Banana Republics and beyond

A friend of mine once referred to New Orleans as "America's only Banana Republic". This same friend also told me that my life "wouldn't be complete until [I] had 'experienced' a black cajun stripper," but nonetheless he is correct. The Banana Republic, for the uninitiated, is a dictatorship. A very unimportant dictatorship, where the country has no oil, viscious ideology, or threatening television programming. The most obvious are in the Caribbean, and South America. But one feature is the cult of personality, a dictator who has delusions of grandeur. Cults of personality exist in threatening countries too (note North Korea's 'Dear Leader', Libya's 'Comrade Kaddafi', and Iraq's 'That asshole Saddam'.) The cult of personality is often accompanied by a book detailing the leader's crackpot theories, bad poetry, or in saddam's case, a romance novel. Mao had the Little Red Book detailing how to be a good communist, Kaddafi had the Little Green Book, which is simply a list of the variety of ways to spell his name. Now Turkmenistan's Saparmurad Niyazov, also known as "Turkmenbashi", or 'Father of all Turkmen', has written his own two-volume "Book of Spirit". For those who don't know about Turkmenistan, don't worry - it doesn't matter. But here's a map for those interested. Check out this Washington Post article on the subject. Here's how to work that cult:

The president's image adorns vodka bottles and is shown constantly in the top right corner on national television. A 36-foot-tall, gold-leaf statue of the president rotates atop a 250-foot base to follow the sun. The streets of the capital, Ashkhabad, are shut down when he chooses to whiz around town in one of his cars. And he has renamed months of the year after himself, his mother and his book.

Hm...that's why 'Merry Nickmas' never caught on as a greeting on my birthday. I lacked my own banana republic. Now, some of the more Cynical amongst you might point to our own president in this situation. But our president is unlikely to do this:

[Niyazov] also interrupts government meetings to recite his poems, including a session last May when he told his military leadership that he had some verse about the dangers facing the country:

That's the difference between a 'Dear Leader' and a 'Leader of the Free World'. When the 'Leader of the Free World', who has his finger on the 'Nuclear Armageddon' button, starts speaking in verse, you don't sit politely. You run.