Author: photog

Ancient European History – Part 2

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In the first part of this essay, I stated that the Greeks and Romans utterly failed in their attempt at democratic or even representative government.  And that is demonstrably true.  Athens lasted less than a lifetime as a democracy and Rome was never anything but an oligarchy masquerading as a popular government.  Even when the emperor was the supreme power in the state somehow the plutocrats still got all the laws they needed to bleed the poor dry and prevent any least benefit for the people who made up the bulk of the empire.  So, yeah, Rome was a slave camp for everyone but the rich.

But how about us?  Have we improved on what the ancients had?  Well, we at least have eliminated slavery.  That is one absolute advantage.  And theoretically we have representative government.  In some sense I have a chance of someone who thinks the way I do writing the laws and enforcing them.  Okay, there’s something like that going on.  After all, look, Donald Trump is president for the second time.  He’s even been able to eject large numbers of Deep State ringers out of the federal government.  And he’s even been able to primary Republicans who vote against the reforms he’s pushing.  He has made some headway toward populist outcomes to some of the worst situations we live under.  He has been attempting to reverse unconstitutional laws and rulings like anti-white and anti-male discrimination.

But what we’re seeing is only the first steps.  And this is Trump’s last term.  Will more progress be made.  After all, even under the Roman Republic there were attempted reforms.  Tiberius Gracchus was a famous example.  He attempted to stop the patricians from robbing poor farmers of their land every time they were forced to fight in a war.  While they were in the army their families got into debt just to feed themselves and when they got home the government refused to forgive these debts in gratitude for their military service and these families ended up losing their farms to the greedy moneylenders who added these acres to their already obscenely large landholdings.  Gracchus attempted to bring these protections to a vote and was murdered by a mob for his trouble.  Interestingly Trump has already dodged two assassins already.  When J. D. Vance and the other republicans run for president in 2028, I hope their secret service protection is a lot better than what candidate Trump had in 2024.

So, yes, we have improved somewhat on the fairness of the government we have over the ancients.  But many of the same problems haunt us.  Graft, influence peddling, complete indifference for the working and middle classes and a bloated bureaucracy that swallows up enormous resources that should go to useful government projects like infrastructure and industrial planning that make it possible for businesses to expand and hire more people.

In the next part I want to look at whether the current method we use for selecting leaders which at least nominally is supposed to be based on Greek and Roman models is really the best method or whether some other structure would be better.

Ancient European History – Part 1

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Ancient History is fascinating.  Specifically reading about Europe from 600 B.C to 200 A.D. is fascinating.  The Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Germans, the Goths, the Scythians even the Persians all interacting (meaning warring against each other) while trying to figure out how to pass from a barbaric tribal social structure into a larger more sophisticated society.  And all this while competing against the more established states like Egypt, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia.

Now some never achieved this.  The Gauls and the Scythians ceased to exist as nations while still in the plundering raider stage.  The Germans and the Goths had to wait for the downfall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. before they could advance.  The Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans all had their day.  The Hellenistic civilization and its several kingdoms and empires had its heyday after Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late fourth century B.C.  Stretching from western India to Egypt this civilization lasted in various areas until the Parthians and Romans overtook it.  The last piece to survive was Egypt which Augustus took charge of after the death of Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C.  Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemies whose progenitor was one of Alexander the Great’s generals.  So, all together the Hellenistic civilization Alexander founded lasted three hundred years.  Of course, you could easily make the case that the Byzantine Empire was the extension of this Hellenistic civilization with a thin patina of Roman influence on its surface.  And that shrinking “empire” managed to hang on in the city of Constantinople until 1453 A.D.

The Romans had their run from about 600 B.C. to 476 A.D.  And they did manage to leave their mark on Europe in a big way.  The Romance languages are spoken by a big chunk of the world population and the influence of Roman concepts in law and politics is immense.  So, these tribes from the dawn of real civilization in Europe had a great influence on us in the West.

But in a real way their political institutions were all resounding failures at providing their people with good governance, stability or a satisfying life.  Both the Greeks and the Romans attempted to create republics that provided the citizens with some say in their government.  Athens was a democracy.  Rome had popular elections (in a limited fashion) of their leaders.  But in both cases these civilizations eventually regressed to some form of monarchy.  The Hellenistic states had dynastic kings.  Rome had its emperors that were sometimes dynastic but during the most successful eras successors were selected by the reigning Emperor based on merit.  And in fact, since essentially the emperor was a military dictator, the legions were the ultimate arbiter of who was a successful emperor.  So, Julius Caesar or a Trajan would be beloved by his conquering legions because they would be showered with the spoils of conquest.  Whereas, an emperor without any military ability like Caligula or Commodus would end up assassinated by the Praetorian Guard in favor of someone more competent.  Perhaps military competency was the basis for picking their head of state.  A case could be made for that.

So, the question has to be asked, have we progressed since the ancients?  Is our government superior to the Greek and Roman states.  Let’s see what I think in Part 2.

New Years Day 2026

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Here we are on the first day of a year that is bound to be a roller coaster ride.  The world is poised between plunging into chaos or shaking off the poisonous effects of the woke nightmare we’ve been subjected to since 2008.  Which one wins is anyone’s guess.  But just having the Bad Orange Man there in the White House is proof to me that all hope hasn’t disappeared.  All of his words and deeds rankle the enemies of normalcy whenever he speaks or acts.  He’s a constant source of rage for all of the people I despise so much.  And hopefully this year he’ll up the voltage even higher and burn out all their circuitry in splendid fashion.

As I said, there’s no guarantee that he’ll win.  There are an enormous number of horrible people in this country.  And they’ll stop at nothing to restore the Obama/Biden team in Washington.  And this team is composed of both Democrats and Republicans.  They’re creatures of the Deep State that profit obscenely from the constant siphoning off of the country’s lifeblood into NGOs and other fronts that profit the Left and attack normal people wherever and whenever they can.  But they have been hurt and hurt badly by the DOGE initiatives and Trump’s executive orders and even that law that the House got passed that ended the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by extension cut off the funding for PBS and NPR.  And this proves that fighting these entities is possible.  And if it’s possible we need to give Trump all the help he can get to win the fight.

So, I’ll start the year with a realistic but positive outlook.  Trump won’t win every fight.  He might even lose one or two houses of Congress in the mid-terms.  But that’s nothing new.  It’s almost expected.  But what he has shown is that he can get a hell of a lot done with the right team and the will to make things happen.

Normally people write New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead, I’ll make a list of things I hope happen in 2026.

  • Tim Walz resigns from the governorship of Minnesota.
  • Mayor Mamdani crashes and burns in his first year as Mayor of New York City. By that I mean that he has to renege on all his campaign promises (free busses, frozen rents, city-run grocery stores) and comes begging to Albany and Washington to keep him from being run out of town on a rail.
  • ICE deports several times more illegals in 2026 than in 2025. They’ve been ramping up and I think they’re figuring out the pain points for illegals.
  • The Ukraine War will end. Will Trump get a Nobel Peace Prize.  Nah!
  • Maduro will flee Venezuela for Cuba. The drug traffickers will shift over to Mexico and American oil companies will return to restore their oil industry to some semblance of efficiency.
  • The guy who shot Charlie Kirk will be found guilty and sentenced to death.

Okay, that’s enough.  Happy New Year.

ShatnerKhan X

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Today I spoke to my fellow initiates in Advanced Shatneriana and it was decided that ShatnerKhan X will take place on January 17th at the Compound in the heart of Dunwich.  Now you may ask is this really the tenth ShatnerKhan.  Well, I tried to look back at the records and discovered that in November of 2024 I mentioned ShatnerKhan VIII.  But before that the highest number I could find was III.  So, something seems wrong.  I went farther back and found that ShatnerKhan I occurred on November 1st 2019.

That was over a year after my initial decision to celebrate all things Shatner in my groundbreaking post. “William Shatner a Demigod of Bad Acting.”  It’s required reading at Starfleet Academy.

The actual agenda is not as structured as in ShatnerKhans past.  Will we watch the two Twilight Zone episodes?  Will we review the various Star Trek episodes where Kirk performs his signature shoulder roll?  Will we rate the various alien women he groped?  Will we analyze his interactions with Lieutenant Sulu for any telltale animosity?  Will we do a survey to decide in which episode Kirk looks fattest?  The only thing I’m certain is we will play “Rocket Man.”  After all it’s a short performance and it combines all of Shatner’s signature tics in one package.  It has the weird pauses, the meaningless syllable stress changes in dialog and his truly embarrassing facial expressions trying to convey inappropriate emotions.  It is a masterclass in bad acting with bad singing thrown into the bargain for free.

And it is important to have a ShatnerKhan.  As we all know Bill Shatner was born in 1931.  He will be ninety-five in 2026 if he makes it to March 22nd.  And honestly, he’s starting to look a little raggedy.  So now is definitely a good time to review his many achievements and mock him relentlessly.

In addition, it’s also an excuse to eat extremely fattening foods and sit around and shoot the breeze with my old friends.  We’re not getting any younger either and it’s time to catch up on what’s gone on over the last year or two.  There are milestones and family stuff and plans to make for the upcoming year and now is the best time before we all get swamped with work and other commitments.

So it is with a light heart that I announce this incredible event.  Will we wear the Shatner masks from the “Halloween” movies (probably not, they’re really uncomfortable and would stop us from continuously eating)?  Will we watch any of the Star Trek movies like parts of the Wrath of Khan with the famous “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!! Moment (probably not, too much work to tee up)?  Will we eat and drink way too much food and dessert?  There I can answer categorically and emphatically Yes!!!  Of course, there is the danger of bad weather upending our plans and causing a cancellation.  This is after all Dunwich, a cursed land with endless evil bleeding into everything including the weather.  But we are intrepid individuals and fear no evil.  So SHATNERKHAN X !!!!!!!