Wednesday, August 24, 2016

The Rise of Trump is Nothing New and Instead is Something Very Old

"You fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others…” - Tiberius Gracchus

Tiberius Gracchus was a Roman who was around before Jesus was even born. He was speaking to those oppressed by their government (Rome, which rose because Greece destroyed itself).

By the way, Gracchus took land from the thieving wealthy and gave it to homeless, impoverished Roman soldiers.

Trump is just a symptom of a pretty bad societal disease that has gone on since the dawn of recorded history and I’m sure before then (so was Jesus, for that matter, not that I’m comparing Trump to Jesus), although the idiotic Talking Heads think Trump is the disease itself. You know – because Hitler!!!!!!! (I’m sure if Jesus was around today he’d also be Hitler!!!!!!!!)

I am an amateur historian, which means I have read a lot of professional historians far more knowledgeable than I am (the study of history can make you cynical, although, fortunately, it’s hasn’t exactly worked in my case).

What anyone who studies history has found is that history repeats. It’s the same story over and over. The kakistocracy gathers all the wealth to itself though gaining control of the government and then crushes everyone. It’s the oldest con game there is. And then…

“So the services [rendered by the] aristocracy did not save it when it monopolized privilege and power too narrowly, when it oppressed the people with selfish and myopic exploitation, when it retarded the growth of the nation by a blind addiction to ancestral ways, when it consumed the men and resources of the state in the lordly sport of dynastic or territorial wars. Then the excluded banded together in wild revolt; the new rich combined with the poor against obstruction and stagnation; the guillotine cut off a thousand noble heads; and democracy took its turn in the misgovernment of mankind.”

Will Durant wrote that a long time ago.

That has been the history of the world without exception. Every historian, ever, has written the exact same thing about his culture. And since the Founding Fathers knew their history they tried to found a totally new country that avoided those old problems. It worked for a while and in some ways still does.

This oppression-of-everyone-by-the-degraded-elites is a huge problem with the U.S. today. Wars that never stop and have accomplished nothing except consume men and wealth, degraded exploiting political “aristocracies,” high-paying jobs and the middle class disappearing and becoming impoverished, all to enrich the politically connected even more…all of these things have happened over and over and over through all of recorded history.

We are repeating the mistakes of Greece and Rome and every civilization that has fallen!

And what has then happened is that the excluded rise up and overthrows their oppressors. Usually this has included baking them alive in ovens, chopping off their heads, dismembering them, shooting them and their children or hanging them from lamp posts by their ankles. Revenge is a bitch.

Fortunately we don’t do those things. We just elect new people. And thank God for that because otherwise we’d have civil war.

I’ve had people tell me the sooner it collapses the better. Nope, unless they want violence in the streets, massive shortages of food and power, and like some of the countries in South America, even no toilet paper!

“We conclude that the concentration of wealth is…periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.” – Will Durant

"Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a wilful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses." - Richard K. Morgan

1 comment:

One Fat Oz Guy said...

It's funny how Hillary sees herself as pulling the strings, when she's just as much a puppet as the president's of governments the US set up.
Her arrogance has lead her to want Top position, even though she could have been fine without it and her health is anything but fine.
If she somehow wins, they'll be wheeling her around everywhere.