Hunting a Dictator: Symbolic Spying Tips Using Pop Culture and a Fairy Tale

Hello, official government spy or independent vigilante out to rid the world of ruthless and steadfast dictators. This isn't a James Bond drill on the supreme technological weapons you could be using to locate and take out Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or other dictators still holding the Middle East hostage. Consider this to be a quick refresher course on how pop culture and fairy tale warnings of the past seem to happen perpetually in reality as we saw with the demise of Osama bin Laden. When they do happen, however, they rarely get cited for being from the pen of a prescient and ancient writer.

What isn't known yet is if the dictator understands the actual process that typically leads to his demise. Even the best-read dictator or despot will nearly always form the belief that they can escape from the clutches of their pursuers and ultimately prevail to some material or spiritual reward. Formation of dogma blinding all principles is assured.

The world of fairy tales and James Bond, though, are some of the most seen and studied pop culture aspects to the steps of a villain's comeuppance and how the spy can weed him out. If the dictator you're pursuing isn't bothering to study any of these because they're too much of a Western influence, then you have the advantage.

Let's start with the formation of the dictator.

From here on out, all you need is the metaphor of the famous fairy tale "The Gingerbread Man." Even though this isn't from Mother Goose or the Brothers Grimm, it's still a European fairy tale with an unknown author of similar mind to the Grimms or Aesop. He or she understood the literal birth of a dictator:

A lonely couple from an indefinite past time wishes to have a child of their own. In creating the child, they ultimately have to deal in disappointment:

Presently, she went to the oven to see if it was baked. As soon as the oven door was opened, the little gingerbread boy jumped out and began to run away as fast as he could go.

Ultimately, the future dictator's parents decide to chase after him to attempt and reform him into the little boy that's required of society. They ultimately can't catch him, though, and he grows up taunting and ultimately running from people he doesn't trust. The first of these will be a group of U.N. inspectors.

At this point, it's time for you, the James Bond metaphor, to step in. Despite not traversing this foreign land in a tuxedo and sipping martinis in local pubs, you can still pretend that you are while in your hotel suite. In the meantime, you've been given a tip that the dictator may show up to a U.N. inspection that's been ordered to search for nuclear weapons. If he shows up, your plan is to pretend you're a fellow U.N. inspector, tranquilize the dictator and take his body into safekeeping at a U.S. military zone to put him under arrest for crimes against humanity.

The U.N. inspectors happen to spot the dictator before you do. He flips his robe in the air ostentatiously and climbs into a Ferrari in the nearby area to make a run for it. Part of his robe is sticking out of the driver door. The inspectors give chase to the dictator down a street with you following in hot pursuit behind in an Aston Martin that was conveniently sitting waiting for you with the keys in the ignition. Once you both manage to corner the dictator's Ferrari in a busy cul-de-sac containing a now disrupted farmer's market, you find out the dictator is ultimately one of his decoys.

You later receive a telegram in your hotel to know that he's on to you:

"I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man, and a group of U.N. inspectors. And I can run away from you, I can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man."

At this point, it's a good idea if you move to a new hotel under a pseudonym. This warning enhances when the dictator sends you a box full of gingerbread man cookies via FedEx delivery to your room.

He's on to all of us.

Next, you get the word that NATO has gone in to conduct a war against the dictator and his country. You're trapped here, but you're still getting tips from insiders saying the dictator is on the run under disguise. It turns out that he may be a yard worker near a meeting place where NATO members are meeting and may eventually be culpable in setting off a bomb.

You put yourself under disguise as one of the rider mowers mowing the ground lawn. The man on the rider mower next to you eyes you suspiciously and begins to try to run your rider mower over. Yes, it's the dictator again. He's wearing prosthetic makeup to appear as if a commoner and a hired laborer.

He's also built a high-powered motor in his rider mower that allows him to escape. Now you have to re-assess who you are as a James Bond-branded spy and realize that you're now chasing a ruthless dictator down dusty roads in rider mowers from a Middle Eastern John Deere manufacturer. Then you realize that a number of other rider mowers are following behind you. These are other spies who've been hot on the dictator's trail without the hot leads you've had.

Despite this chase, the dictator's rider mower is too fast for all of you. A black helicopter overhead sends a rope down over the dictator's rider mower to whisk him up to safety. You and your fellow rider mowers stop in a perplexed circle to look up at what just happened. You barely hear the dictator exclaim over the deafening helicopter propeller:

"I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a group of U.N. inspectors, a group of rider mowers, and I can run away from you, I can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man."

A week later, you read a newspaper report about two other purported spies disguised as a cow who chased the dictator around a bucolic outskirt of the country. The rumor is that the dictator thought contraband was hidden inside of a cow and...

"I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a group of U.N. inspectors, a group of rider mowers, a cow, and I can run away from you, I can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man."

After a month of nothingness from the dictator, the rumor is he's now dead while living in a courier-run cave. To alleviate boredom, you go to a costumed ball held after a party for the country's much less sinister Prime Minister. You decide to dress as a pig as an inside joke to your fellow spy friends attending and who've accused you of shacking up with every Bond Girl in the country.

Near you is a man dressed in a President Obama mask and drinking a rum and scotch. You recognize those dark eyes behind the mask clearly. It's the brazen dictator. But you aren't going to make it obvious yet. Instead, you wait until a crowd is around to accidentally on purpose trip him so the mask will fall off his face.

As you do, one of his cohorts opens a trap door that sends you and the dictator tumbling down an old sewer pipe. When you finally get to the end, you realize your pig mask is stuck and can't be removed as you watch the dictator disappear into the night. Newspapers facetiously declare the next morning that the dictator was chased fruitlessly by a pig:

"I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a group of U.N. inspectors, a group of rider mowers, a cow, a pig, and I can run away from you, I can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man."

After six months of solitude as military fighting winds down, you decide to hang up your spy coat and retire to this country you've grown accustomed to. You've married one of the Bond Girls and now live a quiet life near a river bordering another country that's rumored to offer asylum to wanted terrorists. You provide occasional boat rides across the border to those who don't look suspicious.

A feeble-looking man comes up to you one morning asking you to take him across the river so he can get medical help. He looks desperate, particularly as he keeps turning toward the sound of what appears to be an approaching military convoy. You agree to take him across the river on your boat because he isn't feigning his sickness. As you do, you wait until approaching the halfway point across the river to pull out a PPK pistol with silencer you used as a spy...

Presently the Gingerbread Man said, "Oh dear! I'm quarter gone!" And then, "Oh, I'm half gone!" And soon, "I'm three-quarters gone!" And at last, "I'm all gone!" and never spoke again.

You are the fox to the Gingerbread Man. You'd recognize those eyes from the costume ball anywhere.

The original Gingerbread Man tale:

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/gingerbread/index.html