user: âThe Dictatorâs Learning Curve,â by William J. Dobson

Tony was having panic attacks. It wasn’t easy being a crime boss anymore. The old order was falling away. The Feds had new methods, like the RICO statute. His family gave him agita. His attacks made him feel, he said, like he had “ginger ale in my skull.”

It’s hard not to think about Tony’s woes while reading William J. Dobson’s intelligent and absorbing “Dictator’s Learning Curve.” It’s a book that intricately explores the headache-making complexities of being an authoritarian tough guy in 2012. These despots may well be on anti-depressants too.

Old-school oppressors like Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and Idi Amin had it easy. There was no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitter. “Today, the world’s dictators can surrender any hope of keeping their worst deeds secret,” Mr. Dobson observes. “If you order a violent crackdown — even on a Himalayan mountain pass — you now know it will likely be captured on an iPhone and broadcast around the world.”

The neo-authoritarians, from Vladimir Putin in Russia to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to China’s more faceless technocrats, are still brutal, but they have learned to adapt. These types of leaders, the author says, “are far more sophisticated, savvy and nimble than they once were.”

Mass arrests and firing squads? For most of these men these are clumsy and a bit passé. Tax collectors and health inspectors are now more likely to shut down dissident groups. Today’s dictators confound their critics by peppering their speeches, the author says, “with references to liberty, justice and the rule of law.” Fair and balanced is how they wish to appear, contrary to realities. A new kind of iron fist has arrived, tucked behind an acid-whitened smile.

Mr. Dobson is the politics and foreign affairs editor of Slate; before that he was an editor for Foreign Affairs. He crisscrossed the globe multiple times while reporting this prickly book, traveling some 93,000 miles, he estimates.

He’s interviewed more than 200 people, and his closely observed accounts of dictators’ increasingly sly methods to control their populations are haunting and dispiriting. Chief among these methods is simple confusion. Citizens rarely know, any longer, where the lines are drawn. One Venezuelan tells the author, “Fear does not leave fingerprints.”

Mr. Dobson’s book is more than a catalog of shifting monocratic nightmares, however. He’s just as interested — more interested in fact — in how democracy’s advocates are mixing up their tactics in response. Some of these new methods were on display during the Arab Spring, when despots fell in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Others are still gestating. His explanation of how citizens are using fresh, bespoke tools against modern dictators is almost absurdly inspiring.

Mr. Dobson delivers portraits of some of the world’s leading intellectual, tactical and financial advocates of grass-roots democracy. These scruffy luminaries include Gene Sharp, the American intellectual whose 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” is available for download in more than two dozen languages.

But Mr. Dobson is most galvanizing at ground level, when he’s talking to activists and explaining their stratagems. He points out that more people are willing to attend opposition events, for example, if they are held at night and in the dark, “safe from the prying eyes of the regime.”

He discusses the importance of attracting sympathetic members of the police and military long before things get rough. There’s even more value, perhaps, in recruiting these people’s children. He quotes a strategist who says, “Generals don’t like to attack crowds with their children in the front ranks.”

He is excellent on the uses democracy movements can make of humor. When Mr. Putin cracked down on a television station that broadcast “South Park,” activists carried signs that read: “Putin Killed Kenny.” These people “were protecting free speech,” Mr. Dobson writes, “but they wouldn’t say it that way. They would say they were protecting Kenny and Cartman.”

One Venezuelan opposition member vividly underscores many of this book’s lessons when he says, “If you’re going to fight Mike Tyson, you’re not going to box against him, because, even though he is crazy, he’s going to kill you. But if you can challenge him to a game of chess, you might have a chance.”

“The Dictator’s Learning Curve” is agile and light on its feet, but among its salient points is that pro-democracy movements need to be more than that. Happy thoughts and hippie clothes are not enough. “Revolutions, if they are to be successful,” Mr. Dobson writes, “require planning, preparation, and an intelligent grasp of how to anticipate and outwit a repressive regime that thinks of little beyond preserving its own power.”

Events may move suddenly, Mr. Dobson writes, “but there is usually a movement or organization that put months or years of dangerous (often tedious) work into making that day possible.” One pro-democracy leader puts all this more baldly: “Spontaneity will only get you killed.”

Mr. Dobson’s book, with luck, will find its way into the hands of people who aspire to be free. They’ll find optimism here, but hard realities as well. The author cites statistics that suggest political freedom, and the number of democracies in the world, declined from 2005 to 2010. Modern authoritarians have learned elastic new ways to prosper.

“Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end,” Tony said in that same first episode of “The Sopranos.” He added, “The best is over.” Mr. Dobson’s book proposes that many dictators today may be feeling a similar sort of blues. In order to get out of the way, some of them may only require, from their own people, the right sort of push.

Summary: In his new book, âThe Dictatorâs Learning Curve,â William J. Dobson explores despotsâ increasingly sly methods to control their citizens.


Problem: Report: 600,000 vets wait for care

Despite Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald attesting to reduced wait times at VA hospitals and clinics, a new report obtained by USA Today shows that one in 10 patients continue to wait a month or longer for appointments.

Wait times of a month or longer have continued for more than 600,000 veterans under the department’s care, while the most severely affected veterans – those waiting more than four months for an appointment – have decreased by around 80%, from 120,000 cases in May down to 23,000 in October, the report found.

But last Tuesday on “Morning Joe,” McDonald applauded improvements at the VA, saying “We’ve got wait times down for appointments for veterans by 18% nationally. We’ve got disability claims backlog down by 60%. Homelessness is down by 33 percent.”

An ongoing investigation into the department’s handling of veterans health care has revealed widespread backlogs, with veterans waiting more than four months for an appointment. The crisis forced former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to retire in May. More than 100 investigations into VA facilities nationwide have been launched the U.S. government, including the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Related: VA officials fired over wait time debacle

McDonnell offered a plan to restructure the VA on Monday, with provisions to increase customer service efforts in order to guide veterans through the complex system.

“It’s as if we’re taking a clean sheet of paper and redesigning the second-largest department in government that was cobbled together over many years,” McDonnell said Tuesday.

NOW With Alex Wagner, 8/26/14, 4:47 PM ET

President Obama announced a spate of new executive actions to fix the scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs. Mother Jones’ David Corn discusses with Alex Wagner.

Write a one or two sentence summary.

Summary:

assistant: A new report obtained by USA Today shows that one in ten patients continue to wait a month or longer for appointments.