Lexicon of Politics: Day 25

I know this word is pretty much self-explainatory, but it's worth posting because 1) I feel like President Bush is one of the few people that could pull off saying it, and 2) because the 'in context' quotes are humorous.

thugocracy n. rule by thugs.

1982 New York Times (June 20) 7-10:
The cruise ship is another Pequod, or ship of fools: one of those large symbols with strings attached, by means of which the writer snarls at socialist thugocracy, the class warfare of crooks versus fools, third-world liberation movement, the United Nations and just about everything else.

1988 Washington Post (Aug. 14) B7:
If Dukakis had been president in 1983, Grenada today would be a Cuban-run thugocracy.

1993 R. Kaplan Arabists 279:
Some Arabists argue that the closed and totalitarian nature of the Saddam thugocracy made assessments of it problematic.

oxford dictionary of american political slang