dictator de ludum rabidus

Right, I’ve just been accused of being an arrogant tyrant. Again.
So I’ll play Despot, the game for Ambitious Dictators.

The scene: I believe I lord it over a half-ruined country, which my family — from a minority religious sect — has milked for two generations, against the wishes of the majority — from a rival religious sect.

Both religious sects, mine and the evil devil-worshipping one of the rebels, have been killing each other consistently for the past 12 centuries.

I have friends: a bunch of oil rich fanatics who want to use my semi-demolished country to attack one of my bad neighbours to the South — from yet another sect we believe eat live babies for breakfast; and an ex-spy and secret police agent from a vast but filthily run country to the North, sitting on a huge pile of nuclear weapons of unclear functionality, who also happens to be a big oil producer and wants to contain rebellious bastards from one of his colonies — who happen to belong to the same sect of another of my neighbours to the South, who have oil coming out of their arses, are armed to the teeth and want to see me dead.

Are you with me so far? Good, these things must be clear.
You see, I have enemies who are both unclear and nuclear. They started by sponsoring my internal enemies, who are legion and fight as much amongst each other as against me and my friends. When some of those groups regrouped under one group, sponsored by my oil rich and well armed enemy to the South, whose country is run by a mafia controlled by fanatics from the sect that has been killing my folks for a thousand years, the new group started acting according to their own deranged beliefs, invading yet another country to the South, where the other sect is a minority lording it over a majority who are close to my other oil rich fanatical friends. The reverse situation I have here, so their country is a shattered mirror image of mine. Loads of mines there, too.

Still with me? With all this going on, about half of my people have left the country. Well, when I say ‘my people’ I’m using a bit of poetic licence, as the so-called refugees mostly belong to the other sect, those who want my family extinct; so, good riddance. But my unclear enemies are not happy with that, as they now feel obliged to feed and care for those useless hordes. As a good despot, my heart bleeds for them. Really.

My ex-secret police friend has been a great help on this, spreading all sorts of rumours about the fleeing scum and making the snowflakes go through convulsions of fake conscience. See, they now believe that all that is happening here is their fault, that they should have intervened earlier, that they should make friends with my murderous relatives, that their having better education and more advanced technology makes them responsible for me and my friends making our countries miserable so that we can stuff our bank accounts in the snowflakes’ countries.

But I digress. Thanks to more than a little help from my friends and a lot of bumbling by my enemies, I’m winning.

I shit you not, I’m really subduing the fuckers! They still have this little enclave near my capital, but all their neighbouring rebel groups have beat it to the North, away from my brave soldiers. Said soldiers are now advancing steadily and brutally over what’s left of them, and rightly so.

Now, my enemies say that I fear losing this bout, so I am supposed to have mixed chlorine with Sarin and dropped a few barrel bombs of this brew onto a bakery and a public square.

The silly bastards have not checked this in person. No, they rely on accounts by groups allied with some of the rebel groups and sponsored by some of the countries that are taking care of the refugees.

Now, I ask a few questions:

• Do I control the way the wind blows?
• Have I protected my advancing troops against the cocktail of gases I allegedly had dropped on their vicinity?
• Why would I need to disguise Sarin — a very effective, odourless, virtually undetectable nerve agent — with chlorine, a much less effective irritant, visible, very smellable, a real pest to control, and just as illegal?
• Who on earth would be so stupid as to deploy both simultaneously?

I have a strong suspicion that the imbeciles were led by my ex-secret agent friend to believe all this shit. Why, I don’t hear you ask? He needs their ignorant masses to be distracted by all this bullshit, so his minions can rule and carry out several other pieces of mischief in peace.

Then they say they bombed my ‘research facilities’ and ‘stockpiles’ of lethal gases.

Now, I ask a few more questions:

• Those idiots don’t have swimming pools?
• Do they understand how easy it is to stock and deploy chlorine?
• Do they know that any idiot can make Sarin?
• Do they know that I would not need a stockpile?
• Do they think I am stupid enough to keep nerve gas canisters in an air base? Where an enemy strike can spill it on my folks?
• Why do I need to research the bloody things? Cheaper, much cheaper to just order the stuff on eBay.

But I grow tired. While I cannot just stop playing the game, hanged if I do, I don’t report to you. Go play with a can of insecticide.