14:56
Speaker 1: there's no parliament, there's no courts, there's no nothing that
14:59
Speaker 1: the that leader doesn't either control or just doesn't exist
15:03
Speaker 1: to counter that leader's decisions. A totalitarian regime is like
15:07
Speaker 1: you were saying.
15:07
Speaker 2: I think you're missing in the eye there.
15:09
Speaker 1: They could. It's like deletrious. They control everything, not just
15:14
Speaker 1: the government. They control the social aspects of life in
15:17
Speaker 1: that country. They control the economy of that country, they
15:21
Speaker 1: control the media, they control everything. It's totalitarian.
15:28
Speaker 2: Personal freedoms might be vanquished, might be there might be police,
15:33
Speaker 2: secret police, there might be spies spying on citizens. It's
15:37
Speaker 2: not a good way to live.
15:39
Speaker 1: No, And also you will probably be encouraged that as
15:44
Speaker 1: a citizen, to spy on your fellow citizens, because authoritarian
15:47
Speaker 1: regimes quickly learn that if you have a large population,
15:51
Speaker 1: it's kind of tough and very expensive to keep tabs
15:54
Speaker 1: on everybody. So if you have a secret police going
15:57
Speaker 1: around and people are aware that there is a secret police,
16:00
Speaker 1: to behave themselves more. And if you can get your
16:02
Speaker 1: citizens to kind of keep an eye on one another,
16:04
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna behave even further. That's a terrible way to live.
16:08
Speaker 2: Well, And you know what, Like it sounds like a
16:10
Speaker 2: totalitarian ruler would be. I bet there's a lot of
16:14
Speaker 2: paranoi that goes along with that. Like when you're in
16:17
Speaker 2: that kind of position, Oh, if you're the ruler, Yeah,
16:19
Speaker 2: it's not just like rule everything. So it's all good.
16:21
Speaker 2: Like at that point, you don't know who to trust you, right,
16:24
Speaker 2: you're probably always looking over your shoulder, you know. It's
16:27
Speaker 2: not like why bother with all that? Right, Like you
16:31
Speaker 2: know it's gonna end badly.
16:33
Speaker 1: Just kickback and light of dooby instead? Why bother with
16:38
Speaker 1: all that?
16:40
Speaker 2: Many times there they foster what's known as a cult
16:43
Speaker 2: of personality, and this is a big one. Yeah, if
16:47
Speaker 2: you went into and saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or you
16:50
Speaker 2: go to North Korea or in the times of like
16:54
Speaker 2: Lenin and Stalin, you're going to see a lot of
16:56
Speaker 2: posters and statues of these leaders everywhere.
17:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, you're taught that the leader is basically
17:06
Speaker 1: the state.
17:07
Speaker 2: Who is this the leader?
17:08
Speaker 1: Right, and the state is the most important thing. But
17:12
Speaker 1: the state is personified by the leader. And sometimes they'll
17:15
Speaker 1: even go so far as the state by the way,
17:17
Speaker 1: the leader is descended directly from God. Yeah, so go
17:21
Speaker 1: make a painting of a kid, right, and we're going
17:24
Speaker 1: to put it up in the town square.
17:25
Speaker 2: Who was the one who had the statue rotated to
17:27
Speaker 2: face the sun?
17:28
Speaker 1: He was the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name
17:32
Speaker 1: when he took over in nineteen ninety one. His birth
17:36
Speaker 1: name was Supermarat Niyazov, but he changed his name to Turkmenbashi,
17:42
Speaker 1: and then he started naming everything in Turkmenistan Turkmenbashi, including
17:47
Speaker 1: the month of January. But he created that statue.
17:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he had the golden statue rotated to always
17:54
Speaker 2: face the sun.
17:55
Speaker 1: So yeah, he was always facing the sun. And he said,
17:58
Speaker 1: read that quote, man, that quote is awesome.
18:00
Speaker 2: Oh right, he said, quote. I'm personally against seeing my
18:04
Speaker 2: pictures and statues in the streets, but it's what the
18:07
Speaker 2: people want.
18:10
Speaker 1: We got that, I think from an ode list.
18:12
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, we'll probably pepper in more of those, Okay,
18:16
Speaker 2: But I mean, I hope this drives home the point
18:18
Speaker 2: that these totalitarian dictators, they're narcissists, their megalomaniacs. They are
18:27
Speaker 2: obviously paranoid, otherwise they wouldn't need to rule with an
18:30
Speaker 2: iron fist. And yeah, it's it's not a good way
18:36
Speaker 2: to run a country. Like I said, it always ends badly.
18:39
Speaker 2: I guess to get caught up in the power and
18:42
Speaker 2: they don't see what history has taught us time and
18:44
Speaker 2: time again.
18:44
Speaker 1: I wish we knew what it was because you can
18:49
Speaker 1: look around, especially in the world today and see country
18:52
Speaker 1: after country after country sliding down that rabbit hole.
18:55
Speaker 2: Well, it's a mental disorder on their part, I think.
18:57
Speaker 1: But it doesn't just have to be there, doesn't just
18:59
Speaker 1: have to be like a single leader. Like even liberal
19:01
Speaker 1: democracies are starting to slide down that hole where like
19:05
Speaker 1: they want all the information possible on everybody and ultimately
19:08
Speaker 1: to keep control. You know, but is it based on
19:11
Speaker 1: fear or is it based on paranoia, or is it
19:13
Speaker 1: based on that desire to hang on to power or
19:16
Speaker 1: what Witch's brew? Of all those things, is it that
19:20
Speaker 1: creates that? Why do we keep doing it over and
19:22
Speaker 1: over and over again. Yeah, because it always is the
19:25
Speaker 1: it's the it's the death knell for a civilization. When
19:30
Speaker 1: it's when the leadership starts doing that, it's unsustainable.
19:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and we'll talk a little bit about how
19:35
Speaker 2: they end, but it always is badly. Like you see
19:39
Speaker 2: like Saddam Hussein and power like in these military uniforms,
19:43
Speaker 2: and then you see this like sad old man pulled
19:46
Speaker 2: out of a fox hole.
19:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like she's washed up on Gilligan's Island
19:50
Speaker 1: or something.
19:50
Speaker 2: Like that, or Noriega like wasting away in prison, like
19:53
Speaker 2: begging to get out in a wheelchair.
19:55
Speaker 1: And I would like to know the story behind that,
19:57
Speaker 1: because Noega, Yeah, Panama on the UA, we're pretty good friends.
20:01
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, the US invades, and now
20:04
Speaker 1: Manuel Noriega is in prison in Miami and has been
20:06
Speaker 1: for thirty years. Them went down that prison, is he Oh,
20:10
Speaker 1: that's right, and then they transferred him to uh.
20:13
Speaker 2: Well outside the Panama Canal. Ironically, Oh really, yeah, he's
20:17
Speaker 2: in some prison there. He's like in a wheelchair and
20:19
Speaker 2: in his early eighties and just yeah, not doing so hot.
20:22
Speaker 1: But he served his whole sentence I think in Miami,
20:25
Speaker 1: and then they transferred him to Panama to phil to
20:29
Speaker 1: carry out another sentence down there. Oh really yeah, wow, yeah,
20:32
Speaker 1: but something went down that I don't know about. I'm
20:34
Speaker 1: intensely curious to know. If anybody knows out there, tell me.
20:39
Speaker 2: I'm sure you could find that up pretty easy, right.
20:42
Speaker 1: Apparently not.
20:44
Speaker 2: I was just kidding. I bet it's highly guarded secret.
20:47
Speaker 1: You think, even after all these years, I don't know.
20:50
Speaker 1: Noriega had motor he was a motormouth. I'm sure he
20:54
Speaker 1: told everybody who'd listened.
20:56
Speaker 2: Uh, well, we mentioned Hitler earlier. He, like you said,
21:01
Speaker 2: although not elected, was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor
21:05
Speaker 2: by President Paul von Hindenberg, and then once Hindenburg died,
21:09
Speaker 2: Hitler said, you know what, there's this German word furor
21:14
Speaker 2: that means leader, and he went, why don't we just
21:16
Speaker 2: make that my new title, which is because we don't
21:19
Speaker 2: really need a president and a chancellor. I can be
21:22
Speaker 2: both dudes, and then eventually I'll just kill myself in
21:25
Speaker 2: a bunker.
21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
21:27
Speaker 2: Another I'd say sad end, but just pitiful end.
21:32
Speaker 1: You know, that's a great word for.
21:34
Speaker 2: Sad indicates that, you know what I mean. I don't
21:37
Speaker 2: have to over explain that due out.
21:40
Speaker 1: So but Hitler he came to power legitimately. So did
21:44
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein. Actually he was the general of the Iraqi
21:47
Speaker 1: Army and vice president, and then as the president came,
21:51
Speaker 1: I think he fell ill. Saddam Hussein started to take
21:55
Speaker 1: on more and more power and finally was just like
21:58
Speaker 1: I'm president forever now, okay, And I think that's the case.
22:01
Speaker 1: The point that this article is making is that there's
22:04
Speaker 1: a number of different ways a dictator can come to power.
22:07
Speaker 1: They can come to power and a power vacuum. They
22:09
Speaker 1: can come to power and a coup, which we'll talk about.
22:11
Speaker 1: They can come to power democratically. But if it's the
22:16
Speaker 1: kind of person who wants to rule unfettered, Yeah, and
22:24
Speaker 1: they come they know how to basically work the populace
22:28
Speaker 1: and the circumstances are right, you know, like maybe there's
22:31
Speaker 1: fear of outsiders coming your way, or the economy's bad
22:36
Speaker 1: or something like that, then you can conceivably consolidate your
22:40
Speaker 1: power and turn whatever situation into a dictatorship.
22:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
22:45
Speaker 1: I think it's more it's based on the person and
22:47
Speaker 1: the circumstances that the nation is in when that person
22:51
Speaker 1: grabs power than it is on how they actually get
22:55
Speaker 1: into power.
22:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and whether or not the current leader just happens
22:58
Speaker 2: like be out of town or something.
22:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's another big one too.
23:01
Speaker 2: Sometimes. Yeah, that's just well, let's go ahead and talk about coups,
23:03
Speaker 2: should we? Okay, sure, So coup is There are different
23:07
Speaker 2: kinds of coup or coup d'eta, But a coup is
23:12
Speaker 2: different than a revolution in that there is it's generally
23:16
Speaker 2: a smaller affair. It's not some big mass uprising of people.
23:20
Speaker 2: It's a dude gets a smallish band of his military
23:25
Speaker 2: cohorts together and like we were talking about, either someone
23:28
Speaker 2: is sick or they're dying, or they're just out of
23:30
Speaker 2: the country on business, right, and they come back and
23:33
Speaker 2: they're like, you're not in charge anymore.
23:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry to tell you. Yeah, And they're like, man,
23:38
Speaker 1: they discount of this dishwasher is not worth leaving the
23:40
Speaker 1: country for over this. Uh.
23:42
Speaker 2: It can be Coups can be very bloody and violent,
23:45
Speaker 2: but they don't have to be. In fact, I think
23:48
Speaker 2: a lot of times they're not violent.
23:51
Speaker 1: No, there's a term of bloodless coup.
23:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:53
Speaker 1: And it's basically a couple of the things that make coups,
23:58
Speaker 1: uh or is it just coup like you were saying,
24:00
Speaker 1: there's no s.
24:01
Speaker 2: No, there's an s.
24:03
Speaker 1: Is it silent?
24:04
Speaker 2: I don't know that.
24:05
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go with coups, Okay. A couple of
24:08
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of coups that you were saying, like they're
24:11
Speaker 1: they're not popular uprisings. It's a small elite group that
24:14
Speaker 1: decided to do it, usually the higher ups in the military. Yeah,
24:17
Speaker 1: And they can be bloodless, where it can just be
24:20
Speaker 1: like you're not in charge any longer you were out
24:23
Speaker 1: of the country, stay out of the country. We're putting
24:25
Speaker 1: you in exile. Right. They can be bloody, especially if
24:29
Speaker 1: the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty
24:33
Speaker 1: in the military as well. Yeah, then it can turn
24:35
Speaker 1: pretty pretty bad.
24:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I get the feeling that a lot of
24:38
Speaker 2: times the coup isn't attempted unless they feel like they
24:41
Speaker 2: have the support to pull it off.
24:43
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look at Turkey or the people who
24:47
Speaker 1: tried that coup like just a few months back. Yeah,
24:49
Speaker 1: that's true. I don't know what happened to them. I
24:53
Speaker 1: think Airdwan said like the people were going to be punished,
24:55
Speaker 1: but not necessarily executed, But I don't know if that's
24:58
Speaker 1: true or not. That's another thing that can make a
25:01
Speaker 1: coup bloody is that it can fail and then the
25:04
Speaker 1: people who are carrying out the coup get executed, or
25:06
Speaker 1: it can succeed, and sometimes, just for good measure, the
25:11
Speaker 1: people carrying out the coup execute the former president, which
25:15
Speaker 1: was the case in Peru with Pinochet. Oh sorry Chile, Yeah, Chile,
25:21
Speaker 1: where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the
25:26
Speaker 1: military to get rid of the old guy. Salvador, A
25:28
Speaker 1: Andde and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it,
25:30
Speaker 1: and then they executed A and D.
25:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a coup doesn't always mean a dictator comes
25:35
Speaker 2: right in either. Sometimes a coup can just be temporary
25:38
Speaker 2: until they can elect a new national leader. Right, But
25:42
Speaker 2: it's just basically, uh, just a very small overthrowing of
25:46
Speaker 2: the current government.
25:46
Speaker 1: All right, that's all, So you want to take another break, Yeah,
25:50
Speaker 1: let's do it, okay. Definitely large trials of each.
25:59
Speaker 3: I asked, all right, we're back.
26:15
Speaker 2: What's a junta?
26:18
Speaker 1: Well, it's related to the Jacama root Hikkama.
26:25
Speaker 2: No, that's not true at all. And I didn't really
26:28
Speaker 2: know this, but I've heard a military junta.
26:31
Speaker 1: Well you know it's junta, is it really? Yeah, that's
26:34
Speaker 1: how I was making that joke. Okay, I wasn't sure
26:36
Speaker 1: because I called Hikkama jama Ya. Are you sure it's
26:41
Speaker 1: not Jacama?
26:42
Speaker 2: You sure it's not junta?
26:43
Speaker 1: I asked, it is? It's a military junta.
26:46
Speaker 2: So the junta is is almost like a dictatorship by committee.
26:50
Speaker 2: And you find these a lot in Latin America, and
26:52
Speaker 2: it's a committee of military leaders who essentially act like
26:57
Speaker 2: a dictator.
26:58
Speaker 1: Right, there's instead of one leader, yes, maybe three four
27:03
Speaker 1: top ranking military. Usually there's a If you like Fiji
27:07
Speaker 1: brand water, you're supporting a military hunt when you buy that.
27:11
Speaker 1: As of two thousand and six, the military rose up
27:14
Speaker 1: in Fiji and over through the government and now Military
27:17
Speaker 1: Hunt runs the show there.
27:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a bad scene over there.
27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thailand apparently had a coup that same year.
27:26
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right.
27:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, they followed the typical coup where the president left
27:32
Speaker 1: the country. If I were a president and I were
27:34
Speaker 1: on shaky ground.
27:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't go anywhere.
27:36
Speaker 1: Nope, I'd be like I'm sitting right here.
27:38
Speaker 2: You need scarface. You would just be like in your
27:40
Speaker 2: office with submachine guns. Right well, probably not the mountain
27:43
Speaker 2: of cocaine.
27:44
Speaker 1: Right well, I could because I'd be a dictator. No
27:47
Speaker 1: one could say anything, do any want. But there was
27:50
Speaker 1: one other thing that's really important too. Not only would
27:52
Speaker 1: I not leave the country, I wouldn't even leave the
27:55
Speaker 1: presidential palace because that's like one of the number one
27:58
Speaker 1: things you do in a coup is you secure the
28:01
Speaker 1: presidential palace. Ye, secure the prisons, secure the infrastructure, secure
28:06
Speaker 1: like the local media. And as long as the president's there,
28:10
Speaker 1: for some reason, physically it makes it exponentially harder. I
28:14
Speaker 1: don't know why. Yeah, but couldn't if you were the military.
28:17
Speaker 1: Couldn't you just go up to the president and be like,
28:19
Speaker 1: you're not president anymore and they could say yes I
28:22
Speaker 1: am yeah, you say no you're not. We have the guns,
28:25
Speaker 1: get out of the military presidential palace.
28:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like very passive aggressive to just like change
28:30
Speaker 2: change the dead vaults when it really is sorry, can't
28:34
Speaker 2: get to your bedroom anymore.
28:36
Speaker 1: But Thailand had the same thing, but their junta was
28:40
Speaker 1: the coup carried out by the junta was apparently popularly supported.
28:46
Speaker 1: Oh it was, Yeah, it was the president who's like
28:49
Speaker 1: I vote nay, everybody else said yay.
28:53
Speaker 2: So sometimes when there's a dictatorship, they actually give the
28:57
Speaker 2: appearance that they might hold elections, oh yeah, when in
29:01
Speaker 2: fact it's just sort of a farce.
29:03
Speaker 1: That's a big deal though, actually, because I mean democracy
29:08
Speaker 1: or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate that dictators
29:12
Speaker 1: will hold yeah, like farcical elections pageantry basically, yeah, to
29:17
Speaker 1: make it seem like the populace is all for them,
29:20
Speaker 1: but the elections will be like do you want to
29:23
Speaker 1: keep the leader. No one's running against the leader, right,
29:26
Speaker 1: But do you want to keep the leader? Yes? No,
29:29
Speaker 1: Please write your address down and include a picture of
29:31
Speaker 1: your most beloved person, right life.
29:35
Speaker 2: Or in the case of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin
29:38
Speaker 2: abdul Aziz al Sad, that's a mouthful, he said. You
29:43
Speaker 2: know what, We're going to have elections for the first
29:45
Speaker 2: time since the sixties here in two thousand and five,
29:49
Speaker 2: and you can choose your local civic leaders and your
29:52
Speaker 2: local councils. But women can't vote, Like technically they can,
29:59
Speaker 2: but you don't have the idea to vote because you're
30:01
Speaker 2: a woman, so you can't vote. And a man can't
30:04
Speaker 2: register you to vote because you're a woman, and there
30:08
Speaker 2: just aren't enough women poll workers to register you, so
30:11
Speaker 2: you also can't vote. So it's classic voter disenfranchisement. So
30:16
Speaker 2: you don't have IDs, so you can't vote, so you
30:18
Speaker 2: might as well not be allowed to vote.
30:19
Speaker 1: Right, So since there's a hole an entire gender that's
30:22
Speaker 1: excluded from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's
30:25
Speaker 1: a little less farcical than say, you know one where
30:29
Speaker 1: it's like.
30:29
Speaker 2: Where you have no opposition. Yeah, yeah, And.
30:32
Speaker 1: I found this article It is hilarious. It's called Dictatorships.
30:37
Speaker 1: It was on like kids Net in Australia, an Australian website,
30:42
Speaker 1: and like at the top there's like Teddy Bears and
30:45
Speaker 1: a sun and rainbow and blue skies and then in
30:48
Speaker 1: the text it says dictator and it's all about dictators
30:52
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a weird juxtaposition.
30:54
Speaker 2: It had misspellings in it too, which is weird.
30:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it made some pretty good points. If I
30:59
Speaker 1: were a if I had kids, I'd be like, you,
31:02
Speaker 1: read this website. They know what they're talking about. Read
31:05
Speaker 1: it every day, every day. Just read the dictator entry.
31:07
Speaker 1: That's it. But they mentioned although, yeah, they got something
31:12
Speaker 1: horribly wrong. They mentioned dictator Charles King of Liberia. I
31:16
Speaker 1: think they mean Charles Taylor. Oh yeah, yeah, who claimed
31:23
Speaker 1: to have won by such a landslide that apparently it
31:25
Speaker 1: was like fifteen percent larger than the actual total electorate
31:29
Speaker 1: of his entire country. But then I've also seen that
31:34
Speaker 1: he's done elections that were watched by outside poll watchers, right,
31:41
Speaker 1: and that they they just they said that this is
31:45
Speaker 1: a legitimate election.
31:47
Speaker 2: Interesting. Well, we talked a little bit about them, the
31:52
Speaker 2: dictatorship ending badly or sadly. A lot of times it's
31:56
Speaker 2: just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody
32:01
Speaker 2: and they get sick and die. Lennon suffered strokes, Stalin
32:05
Speaker 2: suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. You know, all
32:10
Speaker 2: the power and money and influence in the world is
32:13
Speaker 2: not going to save you in the end, my friend,
32:17
Speaker 2: mister dictatory.
32:18
Speaker 1: Paranoia will save you and keep you alive.
32:21
Speaker 2: It's always just kind of pitiful, though, I don't know.
32:24
Speaker 1: I disagree. Oh really, yeah, I think it's worth dancing
32:27
Speaker 1: on their graves over Oh.
32:28
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I don't mean I mean pitiful for them.
32:31
Speaker 2: It's just they never it seems like they always go
32:34
Speaker 2: out with a whimper.
32:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, some go out with machine gun fire though.
32:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, just it doesn't stay the salad days forever.
32:44
Speaker 1: No, it's true.
32:45
Speaker 2: I think the message is that's no way to rule
32:47
Speaker 2: a people.
32:48
Speaker 1: I hope we've gotten that across. You know, I don't
32:51
Speaker 1: know how many dictators listen to our podcast, but I
32:55
Speaker 1: hope that, if any do, we've really given them some
32:58
Speaker 1: pause to think about what are doing with their lives.
33:01
Speaker 2: Should we read a few of these weird things done
33:04
Speaker 2: by dictators?
33:05
Speaker 1: Sure, and we should say it's widely believed that dictatorships
33:09
Speaker 1: are on the decline worldwide.
33:11
Speaker 2: What are there like seventy of them now?
33:14
Speaker 1: The most I saw this was twenty four right, Oh yeah.
33:17
Speaker 1: And the reason why is again they think liberal democracy
33:20
Speaker 1: is like basically changing the game. But there was a
33:23
Speaker 1: big influx after the Cold War ended where a lot
33:31
Speaker 1: of no, I'm sorry, the Cold War began. There was
33:33
Speaker 1: a big influx because a lot of the old colonial
33:35
Speaker 1: powers that had colonies and say like Africa and Asia
33:39
Speaker 1: suddenly said World War two's over, We're getting out of
33:42
Speaker 1: the imperialism game. Good luck. And that those power vacuums
33:47
Speaker 1: allowed a lot of dictatorships to grow, and then the
33:53
Speaker 1: polarization of the Cold War allowed them to thrive because
33:56
Speaker 1: a dictator could say, hey, I'm strategically necessary United States.
34:01
Speaker 1: Don't you like me? Don't you want to look the
34:03
Speaker 1: other way on all of my human rights atrocities? And
34:06
Speaker 1: then someone else would say the same thing. That the
34:08
Speaker 1: USSR and the superpowers would prop up these dictators throughout
34:12
Speaker 1: the world. When the Cold War ended, that actually led
34:14
Speaker 1: to a huge and almost immediate decline in dictatorships around
34:18
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, yeah, so they're hopefully going the way
34:22
Speaker 1: of the dinosaur. But we'll see.
34:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was that last article you sent, the one
34:28
Speaker 2: it made a really good point about the United States
34:31
Speaker 2: could learn a little bit about these dictatorships and how
34:36
Speaker 2: they work, not to be like that, but to learn
34:40
Speaker 2: that you can't not for not for pointers, but for
34:44
Speaker 2: pointers and maybe not necessarily saying, hey, we can just
34:46
Speaker 2: go into a country that's been run a certain way
34:49
Speaker 2: for hundreds, if not thousands of years and just say
34:52
Speaker 2: do it all different now.
34:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a book on liberal democracies, read it and
34:57
Speaker 1: do it.
34:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that we might have a more successful approach
35:01
Speaker 2: to foreign policy if there was a little bit more
35:04
Speaker 2: understanding on how these systems worked.
35:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that a lot of these, uh, these dictatorships
35:11
Speaker 1: are not totalitarian but autocratic, which makes them inherently weaker.
35:17
Speaker 1: But if we threaten them, if we're belligerent to them,
35:20
Speaker 1: we give those people a reason to be afraid and
35:23
Speaker 1: to line up behind their leader. So when we actually
35:26
Speaker 1: threaten other countries that are that are autocratic, we we're
35:32
Speaker 1: all we're doing is making the leader more powerful, whereas
35:36
Speaker 1: if we treat them like as kind of a week
35:39
Speaker 1: a week leader of a weak state that that is
35:43
Speaker 1: run in a way that suggests that the people aren't
35:45
Speaker 1: really behind it. They have to be run with an
35:47
Speaker 1: iron fist. Then that that person's probably going to eventually
35:51
Speaker 1: get deposed.
35:52
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting.
35:53
Speaker 1: It was an interesting article. It was in Reason magazine.
35:56
Speaker 1: I think it was written by John Bay utterly. And
36:01
Speaker 1: if that guy's not British, no idea, who is?
36:05
Speaker 2: All right? So we promised a few weird things. Where
36:07
Speaker 2: did you find this one?
36:09
Speaker 1: Odie?
36:10
Speaker 2: Strange things done by evil dictators? Kim Jong Ill those
36:16
Speaker 2: dude in South Korea named Shin sang Ok, and he
36:20
Speaker 2: was known as the orson Wells of South Korea, and
36:23
Speaker 2: he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically
36:27
Speaker 2: Kim Jong Ill was like, you know, we show the
36:30
Speaker 2: world that we are creative artists. Like start making movies, right,
36:33
Speaker 2: we've kidnapped you and brought you here. Make good movies.
36:36
Speaker 2: In fact, remake Godzilla because we just need our own Godzilla.
36:40
Speaker 1: It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollock in
36:43
Speaker 1: the early fifties. But Jackson Pollock wasn't aware that he
36:46
Speaker 1: was being propped.
36:47
Speaker 2: Up because he was drunk, so They did remake Godzilla
36:51
Speaker 2: sort of a movie called Paul Gasari and I looked
36:58
Speaker 2: it up and he basically looks like Godzilla with a
37:00
Speaker 2: minotaur horns coming out the side.
37:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the best.
37:05
Speaker 2: What else This Beatles story was kind of nuts.
37:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Marcos's member of Melda Marcos and all of
37:10
Speaker 1: her shoes. Yeah, who can forget Ferdinand and Amelda Marcos.
37:13
Speaker 1: They ruled the Philippines for a while and apparently they
37:16
Speaker 1: loved the Beatles back in the sixties, and so they
37:19
Speaker 1: invited the Beatles to the Philippines to play a couple
37:22
Speaker 1: shows on their world tour. And when the Beatles got there,
37:25
Speaker 1: the military met them at the airport and said, hey,
37:28
Speaker 1: before you go to your hotel, you're scheduled for a lunch,
37:31
Speaker 1: private lunch with the president and the first Lady. Yeah,
37:34
Speaker 1: And the Beatles were like, look mate, we're really tired.
37:38
Speaker 1: We're going to just go to the hotel and crash
37:40
Speaker 1: because we've got two shows tonight. And that did not
37:43
Speaker 1: go over very well.
37:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. They were acting through their manager, of course, Brian Epstein,
37:49
Speaker 2: and supposedly the story isn't so much that, but he
37:51
Speaker 2: said that they don't they don't accept these formal like
37:55
Speaker 2: state invitations really as a rule, I got to either way,
37:59
Speaker 2: they didn't go, and Emmel de Marcos got on TV
38:02
Speaker 2: and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried to apologize
38:06
Speaker 2: on TV and they blacked him out and people got
38:09
Speaker 2: really upset. The police basically their private police escort was
38:13
Speaker 2: removed and the Beatles were on their own. Wow, which
38:16
Speaker 2: was in ninety sixty four. When you're in the Beatles,
38:19
Speaker 2: this is not a good place, especially in the Philippines,
38:21
Speaker 2: right to find yourself.
38:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, They basically had to escape to the airport and
38:26
Speaker 1: just run out to the plane and head off.
38:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of their dudes was like beaten really badly,
38:31
Speaker 2: and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane
38:34
Speaker 2: then had to like basically was shaken down to pay
38:38
Speaker 2: them back money wow from the concert to get on
38:40
Speaker 2: the plane. And then later on mister mister Lennon, give
38:46
Speaker 2: piece a chance. John Lennon said, yeah, if we go
38:49
Speaker 2: back to the Philippines, it's going to be with an
38:51
Speaker 2: H bomb.
38:54
Speaker 1: Did you really say that?
38:55
Speaker 2: Yeah?
38:56
Speaker 1: Wow?
38:56
Speaker 2: He said he won't even fly over it. So they
38:59
Speaker 2: did not have a good exp your answer, Wow, who's next?
39:03
Speaker 2: I think that ed I mean one was kind of interesting.
39:06
Speaker 1: That sounds so Edie, I mean totally. He he declared
39:11
Speaker 1: himself President for life, p farrel, and he he said,
39:16
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to do this in high style.
39:19
Speaker 1: I'm going to get four white men to carry me
39:20
Speaker 1: around in a chair to celebrate being president for life.
39:24
Speaker 1: And he called it the white Man's Burden, yep, and
39:28
Speaker 1: everybody loved it. He was an odd duck.
39:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you if you look up white Man's Burden
39:33
Speaker 2: and I mean and google images, there's a couple of
39:35
Speaker 2: really great pictures of these kind of blonde white men
39:38
Speaker 2: in suits carrying around its giant Ugandan man in the chair.
39:44
Speaker 1: Have you ever read the Bukowski book that was the
39:49
Speaker 1: it was the basis for Barfly.
39:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which one was that?
39:53
Speaker 1: Hollywood? I think is what it's called.
39:55
Speaker 2: I read Hollywood? Was that the one?
39:56
Speaker 1: Yeah? He talks about watching a documentary about I mean,
40:00
Speaker 1: and how he d I mean, didn't have the money
40:04
Speaker 1: for an air force, but he had pilots that really
40:07
Speaker 1: wanted to fly. So like in the documentary, they're showing
40:09
Speaker 1: these pilots running down a runway and then jumping and
40:13
Speaker 1: then going back to the to the end of the
40:15
Speaker 1: line and just doing this over and over again to
40:18
Speaker 1: practice flying. Yeah, even though they didn't have planes.
40:21
Speaker 2: That movie was good. The Forest Whitaker movie.
40:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, The Last King of Scotland. Yeah, great movie where
40:26
Speaker 1: James mckelboy.
40:28
Speaker 2: You know you can stay in Charles Bakowski's house that
40:31
Speaker 2: he grew up in an airbnb now really, yep, nice,
40:35
Speaker 2: it's been remodeled.
40:37
Speaker 1: Oh, he wouldn't like that, but.
40:39
Speaker 2: No, he would hate the whole thing.
40:40
Speaker 1: I'm sure. How about Kadafi, we'll end with him. Sure, So,
40:45
Speaker 1: Momar Kadafi loved women apparently. Did you know that about him?
40:49
Speaker 2: I did not.
40:50
Speaker 1: He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female
40:55
Speaker 1: bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and
40:59
Speaker 1: high heels while they were protecting him. And in the West,
41:04
Speaker 1: these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This is just
41:08
Speaker 1: off the rails at this point.
41:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, and this podcast.
41:13
Speaker 1: No is the whole Amazonian Guard, the whole thing.
41:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
41:17
Speaker 1: So the Kadafi actually had some sort of legitimate thinking
41:23
Speaker 1: behind it. He thought that an assassin would have trouble
41:26
Speaker 1: shooting a woman.
41:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, it stands to reason.
41:29
Speaker 1: So he surrounded himself with female body guards. Who were
41:31
Speaker 1: also trained to kill. Yeah, but they weren't like the
41:34
Speaker 1: four more makeup and lipstick. Yeah.
41:37
Speaker 2: Oh, actually, can we mention the Hitler thing, because.
41:40
Speaker 1: Is this true? I don't know this is I walked past.
41:43
Speaker 2: It sounds like urban legend. But supposedly Hitler came up
41:48
Speaker 2: with a synthetic blow up doll to comfort soldiers, and
41:54
Speaker 2: it was referred to as a synthetic comforter. Yep, blonde hair,
41:58
Speaker 2: blue eyes could fit in a batpack, and they only
42:02
Speaker 2: made about fifty of them because the soldiers were like,
42:04
Speaker 2: I'm not carrying that thing around. What are you crazy?
42:07
Speaker 2: And he went in fact, I am.
42:09
Speaker 1: You'll see waka waka uh. If you want to know
42:16
Speaker 1: more about dictators, you can type that word into the
42:19
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot common Sense. They said,
42:21
Speaker 1: search bar, it's time for listening mail.
42:25
Speaker 2: A quick correction beforehand, because this has to do with
42:28
Speaker 2: bottle feeding kittens. But in our feeding babies episodes, which,
42:35
Speaker 2: by the way, thanks for all the support on those,
42:37
Speaker 2: which really made us feel good to know we did
42:39
Speaker 2: a pretty good job there. But I erroneously many times
42:43
Speaker 2: said pump and dump, as like, you know, pump breast
42:46
Speaker 2: milk can dump it in the bottle to use.
42:48
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, pump pick up on it.
42:51
Speaker 2: Well, I just I think I kind of threw that
42:53
Speaker 2: term around as just the general term for breast pumping.
42:57
Speaker 2: That's but dumping is dumping it down the drain for
43:00
Speaker 2: one reason or another, like you maybe have had some alcohol.
43:03
Speaker 1: Or dumping it straight to hell.
43:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, pump and dump it sort of just
43:08
Speaker 2: kind of went wild there.
43:09
Speaker 1: That's okay, Chuck, that's right. I did notice a couple
43:12
Speaker 1: of people saying that, but I didn't get what they
43:14
Speaker 1: were saying.
43:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was wrong, huh.
43:18
Speaker 1: All right, so it feels weird.
43:20
Speaker 2: I promised the story about bottle feeding kittens, which have
43:23
Speaker 2: you ever done that? A little baby animal that you
43:24
Speaker 2: gotta care for at that young age? Pretty darn cute. Sure,
43:29
Speaker 2: very powerful feeling.
43:30
Speaker 1: It's very stressful.
43:31
Speaker 2: It is stressful, Hey, guys. When I was a kid,
43:35
Speaker 2: powerful you're like, you want this bottle or not?
43:40
Speaker 1: Crisch you.
43:41
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, my older sister had a
43:43
Speaker 2: habit of rescuing animals that became family pets. She rescued
43:46
Speaker 2: a pair of ferrets from drug abuse quote what quote?
43:50
Speaker 2: Drug abuse in quote? When the ferrets were being abused
43:53
Speaker 2: with drugs or themselves active users. I still don't know.
43:57
Speaker 2: That's a weird thing to say.
43:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a weird email.
44:01
Speaker 2: The family ended up stuck with those smelly little weasels
44:03
Speaker 2: for years. What really I wanted to talk about THO
44:05
Speaker 2: was much more mundane. One day we rescued a random
44:09
Speaker 2: stray kitten from our gutters. Beautiful little thing, fluffy and snowy, white,
44:12
Speaker 2: practically newborn, too young to lap milk. She became a
44:15
Speaker 2: family project of sorts. Throughout the day, almost all the
44:19
Speaker 2: family members would take turns cradling the little kitten. Feeding
44:22
Speaker 2: her with a dropper was pretty special. Was maybe nine
44:25
Speaker 2: at the time, but gladly took time away from playing
44:27
Speaker 2: Zelda to feed the kitten playing Zelda.
44:31
Speaker 1: I forget it, here's the kicker.
44:34
Speaker 2: Though as much as pure love that we pumped into
44:37
Speaker 2: that little kitten, that cat ended up being one of
44:40
Speaker 2: the most purely mean and different cats we ever had.
44:42
Speaker 1: Sounds about right.
44:44
Speaker 2: She grew up to be beyond ungrateful. She came and
44:46
Speaker 2: went as she pleased, and was prone to swipe at
44:49
Speaker 2: you as if you tried to pet her. She hung
44:51
Speaker 2: around for the food, but after a few years, she
44:53
Speaker 2: just disappeared entirely.
44:55
Speaker 1: Sounds like the cat was on drug abuse too.
44:58
Speaker 2: Most of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the
45:00
Speaker 2: point is there are just some bad seeds out there.
45:01
Speaker 2: That is from Chris ps. The ferrets ended up living
45:03
Speaker 2: for years and years.
45:07
Speaker 1: What that was a mysterious email in a lot of ways,
45:11
Speaker 1: like a it's like a David Lynch email. Thanks a lot,
45:16
Speaker 1: Chris with a K. I imagine no, okay, thanks a lot, Chris.
45:20
Speaker 1: We appreciate that. And if you out there want to
45:23
Speaker 1: get in touch with us like Chris did, you can
45:25
Speaker 1: tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us
45:28
Speaker 1: on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You
45:30
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff Podcast at house.
45:33
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45:35
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45:40
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