Cru Jones Society

 

This week’s question, If you could be any historical tyrant, who would you be, has roots a little different than our other questions. Normally we have a brainstorming session to choose our Confessional questions, but not this one. We will let Senor Limon explain how this question came about.

“We have a long and storied history with this question, since Hart, Dagger and I came up with it while drunkenly hitting on random women in a random Tucson bar during the first ever CJS annual rendezvous. Well, Hart and I were drunkenly hitting women. As I recall, we were laughing off a particularly hilarious rejection as two girls brushed me off for not being familiar with whatever obscure Russian author she was currently reading as a part of her graduate studies in Russian literature.  On a side note, higher education is a great thing, but forgetting that you have chosen to specialize in a tiny subset of human knowledge and convincing yourself that what you’re studying is the only important thing in the world is simply unforgivable. Anyway, the conversation somehow devolved into an argument over the artistic styling of one of the random ass paintings on the wall at the bar. As my question of what literary character would you be was brushed off by the Russian lit grade student as trite, we came up with the historical tyrant question as one of the most awkward and guaranteed hilariously unsuccessful pickup lines ever.”

So when we started the Monday Confessional feature, we couldn’t help but to constantly bring this question up, and so finally we posed it to all of our loyal readers. So which historical tyrant would you be? We’ll go first.

Hart: Genghis Khan. To be a Mongolian terrorizing the Asian countryside would be a lot of fun. As the emperor of largest empire in history, I would have so much at my beck and call.

I think I would to be Genghis because there are so few tyrants who conjure up images of such a savage nature. There’s always this idea of a burly man in animal hide and a sword running a muck and reeking havoc. There is this idea he was the sort of guy who would rip off the leg of his enemy and eat it like he has a turkey leg at the county fair. There is just something about that brutality that appeals to my animal instinct.

By the time Khan died he had conquered and controlled most of Asia. The empire he started went on to conquer all of Asia except for Russia and India. To have that kind of power and control would be incredible. I can just imagine every great leader he took out went down screaming, “KHHHAAAANNN!”

So I would definitely be Genghis Khan. Or evil Lincoln.

Dagger: For as long as I’ve aspired to own my own home, I’ve had a borderline unhealthy infatuation with “The Juan Peron Balcony.” I’ve always wanted a balcony right off my bedroom that surveys the wealth of my property where I can stand and make proclamations to all the marginalized Argentinean workers that have gathered looking for support and guidance from me and my hot wife. For whatever reason, I think having a balcony off your bedroom is the height of power and no one can tell me otherwise.

Additionally, Lady E has what I like to call “an adulteress robe” that she sometimes wears around the house that looks to me like something the black widow character in a sexy suspense movie would wear with nothing but semi-trashy undergarments underneath and a martini in one hand and cigarette in the other. For a point of reference, think Denise Richards’ mom in Wild Things. And where do these women almost always wear these robes? On their Juan Peron balconies where they can stand there looking all voluptuous and insatiable while taunting the Hispanic pool boy. Lot to love about the Juan Peron balcony.

So my immediate answer to this question would have been Juan Peron, except his status as a real tyrant is debatable. True, Peron thought Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was “one of the greatest men of the century” and allowed refuge for Nazi war criminals in his country, but with the help of his wife Evita, Peron aided the plight of the workers, sowed the seeds of social justice in Argentina, and paved the way for women’s suffrage. Analyzing Peron is a highly complicated thing to do, and while many of his positions stood in contradiction to themselves, it would be wrong to blanketly call him “a tyrant.” He did some shitty things and he did some good things. Basically, he was just like every other leader ever to rise to power.

But make no mistake, even though I’m buying a house without one, rest assured one day I will have myself a fucking Juan Peron Balcony.

If I could be any historical tyrant, I think I’d like to be William Randolph Hearst. After all, he is listed in the book 100 Greatest Tyrants by Andrew Langley, which just goes to show you that you don’t have to rule a country to be a hated asshole and affect history.

My reasoning here is simple: If I’m William Randolph Hearst, I’m richer than God, own a ridiculous shitpot of newspapers and magazines I’ve created (as it stands today I only own one website), am hated by John Steinbeck, have completely destroyed the hemp industry (even though I disagreed with that, crushing an entire industry seems like mean-spirited fun), and inspired the greatest movie ever made. And I did it all without having to kill anyone or invade someone’s homeland.

I’m basically just one of the five most ruthless businessmen in the history of time which is a nice change of pace for me since I get nervous haggling over the price of a car or leaving less than 20% tip on a restaurant check. Being Hearst seems like a ton of work, but with control of virtually the entire profession of journalism at my fingertips, maybe RAD finally fucking gets released on DVD.

Senor Limon dropped in to not only help with the intro, but leave his two cents worth.

Limon: Interestingly, until this week I never seriously considered what my answer would be.

There are many interesting choices when it comes to historical tyranny; unfortunately most of the tyrants were too focused on megalomania to bother doing anything else of note. All things considered, my choice is none other than the mad one nutted German himself: Adolph Hitler. Why? Because the man’s antics indirectly or directly resulted in the worlds first jet aircraft, Volkswagen, BMW, the splitting of the atom, and the conquering of France.  To top it all off Hitler deprived the western world the satisfaction of killing his broken ass and chomped down on some cyanide before we got the chance.

We’ll take a trip to Russia, and then come on back to Europe, before finally ending in the proper tyrannical fashion, with a beheading.

Lady E: Typically Tyrants are males, and I find that cliché and boring. So in choosing the tyrant I would be there were criteria.

1) She needed to be a female

2) She needed to have done some crazy shit

3) She needed to also have a human side to her.

Hence I choose Empress Catherine II of Russia, AKA Catherine the Great.

She single handedly took Russia into the age of Enlightenment and made it a super power nation, yet she had no problems taking on those who would try to rise up against her. She loved herself some serious torture and public executions. I can think of quite a few people I would love to be able to torture and publicly execute, I am jealous of her that she could, and I would be put in jail…

She was brilliant, smart and strong. Everything a female tyrant should be.

And as an end note, her death by being crushed to death by a horse, whilst trying to have sex with it, fiction. She died of a stroke in her sleep.

F-U-Natalie: I would have to pick King Henry VIII. When he didn’t like the rules he made his own. “I don’t like what the Catholic Church has to say so I’m creating a new church….and since we’re in England I shall call it…..The Church of England”. He also reveled in all the finery that came with being a king and ate whatever he wanted. AND he got a lot of ass. Finally, he’s hot! I mean Eric Bana? He could rule me any day…..It’s good to be the king.

Twodogszk: I would be Julius Caesar – Toga, Toga, Toga. The dude basically ruled the world in the BCs, before that Jesus guy was miraculously conceived. Plus he had relations with Cleopatra, one hot Egyptian goddess. He could drink as much wine as he wanted; eat pizza all day and go watch a deadly gladiator match. He could point his thumb up or down and decide the fate of any man, even that douchetard Russell Crowe.

Deuce: I think that if I had to be a tyrant from history, I would choose to be Emperor Nero. If I remember my world history class from junior year of high school (doubtful), he only ruled for 14 years, and those last 2 were pretty rough for him, but the first dozen would have been sweet. Nero ruled a society steeped in lavishness and decadence. Anything he wanted he had and what was best about that is all this time he is enjoying himself, the common people of Rome loved him incredibly. He was a ruler for the common folk.  Furthermore, Rome didn’t have any serious or threatening enemies he had to worry about. No Allied Forces to worry about, those Carthaginians had been defeated almost 200 years earlier and it would be another 300 years until the Huns showed their ugly mugs. Rome was the top dog in the world back in the 50s AD. He even ruled over the Roman building of the first London Bridge.  In fact his demise came because of his desire to build a second huge house for himself and that is why some people purport that he started the great Roman Fire. He had plausible deniability since he was in a whole other part of the kingdom, but I guess it’s just fun to say that he “fiddled while Rome burned.”  He wasn’t fiddling; he was off on holiday with some of Rome’s most beautiful women I would imagine. Either way, when he came back home, he found an easy scapegoat for the fire in those pesky Christians that had just started sprouting up. Unfortunately, the damage to his reputation was done, but man oh man that would have been one fantastic decade.

We never truly realized just how many historical tyrants Italy actually had. Guess with great pizza, comes great tyranny. So now that you have some god answers, be sure to try this question out as a pickup line. Then send us the hilarious story of what happened.

Well that was a nice little trip through history, much better than the 3 hour tour the S.S. Minnow took. How awful would that have been to be washed up on a desert island? Well maybe we should start preparing just in case that was to happen. That’s right CJS readers; we are starting our own 3 hour tour and playing Desert Island. We love music here at CJS, so we will start off with which 5 albums would want stranded on the island with you? We understand this is an age of iPods, and the concept of an album is a bit obsolete, but just go with it. You’re stranded on an island in the time of GPS for Christ sake, so forget the logic.

We want to know more about all our readers. So don’t hold back. If you haven’t confessed, or it’s been awhile, or even if you did it last week, we want to hear from you. Don’t be shy and send us your response, along with your posting name to staff@crujonessociety.com and we’ll put them up next week.

Dagger and Hart