Ripley the model Insatiable
Listening lately to some Ripley episodes. I've noted before that Ripley was a firm globalist even during the FDR lucid interval when most Americans had settled into a less imperialist mode. Ripley's Insatiable genes bubbled up when WW2 started; he clearly felt more free to express his Insatiability.

From a 1944 episode:

Argentina gave us the first of the modern dictators, Ramirez in 1814 and later the infamous Manuel Rosas. Rosas never went to school so he mistrusted and hated educated people. He established storm troopers, and like Hitler abolished freedom of the press. He dissolved parliament and organized his own Gestapo, the Mazorcas, with orders to kill 7000 people a year for no reason at all.

Online sources vary in attitude but agree that Rosas was a hardass dictator and expansionist. No question there. The 7000 number seems to be a total of the purges during his reign, not an annual quota as Ripley said... but it's still an impressive number.

This 1961 article tried to get beyond the attitudes. US had major problems with Rosas for two reasons:

1. Our ambassador to Paraguay, Edward Hopkins, was a Bezos type who wanted to run Paraguay himself. He wanted Rosas to stop taking over Paraguay so Hopkins could own it. Hopkins insulted and condemned Rosas "on behalf of" USA, and Rosas responded in kind.

2. At one point Rosas seized some American ships that were close to the Falkland Islands. We broke off relations as a result. (Sounds familiar.)

So Ripley was right about the main theme, but he was wrong about the first thing he said, and the wrongness is revealing.

Rosas was NOT an uneducated man who hated education. Like many dictators he was the son of a successful aristocrat**. Ripley, a New Yorker, tossed the "fact" into the story to insult his own listeners. At that time the majority of American adults hadn't finished high school, and MANY had only two or three years of primary school before they started work on the farm.

Those "uneducated" Americans generally respected education because they hadn't experienced much of it. They believed the myths propagated by media, including Ripley. They wanted their kids to get more education, which led directly to our current mess.

If you were a typical man with 6 or 7 years of schooling, Ripley's BIGOTED claim that you were automatically a Hitler type would be deeply insulting.

Our demon media still push the same myth. More education is the cure for poverty. More education is the cure for bigotry. More education is the cure for dictatorship.

Perfectly backwards.

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**Aside from Freudian stuff, this common fact shouldn't be surprising. Aristocrats are selectively bred for ability to rule. Gaining and holding power is a difficult job, and it helps to have both talent and training. Thus beneficent rulers and hardass rulers both tend to come from aristocratic backgrounds. You have to be hardass to accomplish a beneficent purpose, and sometimes (as with Rosas) the hardass side goes well beyond necessity.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 1:29 AM