I’ve often wondered what Nicolae Ceausescu , the former and cruel dictator of Romania who enslaved the Romanian and Swabian people post-Uncle Joe (Stalin), literally selling human beings as slaves to other countries, thought when he came to his balcony one day, and saw the streets crammed with demonstrators demanding his resignation. And more. Much more.
Ceausescu too, like Mubarak, tried to mollify the protesters by addressing them publicly, listing all the dictators’ good deeds, leaving out the very essence of the dictatorial heart: “I get it all, you get nothing.” This would appear to be a proof that said dictator thinks people can be bought with candy when they are in the last stages of spiritual, economic and bodily malnutrition.
I’ve wondered what Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma felt when he saw the streets of Rangoon filled with monks in saffron and wine-colored robes and soft eyes, who called for his cruel actions toward the poorest of the poor to be condemned utterly. He, like Mubarak seemingly, sent out his army to harm the holy people, to murder them, rout them from their peaceful monastaries, haul them up to Northern Burma and imprison them there.
Than Shwe, like many dictators, gained his army by promising to feed the sons of the poor to do his dirty work for him. That a solder would have to make the impossible choice to do a dictators’ dishonest bidding in order for the soldier to keep his entire family from literally starving, is a heinous choice that only a dictatorial and sick mind can even think to exploit.
I’ve wondered about so many other dictators who spoke about how ‘all would help one another,’ and instead became self-made kings and queens, thieving the resources, the money, the very lives of the people themselves… only to enrich their own gourmand and Jabba appetites for gold, skimming the drug trade, diamonds, feasts, sex and power over life and death for any man, any woman, any child, any elder who cross their path.
President Mubarak actual interests and appetites have been weighed by a large number of his own people. And what he will do now, may follow any number of trajectories.
We know from following the ‘careers’ of dictators and dictators’ sons, such as Baby Doc Duvalier, Adolph Hitler, Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, and others… that first and foremost, a dictator who finally awakens to true seige or threat, tries to beat it out of the area, whether by going into hiding where they think no one will ever look for a ‘king’… a hole in the ground literally, or underground in a concrete bunker, or in the home of a peasant-farmer, or in the local sty…
or else, commanding their army to do their bidding or else be shot dead on the spot, attempt to flee …as the ever arrogant and unaccountable Ceausecu attempted with his fur collared overcoated wife… via heliocopeter. They were captured, and the ‘new populace’ –enraged from decades of being abused –summarily tried and executed the Ceausescus by firing squad.
Though some of the older Romanians still long for what they had as privilege and predictability under Ceausescu and his uneducated wife who set herself up as Minister of Education, many Romanians are now free for the first time in decades … free to blunder about and to create triumphs too… but without being forced to brutality.
That seems worth a good amount, to the people… the chance to live in more peace, with more free will, with far less fear.
What will it be for Mubarak, a peaceful revolution that overthrew him, or a bloody coup initiated by his own conjuring of violence in the streets, or his sudden face-saving hope of retreating into exile, asking for asylum in some other country where those in the streets cannot follow him?
Though the news focuses on his stepping down… I dont believe we can know the answer to what will become of Mubarak, nor what roots of his tree will still be left in place and watered subversively, even though he himself is no longer on the throne. The emphasis will be on ‘What price freedom?’
And though some are ‘askeered’ already about the precious oil supplies and sarcastically say Mubarak should stay unless we all want $10 a gallon gasoline… to weigh this momentous time of people wanting a deep say-so in their own lives by such cheap measure, is beneath one’s soul. This now only– the people and their lives. That other important point, later.
Stay tuned in coming weeks.
One thing is for certain… those who mourn for the loss of Mubarak or who would long for his reign again– or that of other dictators currently dozens of them throughout the world– will also have to pluck out both of their eyes in order to pretend the crushing poverty, state supported violence, hunger, and injustice forced onto the many did not and does not exist.
The manipulation of the people with honeyed words or with bloody threat and violence to them, and well as the shameful glittering display of luxury grabbed up by the dictator Mubarak and his ‘chosen ones’ that he has favored with all costly trinkets and treasures all these decades, can only be seen as an atrocious lust for power and a malignant greed by any soul who carries even the smallest heart of justice.