The Modern Dictator
Yesterday, my wife told me that I wouldn’t be a good dictator. Can you believe that? The person who I chose to share my entire life with looked me dead in the eye and told me in no uncertain terms that I would have no success in the field of dictating.
Full disclosure, it’s not as though my wife brought this up to me out of the blue. We had been talking about dictators and I said that I think the modern dictator should really adopt a lighter touch. For instance, instead of censoring the media, jailing political dissidents, and committing genocide, maybe spend more energy and resources on bettering the lives of the people and earning their respect. My wife said I had no concept of what all goes into a dictatorship, but I think she’s guilty of the same regressive thinking that plagues so many of today’s dictators.
Conventional wisdom and my wife suggest that the single overarching goal of a dictator is to amass power. To that I say, “but then what? Once you have the power, what do you want to do with it?” I think dictators get too hung up on the journey and lose sight of the destination.
When you get down to the very core of it, I think dictators have two possible motivations for their totalitarian aspirations: personal gain or ideological control. And honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if almost all dictators were really in the former category, despite what they might claim on their state run social media.
From a personal gain standpoint, what can you really gain from being a dictator that you can’t also gain from being incredibly wealthy? Living in an opulent palace, being draped in the finest silks, tasting only the most succulent dishes? Seems pretty standard fare for the jet set.
At this point, I should acknowledge my own first world privilege and say that in underdeveloped countries, dictatorship might be one of the few paths to wealth that are available to the average joe. However, the dictator still has the option of embezzling millions and fleeing the country to live the high life in Monte Carlo, leaving the despotic life behind.
No, from a personal gain standpoint, the only real benefit to being a dictator is to have the loyalty and adoration of your subjects. Well, that or to force a large number of people to come see your improv team do a 15 minute set on a Tuesday night, which we all know is a very tough sell even to your nearest and dearest.
OK, so we’ve identified that you want to be loved by all. The standard dictator playbook for love calls for tons of propaganda, internet firewalls, forced public displays, and maybe scapegoating an ethnic minority group to make it seem like you are the only thing preventing the complete collapse of society. Well, that’s no way to get a population to fall in love with you. How about instead of preventing people from watching a cartoon that you feel is a veiled commentary on your leadership, you focus on making people happy? Here’s a couple of ideas just off the top of my head that would really get people to love you as a leader:
Semi-regular ice cream socials
Efficient and reliable public transportation
Federal holiday every month
Elimination of poverty and hunger
Free merch
I know these aren’t the easiest or most fun initiatives to enact, but being a dictator is hard work no matter what! And these tactics will ensure that when you force the citizenry to stage an elaborate parade in your honor, they won’t mind so much, and that will mean so much more. Maybe one of them will even fall in love with you. Or several of them, if you’re into ethical, dictatorial non-monogamy.
Now ideological control is trickier. If you want to implement Sharia Law on a population that isn’t all that into Sharia Law, you’ve got some tough sledding ahead of you. There will be dissent. Public protests. Condemnation from the global community. However, what if instead of implementing Sharia Law wholesale, you pick out the parts of Sharia Law you do like and leave the rest by the wayside? Then people won’t feel quite so oppressed under your regime, the U.N. will turn a blind eye to your stranger laws, and you’ll still get what you want out of things.
Let’s put this into a more concrete scenario because I honestly don’t know what’s in Sharia Law, but it seems like it might have been a bad idea that I even brought it up at all. If I were a dictator, my knee jerk reaction would be for mayonnaise to be completely banned and anyone caught making or using mayonnaise would be flogged in the most convenient public square. This would only lead to mayonnaise based protests, further enraging me and leading to brutal crackdowns and UN Peacekeeping Missions.
But when I take a step back and take a look at what I’m really mad about, it’s that people are putting mayonnaise on my burgers and sandwiches without consulting me and then making outrageous claims like “mayonnaise is delicious”. It is not. So, let’s dial back my edict to get to the heart of what I really want: Under the Barlow regime it shall be illegal to put mayonnaise on a dish unless someone asks for it. If someone breaks this law, they now have to make an announcement in the most convenient public square that mayonnaise is awful. Is anyone really going to stage a protest around this rule? Mayonnaise is still available to the general public, but now I don’t have to be unpleasantly surprised by it when I go to a restaurant. That’s a win-win and the classic soft touch that I’ve been trying to describe here.
Look, I know what you and my wife are going to say: Dictators are overthrown all the time and if you seem weak, your enemies will plot to overthrow you and pretty soon there’s mayonnaise on everything. That’s why I will sit down with my enemies and run them through my same rigorous process that I myself have followed to get to the real heart of what I want and then we’ll go from there and find a mutually beneficial solution.
Now let’s say my potential usurper has gone through my process and still has ideological differences with me and says something like “I think ketchup on hot dogs is in defiance with the laws of nature and affront to God.” Well, in that instance, my response will be swift and brutal. This person and their supporters will be made a gruesome and very public example of.
Because no one should ever tell you what condiments are and are not appropriate for your hot dog. Not on my watch.
Now I know that’s not exactly the soft touch I’d been espousing throughout this piece, but I think there is a firmness that underlies the soft touch and sometimes that firmness can get a little rough. However, as long as the overwhelming majority of your citizens are content, I think you should have a long and prosperous dictatorship. And if you do, please let my wife know.