Daily Skeptic: Neil Oliver’s piece about our broken democracy for this site set me thinking. I’m interested in all sorts of historical analogies for our times because they can help a wider understanding of the mess we are getting deeper and deeper into. Neil points out, rightly, that we are being increasingly led into a future determined by a small, and getting smaller, elite tier of leaders. Ramesh Thakur warns that once Government takes on extra powers it won’t give them up.
Absolutism in all its forms has a far longer history than democracy and so does what we are seeing in our own time. Ancient Egypt was ruled by a despotic absolutist hereditary monarchy that manifested itself in a succession of dynasties. The reigning Pharaoh, who was in a few exceptional instances a woman, posed as the protector of Maat.
Maat was a nebulous concept that encompassed order, truth and justice. The Pharaoh stood as a bastion between the people and the forces of chaos. This pretext has been used by the ruling class or the ruler since time immemorial. It was no different during Covid, when governments across the world legitimated dramatic controls over people’s private lives on the basis that the state was protecting the population from the chaos and disorder of Covid. They were able to do this, because most people most of the time acquiesce in the state’s leadership. This is perfectly understandable because the alternative is usually anarchy, and because the state is perceived alone to have access to the resources necessary for protection. However, it is very easy to allow the state to subsume ever more power and control.
In or around 1352 BC the Pharaoh Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty died. With his Queen Tiye he presided over Egypt at the climax of its power and wealth. If the mummy thought to be his really was him, he was by then a man in late middle age crippled by ill-health, obesity and rotten teeth. more
Recommend reading.
I like the lessons from the French Revolution. Who wouldn’t like to see Obama, Clinton, Biden, McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer and the rest of those bastards getting their heads lopped off?
The good forms of govt are mostly infiltrated by those only interested in wealth and, most of all, power.
Our country currently resembles Rome on its way to the fall. Crooked politicians, open borders, making immorality “normal”…
While reading this article I kept thinking of Margaret Thatcher explaining why she fired one of her ministers. She said he had become accustomed to the trappings of office.
Seems a common problem.
As far as revolts, they indeed would be more dangerous to crooked politicians nowadays as we have guns. Egyptians and did not.
Probably what’s kept the US pretty much intact until now.
Hence the weaponizing of law enforcement. Get detractors imprisoned in hopes of shutting the rest up.
“Here with their daughters, the royal couple ordered the construction of a new city with temples and palaces, and a royal necropolis. The elite hangers on built themselves fine townhouses and well-appointed tombs. The rest of the city’s people, who had had no choice, lived in slums.”
Nothing has changed in the last 5,000 years. We’re slaves to the rich. Maybe that’s why Jesus said it was harder for a rich man to enter into heaven. It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
BTW, ancient Egyptians enjoyed their cocaine, they gave us that too.