Our Emporers

It appears as though I'll survive.

Reading about the bail out (a good place to start). I have been thinking about the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the empire. How quickly they went from Julius and Augustus to Tiberius and Caligula.

That is, how quickly things crashed. There were regularly "good" emperors, but in the end they were too controlled by the situation and unable to see past their rule. Of course, currently we elect our emperors, but that has already started to be changed. (Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004).

Gnats like me and mosquitoes like Greenwald are allowed to fly around the edges and bite at not much, but if things get tentative for the rulers you can bet that we won't be permitted. Watch that old net neutrality get plowed under. Obama has already shown that he wants complete control -- look what he did to the liberal/progressive 527s.

I am continuously amazed at how much support there is for a clearly incompetent petulant child as president. Yet within a short time in Rome there was Caligula. I had kind of had the idea that we had sort of evolved and were better at governing ourselves than the Romans. I suspect not -- now.

So anyway we pour mass amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie May and now nearly a trillion into AIG. All of that money goes into the pockets of the wealthy. The people who cry the loudest that the hand of the market must be allowed to act and to sweep the dead wood away are those who are now crying hardest for the government to rescue them. You know they were than more willing to allow the market hand sweep away the dead wood of Korea, South Africa, and Indonesia.

Also, the opposition party doesn't seem to be much in opposition. It does seem that a reasonable alternative (if you don't want to let the market hand act) is to put that much money into the pockets of the people who are defaulting on their houses. Then they can pay off their mortgages and put money directly into the pockets of people who sell things. Naw that would be socialism. Giving huge amounts of money to a few incredibly wealthy people isn't socialism it's government by theft a true kleptocracy. Which would be beloved by the Roman emperors and the worst banana republic dictator.

Don't you see the difference? I can see why so many of the later Roman writers were satirists and cynics.