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The End of Dictators

AUGUST 14, 2012

I worked on a series of full page illustrations with Pentagram down in Austin.   The story is titled "The Last Days of the Dictator" and runs in the alumni magazine of Middlebury College.  The focus is a new book by Middlebury alumni William J. Dobson titled "The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy".   Dobson was managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and is now Slate's politics and foreign affairs editor.   His book is an exhaustively researched take on the events of the past few years in the Middle East and beyond.   A look at how dictators have changed, adapted, and been brought down (or not) in places like Venezuela, to Tunisia, Egypt and Syria.

"I felt as though there was a tendency to view these regimes with preconceptions we have about dictatorships in general — that they're slow, lumbering behemoths."  But too often, that notion didn't square with reality.

"And Twitpics are the greater explosive.  As a result, dictators are getting smarter.  they're mastering corruption, technology, and social unrest — and using every tool except the sword."



© 2024 Edel Rodriguez