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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Everybody's Just The Worst

The world is rather concerned about North Korea again, after Kim Jong Un had his uncle executed in what is widely believed to be a consolidation of power, and who has followed that up by summoning businesspeople in China to North Korea in what appears to either be a loyalty test or a prelude to further purges. While we could try and parse out what this means or try to guess what Un will do in the near future- and many are doing just that- here we'll leave it at the obvious observation that Un is proving himself to be not only most cold-heartedly bloodthirsty of the three Kims by a significant margin, which is really saying something, but that when family members that close to you are purged that dramatically, you're on your way to the all-time Ruthless Bastard Dictator Hall of Fame.

As something of an appreciation of what that means, I have here a Sporcle quiz providing you with a list of 20th and 21st-century dictators (with one exception ruling before that period). There are 99 on the list. Your official task is to say what country each of them ruled, with 20 minutes on the clock. As this quiz was made in 2011, Kim Jong Un is not included, and neither is Kim Jong Il, though Kim Il Sung is. This is because no country is represented more than once. Your unofficial task, though, is to run through that list populated exclusively by some of the absolute worst people to walk the Earth over the past century or so, and to compare Un, or what we at least know of him, to the group displayed. Un does not project to match up favorably with very many names here.

And in the very likely event many if not most of these names don't ring a bell at all, well, pick one and start reading up.

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