Monday, December 19, 2011

He's not so ronery anymore...

...not with Benny and Joe and Adolf and Idi and Muammar and Saddam to keep him company.

Looking at those last three names there makes me realize that it's been a pretty fair decade for dead dictators.

Myself, I think it's a damn shame when a tyrant dies of natural causes. Although, I guess "torn apart by an angry mob of his victims" would be a sort of 'natural cause', and one I could heartily endorse.

21 comments:

  1. Yes Tam, no lost love between him and his peaple. Now the son is just as ruthless.

    Walt

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  2. "torn apart by an angry mob of his victims"

    Problem is, if the "victims" were willing to do this, he'd never have risen to power. What's the saying? People get the government they deserve?

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  3. Of course, we now go into the classic Power Game played by Feudalists since the Dawn of Man, "No, the Throne should be mine! I'm the Oldest!"

    Where's Hans Blix when you need him?

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  4. let's hope Chavez & Castro follow soon too.

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  5. Let's not forget Mao on that list...

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  6. It is in no way inclusive, nor is it in any sort of order. Mentally write in your favorites.

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  7. I'll always remember his world famous speech.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSXNJMP8ir4

    Gerry

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  8. "Hung on a lamp-post" is a sort of "torn apart by an angry mob" isn't it? So Benny kinda qualifies there.

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  9. Larry,

    I was thinking more like the end of Guillaume Sam.

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  10. It was a garage door frame and he was already dead.

    Without in any way diminishing the quality of their evil, the second half of your list reminds us that real, awful, superstar tyrants are long gone, their pale successors largely reduced to C market countries where the scope and quantum of horror are decidedly less.

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  11. Jezebel, too.

    Actual rending limb from limb is pretty tough to do.

    Funny, every time I am at a curée I remember Guillaume and think how fitting it would be for others.

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  12. One Dear Leader down...how many to go?

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  13. For some reason, I keep fantasizing that his being on a train was what gave us the opening to zap his pacemaker, either from orbit or from trackside in some grand spy caper. (Focus the beam on a spot on the tracks, hold it as the whole train passes through. Voila!)

    Of course, I don't even know if the bastard had a pacemaker, but I can dream, can't I?

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  14. Staghounds: Look at Great Leader and Dear Leader's record, and get back to us on "real, awful superstar tyrants."
    At one point we were speculating in that ghoulish way soldiers do--although the Battalion Commander said it first--"What wine goes with Ajashi?"

    If he had been torn limb from limb he probably would have been eaten.

    I note that the north Koreans have pro(?)gressed from the Great Leader, through the Dear Leader, to the Brilliant Comrade.
    I suspect some sort of system...

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  15. Unless, of course, some of the 'loyal staff' on the train kind of, maybe, helped him along a bit?
    "Dear Leader, you are a great man, but the time has come."

    Interesting thought, anyway. Which does feed into "Who is going to wind up actually running what up there?"

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  16. Well we are looking at the tyrants of now not the tyrants of 1950 that was my point.

    Hitler and Stalin (and Mao) all have corpse numbers in the 11 figures, plus significant impact on the world outside their own jurisdictions.

    Why is Lenin never on these lists? He was really the first and originator of modern real life dystopia.

    (I agree about Mussolini, he is a mere honorable mention even compared to KJI)

    This decade's tyrants are not even close.

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  17. "torn apart by an angry mob of his victims"

    There was a Star Trek novel where Kirk mused that dying of poison is certainly a natural thing to do.

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  18. I suppose it boils down to a debate about "quality" (if that's the word) versus quantity.

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  19. "Actual rending limb from limb is pretty tough to do." Well, not if you have horses. Oops. Forgot. They already ate all the ponies.

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  20. "Where's Hans Blix when you need him?"

    I read that as "Hans Brix."

    Thank you, Team America. I'm going to have to watch that movie in his "honor."

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  21. We need some New Jack dictators for a New Jack century.

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