Controversial Political Opinions

[pbrower2a]

Crisis eras do not always go well. War is worse than a zero-sum game, and a Crisis that culminates in triumph for one side (Rome in the Second Punic War, the Union side in the American Civil War, the Allied Powers in WWII) can be great tragedy for the losing side (Carthage, the Confederacy, the Axis Powers). What looks like a Crisis triumph at the time because the winners write the histories may be a hidden calamity. Most of what we think we Americans know about Spartacus and the Servile War is a consequence of the writing of the American novelist Howard Fast. Classical civilization might have fared better had Spartacus overthrown the slave order that corrupted the latter century of the Roman Republic.

At least during the American Civil War we solved one problem that the Romans never did,and in our last completed Crisis we smashed two of the vilest social orders that ever existed. This time the key issue is the debasement of our social order. This Crisis can culminate in America becoming an Evil Empire in which the unlimited greed of rapacious elites gets dictatorial or despotic power to entrench its will. We could have the Orwellian nightmare of a boot grinding into a human face, but whose horror has the additional offense of the person grinding his boot insisting that the face being tortured smile in masochistic glee.