Current U.S. Ruling Class Will Not Age Well
Extravagant debt, endless wars, institutional decline, the COVID-19 debacle, sordid affairs, money worship, bad manners, and deep social divisions leave little for the younger generations to admire.
In 121 A.D. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (called “Suetonius” by scholars) wrote De vita Caesarum (The Lives of the Caesars, now best known as The Twelve Caesars). Suetonius wrote the book while serving as personal secretary to the emperor Hadrian.
The portrait that Suetonius paints is not pretty. He regales the reader with sensational accounts of cruelty, depravity, over-the-top luxury, brutality, sexual perversion, gross overspending, self-aggrandizing militarism, and stupidity.
Even after making generous allowances for the book’s sensationalism, gossip, and propaganda, the reader will struggle to admire these guys.
What is it about wealth and power that makes people behave so foolishly and selfishly? Their behavior resembles that of people who are giddy drunk.
I wonder if Hadrian—who considered himself a Stoic philosopher, aesthete, and gentleman—may have endorsed the negative portrait of his predecessors to make himself (with his own faults) look better by comparison.
Whatever the case may be, I often think about The Twelve Caesars when trying to evaluate our ruling class since Bill Clinton took office on January 20, 1993. I sometimes toy with the idea of writing a Suetonius knock-off of about the five presidents who have held office during our post-Cold War era (working title, The Five Squanderers).
Rome survived the crazy era the Twelve Caesars. The combined reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius (from 117 to 180) was a time of far greater prudence. I suspect that the U.S. will survive the psycho clown show of the last 33 years, but it leaves little for the younger generations to admire.
From what I can gather the USA Presidents from 1990 onwards have done Israel’s bidding for years sadly. To get things straight, I’m NOT pro Hamas, I am pro Christian Palestinians though. Anyway I digress, if you include Trump in that bunch of US presidents, not sure if you are, but aside from him, one thing is for sure - as a Brit we’d take DT ANY day over the Marxist megalomaniac we presently have at number 10. The UK currently have 3,800 people in jail just for social media posts and at least you’re not over run with ☪️🥷🏽 🕌 in the USA, although New York need to take a look at London with Sadiq Khan and be careful who they vote for ………..😞
I am pretty convinced that our country is doomed to fail. We cannot keep going on like this, flipping from one party rule to another, with the divide in between growing by the moment. I lean conservative, and in my view, the past 5-10 years have been the most eye-opening. This country will never survive if we do not impose term limits in congress, severely limit the influence of big pharma and other corporate lobbyists, and dismantle the control the Fed has over our banking system. I don’t see any of this ever happening, so I think we’re all screwed.