Democracy in Ancient Greece required every citizen to participate actively all of the time. Their definition of citizenship was not ours of course but we do have, and need to protect from Trump's predations, ours. Being a citizen of any country bestows rights...and OBLIGATIONS! Our system has, in recent years been marked by either compla…
Democracy in Ancient Greece required every citizen to participate actively all of the time. Their definition of citizenship was not ours of course but we do have, and need to protect from Trump's predations, ours. Being a citizen of any country bestows rights...and OBLIGATIONS! Our system has, in recent years been marked by either complacency and the feeling that all is well and others will take care of it... OR... disgust and frustration as voting didn't seem to change anything. The result has been lower and lower participation making election buying, influencing, disrupting,skulduggery and discounting all the more easier....and cheaper than it should be.
Either through lack of confidence or overconfidence in our democratic system we let our guard down, big money and foreign interests siezed the chance and are exploiting it in full to impose their interests over the people's needs. We let it happen, watched it progress and bemoaned its symptomes. Trump was a catastrophy that has been trying to happen for 175 years.
Absenteeism on election day and not making oneself stand up and be counted is very positively correlated with increasing income inequality around the world. Treating corporations as people and corporate money as free speech was the opening of the door to the stable....the horse that has bolted has names such as Koch, Bradley, Olin, Scaife.....and of course Trump, DeVos, Putin and many others. Off-loading the Fairness Doctrine in Media gave them the voice to sell their lies and propaganda. Gun ownership and the propagation of Bush's DHS' s "circle-the-wagons" mentality has given them the foot soldiers to enchain the people. We need now to take a leaf out of the book that is being written by the Byelorussian people and before them the Ukrainians and metaphoricaly "take to the streets" in defiance of the traiterous dictators guns. The people will have to go out and defend the mail-in ballots, the polling stations, the vote counting process and the declaration of TRUE results and there afterward the swearing-in of a truly elected President. Trump can only win if people sit back, moan, grumble and regret that he's got away with it. Get out there!
Analysis of the fall of the Roman Republic cites increasing political disengagement by the Roman citizens as a major cause of the eventual failure. With both Rome and Greece, things become perilous when a democracy becomes an empire and rules autocratically outside its borders overseas while trying to maintain the old ways within the "republic." Gresham's Law of Money (bad money drives out good) works in politics also, and empires tend to bring their authoritarian ways overseas back home.
I somehow didn't think that we would sink to the level of peplum. Our current "Nero" can't even play the fiddle! But we are getting the same oscillation between "republic" and "empire" that characterized their decline and fall. I hate to think who will play the role of Attila and whether we can hope for a new Justinian !
Democracy in Ancient Greece required every citizen to participate actively all of the time. Their definition of citizenship was not ours of course but we do have, and need to protect from Trump's predations, ours. Being a citizen of any country bestows rights...and OBLIGATIONS! Our system has, in recent years been marked by either complacency and the feeling that all is well and others will take care of it... OR... disgust and frustration as voting didn't seem to change anything. The result has been lower and lower participation making election buying, influencing, disrupting,skulduggery and discounting all the more easier....and cheaper than it should be.
Either through lack of confidence or overconfidence in our democratic system we let our guard down, big money and foreign interests siezed the chance and are exploiting it in full to impose their interests over the people's needs. We let it happen, watched it progress and bemoaned its symptomes. Trump was a catastrophy that has been trying to happen for 175 years.
Absenteeism on election day and not making oneself stand up and be counted is very positively correlated with increasing income inequality around the world. Treating corporations as people and corporate money as free speech was the opening of the door to the stable....the horse that has bolted has names such as Koch, Bradley, Olin, Scaife.....and of course Trump, DeVos, Putin and many others. Off-loading the Fairness Doctrine in Media gave them the voice to sell their lies and propaganda. Gun ownership and the propagation of Bush's DHS' s "circle-the-wagons" mentality has given them the foot soldiers to enchain the people. We need now to take a leaf out of the book that is being written by the Byelorussian people and before them the Ukrainians and metaphoricaly "take to the streets" in defiance of the traiterous dictators guns. The people will have to go out and defend the mail-in ballots, the polling stations, the vote counting process and the declaration of TRUE results and there afterward the swearing-in of a truly elected President. Trump can only win if people sit back, moan, grumble and regret that he's got away with it. Get out there!
Analysis of the fall of the Roman Republic cites increasing political disengagement by the Roman citizens as a major cause of the eventual failure. With both Rome and Greece, things become perilous when a democracy becomes an empire and rules autocratically outside its borders overseas while trying to maintain the old ways within the "republic." Gresham's Law of Money (bad money drives out good) works in politics also, and empires tend to bring their authoritarian ways overseas back home.
I somehow didn't think that we would sink to the level of peplum. Our current "Nero" can't even play the fiddle! But we are getting the same oscillation between "republic" and "empire" that characterized their decline and fall. I hate to think who will play the role of Attila and whether we can hope for a new Justinian !
💙