Fiji

In literature, the first or second week of class the professor wrote down a seating chart (of where we were sitting that day). That day I noticed that on the table, in front of my spot, the word "FIJI" was scratched into it. Well, that makes it fairly easy to distinguish where I sit considering it's a long table with few landmarks (due to length). Of course, my spot happens to be in the exact center of the room and there's a projector-type thing hanging from the ceiling in a straight line from my seat as well, and I could use that to mark my position but that is unimportant.

In civilization, we also have a self-picked seating chart of sorts, but I sit against the wall in a desk, right in front of some odd protrusion. For a short bit, the wall juts out at a 90 degree angle, as if there is a support there or something. I sit right in front of that, so it's easy to remember where I sit, however, on that little pseudo-support thing, the word "FIJI" is scribbled in blue pen. I think I'm being stalked by someone from the future, and their choosen method of stalking involves going places they know I'll go, before I go there, and taunting me with this meaningless (to me) word -- FIJI. I wonder, why, oh why, would people from the future stalk me? Ah, I know. Something bad must happen, sometime relatively soon (in the cosmic sense of things) and all that could be found was "Blame Polerand."

Ok, the facts are still facts, the extrapolation might not be as sound as the facts. Oh well. I found it slightly odd. Sitting here important some of my CDs that I bought from Columbia House or ... BMG, I forget. Maybe both? It wouldn't surprise me. As I was telling Eric it makes me feel old looking at the dates on the MP3 tags and seeing that the "albums" (I bet a bunch of you feel a lot older, having actual records and albums -- it's because you are old) were released in 1994 or 1993. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. And of course, it really wasn't that long ago. I remember playing Desert Strike on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis and the intro to it (or one of the other helicopter and desert attack games) had some thing about the evil madman Saddam. Heh. Just interesting. Also interesting, last saturday I caught the tail-end of Hot Shots! Part Deux on HBO. I was pleased to catch the President-Dictator lightsaber duel. Or a Simpsons episode where Krusty the Klown is confronted by his daughter that he didn'tk now he had. He was entertaining the troops ("They should call him So-Damn Insane!" "Hey, you're just fueling the flames of hatred!") and then knocked up a female soldier. The next day she overslept, the day she was supposed to fulfill her mission to kill Saddam (with a frickin' rocket launcher or RPG, no less -- speaking of insane) and Krusty stopped her because he wanted to save his jokes. Heh.

Anyhow, you'd never imagine that when people say that history is doomed to repeat itself it would be so ... identical and obvious. The World Wars, both started by Germany, both with the United States enterting late and reluctantly. Or the two Gulf Wars now. And we've already had one Korean war, so why not? Best Occupation -- military dictator. First off, there's the salary and the power, both of which I'm sure can afford you a very fine office with a view. Also, there's the benefits. Most likely at least one country will harbor you if you ever have to flee and they will feed you and such, plus, no one will really care what you do. You can kill, maim, and make really awful jokes, but in the end, you might have to face a war tribunal at most. Heaven's no. The worst punishment a dictator would ever get is to be forced to live under his own conditions, and that will never happen.

But I always wonder, what allows a nation to turn into a dictatorship? You've seen it a lot in South America (nations at one point ruled by foreign nations and foreign governors who held absolute sway over the majority with their minority, i.e. setting the precedent) or in Asia (Soviet Union, Cambodia, North Korea -- Russia, the longest lasting "western" autocracy with the repressive czars; Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, all controlled as Indochina under the French and here by controlled I mean exploited for rubber; North Korea, stuck between China and Japan, taken over by each and then divided by the US into North and South Korea) or Africa (lots of examples) or the so-called Middle-East (subjugated by the Mongols at one point, warred against each other, the crossing grounds for armies going east or west, nomadic peoples due to geography). Why are raw materials so important? We needed platinum for our nukes. South Africa and Russia are the two big places where you can find platinum. When they were the Soviet Union, however, we could not get platinum from them (or would not), so we had to turn to South Africa. Well, South Africa got a "Get out of jail free card" thanks to that and could do whatever they wanted. After the Soviet Union became ... less Soviet and less united, it suddenly became the time to tell them to clean up their act (we were ones to talk).

But then, that still makes me wonder about dictators. They are puzzling. And "fixing" it, that too is puzzling. Personally, I say let them do as they please as long as they stay the Hell out of my way. But there's got to be something in the dictator-gene that just won't let them do that. I wonder how tall your average dictator is? Something has to give them a chip on their shoulder and I wonder if it's because they're all midgets and use stilts under their pantlegs.