Dictators

Do we really ever know them?

I have been binge listening to a Noiser podcast, the real dictators and the stories about these men- has there been a woman dictator?- are the personification of cruelty.

It is interesting that some of these people were not really nationals, in the real sense of the word, of the countries they ruled with an iron fist. Take for example the Georgian Stalin, or the Austrian Hitler.

Of the dictators I have listened to their histories, papa Doc was an outlier. A medic who made death his trademark.

Or that these fellows rose from poor or humble backgrounds to come to wield so much power. Mao, Stalin, Gaddafi, and a host of others- all humble folk.

But what this has done is got me thinking about Kenya. It is not in doubt that Moi and Kenyatta was tin pot dictators. It is our present regime and the two previous ones that come to focus and I ask myself how far from a dictatorship we really are. We have a parliament that for all intents and purposes is a big rubber-stamp. The judiciary is a laundromat. And with bodies appearing in rivers, forests and all, I am not sure we are not living in a dictatorship, albeit a subtle one

Where others like Stalin started a personality cult where they became the gods, our benign dictator and his family are part of the church choir and the poor people are hooked. You hear people say oh the president is a good person because of church and I face palm.

Who knew that the Spaniards went through a dictatorship that the whole community seems to have voted to forget?

And it is hard work to topple a dictator. The secret police. The death squads. The cultural revolution. And all their plots are difficult to fight. You put yourself out there to challenge them, you meet a cruel end.

You don’t want to live under a dictatorship no matter how good it looks from the window.

This morning

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

I got off bed, went for a short run then got into the car to drive to the office. If you don’t live in a cave like I do, you would have come across news of Nairobi rains and subsequent floods. This went well.

I think cycling in Nairobi is an extreme sport,if not a risk and should be feature somewhere in the 1001 ways to die. And many cyclists have died on our roads, sadly, and there’s no cultural change. But for my love of cycling, I once woke up to try a city to coast adventure. I had no phone just money a bike pump, a patch kit, a torch and water. This went well until it didn’t. I ended up with a puncture in the middle of the Tsavo national park, fixed it and continued. I ended up completing my longest ride to date.

I would go on but I will stop here.