Now that the citizens of the world mostly all have cell phones with built in cameras it’s hard to be incognito. Being a cattleman for the last 65 years I’ve learned to be a pretty good observer of what’s going on around me. From a water trough that has a leak to the quantity of grass in a particular area of the ranch. Anyway as I was observing I was also noodling which is my way of mostly just thinking about “off the wall” kinds of nonsense. 

       So, from some out of the way place in my brain lies the nonsense domain and a question emerged. Why is it you never see a dictator smile?  It made wonder if a dictator who supposedly has total power over his country and its people, no questions asked, that ought to make a power driven mad man smile. But I’ve never seen a photo of a smiling dictator. 

               To be a dictator it seems to me that it must be a terribly lonely way to spend all your days. First you have to surround yourself with bodyguards to keep your supposed friends at arm’s length and you have to be extremely self centered and care not one bit about the welfare of who your dictating over. Your health must be suspect, probably have high blood pressure, ulcers, and all those diseases caused by not smiling or laughing and there are no really old bold dictators only dead ones. So my question becomes if a dictator like Joe Stalin, who ruled over the Russian communist empire for 30 or so years and only lived to be 74, had a chance at a “do over to be a benevolent dictator” would he choose the chance to have one of his citizens say “your doing a good job Joe, keep up the good work” and Joe would have a big smile on his face. Or would he forsake that smile and return to his old murderous ways? What do you out there in blog land think or are you saying to yourself “I believe Jack has slipped a cog.”  

                           See Ya 

                            Jack