There was an episode of Gilligan’s Island where Gilligan became a dictator following the advice of an evil man. He thought he was doing good work, as he loved his people and promised them-This, That, and The Other Thing. His people, of course, hated him.
Hitler is the poster child for Dictators, a nasty fellow surrounded by a group of people who would do anything he said-and anyone who didn’t would be killed. This is why most dictators don’t care if the people love them or hate them-the people just come with the scenery, as some pop star said. You can kill them, in some case like the Nazi and the Khmer Rouge, almost all of them without anyone every saying No. As Mel Brooks said, it’s good to be the King.
So the recent ousting of long time Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak is wonderfully weird. This was not a revolution that could have happened ten years ago. The weapons here were not Molotov cocktails and Improvised Explosive Device-they were Twitter and facebook and cellphones. It was also the willingness of people to look and listen and the full expectation that if tanks had rolled over people in the streets that something would have happened. We may find out just what that something may have been in a few weeks, if we see more people rushing to the streets to kick out the bad guys running their countries. All we need is one megalomaniac to go all 20th Century on their asses and then watch what happens.
I’m not too hopeful myself. We need only look at the continents of Africa and South America to see what happens when you throw the nasty people out of power-other nasty people step in and pick up where the last group tossed out left off.
