It was mentioned on the news this morning that people in North Korea can be sent to Labor Camps for watching Western Media. It’s amazing how we know about countries where freedom is a fluid concept at best, but it’s those details that drive it home.
I’ve been thinking about Dictators. How is it that one man can exert such influence, I wonder; how does it get to that point? Is it simply a matter of surrounding yourself with enough puppets, and paying them so much that they have no choice but to support you?
Does it start with earnest ideology? Somehow I think not; although ideology is a great thing to hide behind, I don’t think anybody still thinks that Hitler really believed he was going to improve conditions in Germany. Conditions for himself, yes, but not for “his” people.
Like many Europeans who came of age before or during the eighties, I vividly remember the images of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu’s limp body on the evening news. It made an impression on me, seeing this once mighty man not just dead, but disgraced, abandoned on the street like a piece of trash. His picture can still be accessed on line, as if to instill in people that he is really, truly gone.
http://www.ceausescu.org/ceausescu_pictures/nicolae_si_elena/source/276.html
All too often, dictators leave behind a country decimated, hurt beyond recognition, poor beyond belief. Nearly twenty years later, Romania is still in shambles; the former DDR isn’t fairing that much better. It makes me wonder what will happen to Cuba once the Castro regime finally comes to and end. It also doesn’t bode well for Iraq; what will that country look like twenty years from now?
I guess it makes me grateful that we can discuss politics in this country; sometimes we get so distracted by our differences that we forget how liberated we are, being able to have our little catfights and worrying about mailers and pant suits and African dresses and such.
I’m a little contemplative today; so I’m going to end on a lighter note: This morning, a snippet of Bill Cunningham was on the news. My six-year-old saw him; started laughing, and yelled “McCain threw me under the bus!” It was the most spot-on imitation I have heard in months.
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Fun with Politics (17) // February 28, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI guess it makes me grateful that we can discuss politics in this country; sometimes we get so distracted by our differences that we forget how liberated we are, being able to have our little catfights and worrying about mailers and … [...]
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