Week in, but not really. Today is a holy day, the observance of the birthday anniversary of Martin Luther King (Yankee guvment) and Robert Edward Lee (Muntgum guvment.) The shules are closed so the only educationalists at gym this morning were the few dedicated and I was unable to ask whether the holiday was for King or Lee. I rather suspect the former given the social correctness that is a chancre of our so-called public education system.
Rather a shame really, more are deserving but there is something antipathetic that forbids any merging, so one is left with either-or and regardless labeled a bigot and blackguard.
The podcast episode this morning (in the main) was the CBC’s “Best of Ideas” take on Thucydides and his history/journal of the Peloponnesian War. I was rather taken by some of Victor Davis Hansen’s comments about how Sparta and Athens could be characterized by a set of Ising states of occupancy this or that. In this case, for each state, Sparta would be This, and Athens That, and the things they had in common ignored and irrelevant. So war ensued between the oligarchs and the democrats, and after a short while it became a classic Dehlbruckian war of attrition where killing was preferable to victory and dying killing someone on the other side was preferable to the reverse.
I was struck by the similarity to our contemporary situation of politics in the Yankee republic. The two political parties, who might best be characterized as oligarchs and aristocrats since the democrats are not except to carry just as the republicans are not but do not carry the name, are characterized by a list of oppositions on various matters that have now managed to alienate them from nearly as many as are not, combined. For example, to be a member of one a citizen must either favor gun abolition and abortion, or to be a member of the other must favor gun licensing and denial of women’s rights. The middle ground of advocating the right of the citizen to live their life with responsibility and safety is excluded and hence makes the political parties the co-dictators of an increasing smaller fraction of the citizenry.
Perhaps if we learned from the Greeks’ misfortune and banned political parties, making membership a felony punishable by organ harvesting? Or more punishingly, allowed them to retain their franchise but forbade them to ever hold public office that did not entail use of a pooper scooper?
Of course if we did that then we should have to do something about corporations and lobbyists so perhaps it would be best if we just collapse into a civil war? And have a real problem finding anyone to stand for some/many offices?
