Tag: Athens

A Pocket Full of Miracles

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For a thousand years from roughly 500 BC to 500 AD the most dynamic civilization on the planet was the Greco-Roman world.  This consisted of a number of Indo-European speaking pastoral tribes who had earlier invaded southeastern Europe and disrupting the existing Mediterranean civilization there, borrowed heavily from their predecessors and founded city states in Italy, Asia Minor and the Balkans while competing with the more civilized Phoenicians and struggling to resist even less civilized Indo-European tribes like the Celts who periodically invaded from the north.  Two of these cities; first Athens in Hellas and then Rome in Italy, stumbled upon the dynamism that comes when some measure of freedom from oppression is codified into a government.

In both cases the limited form of democracy unleashed a power that dominated its neighbors for an appreciable time.  Eventually in both cases this freedom decayed and was replaced by autocracy.

A little more than a thousand years after the remnants of the Greco-Roman civilization collapsed the English resurrected a different but similar form of government.  And the English colonies around the world have continued and adapted this form of government including the former colonies that became the United States of America.  A case can be made that the last four hundred years have represented the practical extent of this experiment in democracy.  And like the Athenians before them the American and the British have tried to force their vassal states to emulate their form of government, so that today the number of democracies in the world is impressive, unless you look too closely.

But four hundred years is a long time.  Athens maintained democracy for most of one hundred and eighty years and theoretically the Roman republic hadn’t devolved into a dictatorship for almost five hundred years.  But truly the last century of the Roman republic was a series of dictators vying to stay in power and unleashing endless wars on the state.

So, four hundred years is a pretty good run.  But the current Anglo-American project is showing many of the warning signs of an exhausted civilization.  And probably the most damning is the plutocrats trying to eliminate the middle-class and replace them with serfs.  Even back in 4th century Athens, Aristotle knew that only with a numerous middle-class can a free state maintain itself.  Well, we are quickly devolving into the condition that the Roman plebians found themselves in the first century BC.  Their farms were bought up by the rich who used slave labor to outcompete the small farmers and left them forced to enlist in the army just to keep from starving.

Our predicament is even worse.  The plutocrats don’t need us at all, not even as cannon fodder.  All they want us to do is disappear.  So that leaves us with Donald Trump.  He says he wants to make us great again.  He’ll have to answer two questions:

  1. Is it too late to get an honest election?
  2. Is it too late to restore the middle class?

Of course, if the first answer is no then the second answer is no by default.  I am hoping he can pull it off.  Getting a fair election is a long shot.  But there’s no reason to hope against it.  Restoring prosperity is a larger and more complicated story.  And finally, if he manages to get some things done, the next question is can he recruit honest men to succeed him and keep the effort going.  Because, let’s face it, there is a generation of work to even begin to fix our problems.  It’ll take a whole pocket full of miracles.

One thing that the Athenians had over us is honest comic poets.  Aristophanes openly mocked the failures and foibles of the leaders of his country.  All we have is Saturday Night Live and the late-night show hosts.  And they’re all in the bag for the Democrats.  And on top of everything else they’re not even funny.  Well, we have this guy.

I’ll Wait for the Movie Version

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“Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as they warred against each other, beginning to write as soon as the war was on foot, with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it; conjecturing so much both from this, that they flourished on both sides in all manner of provision, and also because he saw the rest of Greece siding with the one or the other faction, some then presently and some intending so to do. For this was certainly the greatest commotion that ever happened among the Grecians, reaching also to part of the barbarians and, as a man may say, to most nations. For the actions that preceded this and those again that are yet more ancient, though the truth of them through length of time cannot by any means clearly be discovered, yet for any argument that, looking into times far past, I have yet light on to persuade me, I do not think they have been very great, either for matter of war or otherwise.”

In 1629 Thomas Hobbes the philosopher (or we should say the social scientist) translated into English, Thucydides “Peloponnesian War.”  Above is Thucydides’ introduction.  He believed that this was the greatest war that had ever been fought among the Greeks.  And in this belief, he was probably right.  And in a sense every major war that was fought afterward in which European peoples fought amongst themselves became the greatest war.  After the Peloponnesian war, Sparta fought with the other Hellenic city states such as Thebes until they wore each other down.  That allowed the related Macedonian nation to conquer the Greeks and that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire.  And the squabbling of the successor kingdoms of Alexander’s generals was the incubator for the Roman empire.

But when the rotted corpse of the Caesars’ world disintegrated sometime during the 5th century A.D. it formed the fertile soil that nurtured our Western civilization.  And now the United States of America is approaching the point where it will need a new name.  Calling it a democratic republic is sort of a bad joke.  The form of the government is some kind of self-perpetuating bureaucracy.  And its extent is no longer defined by the outline of the fifty states.  Much like Rome it has many vassal states that while technically not American territory nevertheless are almost completely controlled by America.

And like Rome the American Empire has an enormous amount of momentum.  Even in the midst of precipitous decline in many aspects of its existence the shear mass of this human organization is staggering to behold.  And because of this scope it will take a long time for the creature to die.  Unfortunately, we will be the witnesses to the early stages of this downfall.  And it is already on display.  Just as the Roman republic died with the destruction of the small Roman farmers so our society will degenerate into a feudal existence with the dominance of the corporate oligarchs over small independent businesses.  And in fact, the last few years has greatly accelerated this process.

And our age’s equivalent to the Roman “bread and circuses” is the vision of welfare and the metaverse where everyone commits slow suicide to make room for the depopulated Gaia model.  It almost makes 5th century Rome sound humanistic.

I was recently skimming through Macchiavelli’s “History of Florence.”  It begins with the Fall of Rome and after the Carolingian period quickly devolves into endless petty wars between a long series of German Holy Roman Emperors named Frederic, French Kings named Louis and Neapolitan Dukes named Rodrigo battling the Popes for control of Tuscany and Lombardy.  And it occurred to me that someday that will be North America.  Idiotic descendants of the Pilgrims will be warring endlessly with some Asiatic warlords and Neo-Aztecs for possession of Lake Winnipesaukee.  And if that’s the case then my ancestors might as well have remained in Southern Italy and at least have had the comfort of snow free March weather.

If I were a Stoic, I’d look at the whole thing as the way of the world and just make the best of it without whining about it.  But my ancestors made a tradition of bitterly complaining about just about everything that was outside of their control and just about everything was outside of their control.  At the same time, it meant trying to make the most of the things we could control; family, food and friends.

But just as Thucydides did with Athens and Tacitus did with Republican Rome, we will get a chance to see up close and personal how a once free people get turned into serfs.  It won’t be pretty but it will be momentous.  I hope the movie version has good CGI effects.

The Paradox of Western Civilization

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To anybody who came of age in America before, let’s say 1990, it’s always maddening to hear the views of Millennials on the subject of Western History.  They are completely convinced that the world would have been a paradise if only the evil Europeans hadn’t interfered with all the good people everywhere else.  So, because the settlers dispossessed the Indians and used slave labor for agriculture and used the advanced weapons and tactics that they invented to conquer the whole world this must mean that the Europeans were morally inferior to the peoples they defeated.  The fact that history and archeology show that humans everywhere and at all times have waged war against their neighbors and made slaves of their defeated rivals is as clear and understandable as any other law of nature.  The Khans of Mongolia conquered most of Eurasia and committed atrocities that rival anything that Hitler or Stalin committed.  Empires in India, the Middle East and Meso-America conquered and enslaved their neighbors whenever the opportunity arose.  The tribes and nations of Sub-Saharan Africa even in modern times have committed genocidal attacks on their enemies that have stunned outsiders by their cruelty.  Man has been a terrifying enemy to his neighbors for as long as he has existed.  In fact, it is ignored that the English were the ones who ended slavery inside their vast empire in the nineteenth century with the United States following their example shortly after.  It was Europeans (the Swiss and the English and their descendants) who first resurrected democracy after a lapse of thousands of years since the end of the first attempts back in ancient Athens.  And with respect to women’s rights, England and the United States, once again, were in the vanguard of that movement.

But none of this registers with Millennials.  They’ve been proselytized and brow-beaten by their teachers from kindergarten to graduate school and beyond to acknowledge the hereditary guilt of belonging to a civilization that virtually alone has created the modern world that everyone lives in.  And to atone for the “sins” of their ancestors they desire to hand over the country to anyone who desires to come here to live.  They think it would be better if America belonged to the world.  “After all,” they think, “we stole it from someone else, we should give it back.”

What they’re too blind to realize is that if they indeed gave it to the world, it soon wouldn’t be a place that the world would want to live in.  It is true that many people come to America to get free stuff.  They see a gravy train and figure on getting as much of what is being handed out for as long as it’s available.  They typically send the money they get back home to their families and intend to return when it gets to be a big enough nest egg.  But there have always been people who come to America because they’ve heard that things are done right here.  If you live in a country where the local strongman can take your property or even abuse your family with impunity then it doesn’t matter if you are relatively well off.  A lawless society is a violent and chaotic place where only the strongest survive and even they know a stronger man will eventually come along to supplant them.  Whether it was German peasants fleeing religious wars or Southern Italians fleeing poverty and the cruel intimidation of the Mafia people came to the United States because for the most part the middle class here were able to negotiate a sane existence where their children could live a decent life and maybe even better themselves over time.

But as the older population knows, every time a new wave of immigrants arrives and crowds the slums of the old cities, it creates crime and poverty and resentment between the older inhabitants and the new immigrants.  At that point, in the past, immigration is halted.  Then it takes fifty years for the new immigrants to assimilate and blend into the American way of life.  And normal life resumes for the bulk of the inhabitants.

But if the Millennials (and the Democrat leadership and the corporations who need cheap labor) have their way, then there will be no halt to the influx of immigrants.  Eventually we will reach a tipping point where the new arrivals will swamp out the cultural Americans and it won’t be America anymore.  Once enough people will sell their vote for some short-term economic benefit, all the things that made the United States unique, things like the Bill of Rights, will be legislated away and we will live in the same lawless jungle that all those who came here fled from.

It took almost two thousand years between Ancient Athens and Modern Europe for democracy to reappear.  If it disappears here, it may take that long for it to reappear.  We must do what we can to stop this stupid idea that everyone can move to America.

And it’s unnecessary.  The whole world knows what a working civilization looks like.  It was the civilization that flourished in Europe during the industrial revolution.  It was when man used science and intelligence to improve the way he lived.  This can be copied and adapted to the local conditions.  It won’t be like America but it will be better than the tribal life that preceded modernity.  We don’t need to let everyone come here.  We don’t even have to enforce our standards on these more backward countries.  But we can insist that if they want to have any interaction with us that they must maintain some reasonable standards of behavior to allow that interaction to be acceptable to us.  We can make common cause with countries that have the same aspirations as us.  Those that don’t we can ignore.  But we don’t owe even friendly nations the right to flood our country and disrupt our way of life.

So, to hell with the Millennials and their idiot teachers.  This is our way of life here and we don’t want to lose it.

Trump vs The Time Hag – Episode 2 – The Funeral Oration of Trumpicles

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(Hat tip to Roger Kimball for the inspiration.)

 

Note: A prequel has been written to this post.  Sorry for the complication.

General Trumpicles – (GT) – People of Athens, and remember Athens is the greatest city in the world, I speak to you today as your leader, and you love me, you really do. I stand before you today to say that Sparta is low energy and rumor of their military strength is fake news, it really is.

(loud and prolonged cheering)

Yes, yes you love me, of course you do. How could you not?  I return to you victorious after defeating the Thebans and building the long walls out to the Piraeus and getting the Spartans to pay for it.  And considering how poor and cheap the Spartans are it wasn’t easy.  Trust me!

(prolonged chanting of “Sparta Sucks, Sparta Sucks)

Yes, yes they do, they really do. And there it’s actually fashionable but let’s not get homophobic.  What I want to say is that Athens is the greatest city in the world and I’m the greatest leader in the world and you’re all so lucky to live in this Fifth Century B.C. Golden Age.  Although I really don’t know what B.C. means and fifth century from what?  But who cares?  It’s golden and that’s enough.  Next week we’ll be opening up the new Trumpicles Temple and Casino.  Some people want to call it the Parthenon.  They think that statue is Athena.  But it’s really Melania.  And Parthenon for her would be misleading.  Enough said.

I just want to say a few words about how great Athens is and why it’s great. It’s great because we make the best deals and we are smarter than the other greeks and because we don’t take crap from anyone.  Darius landed here when our fathers were poor farmers and told us to pay tribute and we told him to stick it in his ear.  And he burned down the city because it was built of wood.  And we’ve rebuilt it out of marble. And he fought us at Marathon and we kicked his ass.

(prolonged chanting of “Persia Sucks, Persia Sucks)

Yeah, they do. But be generous.  At least they’re not the Spartans.

(loud and raucous laughing)

And don’t forget that it was the Trumpicles Corporation that rebuilt Athens in marble. And it was the finest Parian marble and no expense was spared and it is the showcase of the Aegean Sea.  Now you may be asking yourself, “why does Trumpicles do all this.”?  Well, I’ll tell you.  It’s because I’m a man of the people.  I’m not like that Crooked Clintoninus.  I never make an obol on any of these deals I make for you.  It’s well documented that I’m the greatest leader that you will ever have. After me it’ll be one long slide down into Palookaville and then Alexander and the Macedonians will turn this place into a parking lot for the tourists.  But for as long as you’ve got me, the good times will roll and you won’t have to worry about anything except how to spend the drachmas.  So to sum it up, Athens is the greatest city because I’m the greatest leader, you love me and Sparta sucks.  Good night everybody.

(loud foot stomping and chanting Trumpicles, Trumpicles, Sparta Sucks, Sparta Sucks.)