Arnold Toynbee Was Right.

[red dog 1]

"America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defense of vested interests.
She now stands for what Rome stood for.
Rome consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign communities that fell under her sway; and since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Rome's policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number."

Arnold Toynbee, Historian, 1961


(That first line reminds me of Eisenhower's Farewell Speech, also from 1961)

[DirkGently]

1. Well put. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Well, he gave Rome an undeservedly bad rap

but he didn't have access to a lot of information excavations have turned up since then.

For instance, Rome maintained a huge degree of social mobility. You might have been taken as a slave in your home country and sold to a Roman, but after some years of faithful service, you were freed, taking your former master's surname. You could become a citizen (if male) at the age of 30, or before then if you married and produced a child. Once a citizen, you could become rich and many did. In conquered provinces, people who became Romanized and lived in the Roman settlements were considered full Roman citizens, on a par with the ones who had come from Rome. They got rich, also. The military was fully international, soldiers often being recruited from the areas being occupied. It was another path to full citizenship.

This country seems to have entered the business of abolishing social mobility. Once a (wage) slave, always a (wage) slave. The rich need no longer fear squandering themselves into poverty and the poor no longer are able to aspire to anything but more years of being poor. This is closer to the brutal system the Greeks had than it is to the Romans.

But yes, we're following the classical pattern of Empire, the periphery getting all the attention (i.e. investment, new factories) and the interior being abandoned except as an administrative center.

[bemildred]

5. +1.

People forget that what brought the USSR down was a revolt of the Russian people, who got tired of paying for it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Income & wealth inequality is number one social problem in US and the world today.

If it is not fixed soon, then cracks will appear that will be violent and ugly.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. Truth.

[MasonDreams]

6. Nominating drumpf is 1 bigly ugly crack

Please, please, Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.