[lbo-talk] Little Dickie Perle - We had the very best of intentions

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Mon Jun 4 12:28:02 PDT 2007


On 6/4/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I missed this one. The "Vulcans" (Perle, et al.'s
> self-denomination) thought (think?) of themselves as
> heirs to the Roman Empire. In Roman times, leaders who
> failed this catastrophically wouldn't have the nerve
> to back asking for a blank check to keep the mess they
> made out of admitted ignorance and stupidity from
> blowing up completely. They'd be expected to go home
> and open a vein in a hot bath. Some old customs are
> worth bringing back.

Actually, more likely, they would have been prosecuted by some up-and-coming "populare" politician, and just before their conviction, after all attempts to bribe the jury had failed, they would have fled into exile, along with any loot they managed to salvage. It was only the "honorable men" who committed suicide; the ones who took the 'old ways' seriously.

But I think we would actually need "populare" politicians, in the first place i.e. politicians willing to go for the main chance by bringing a fellow "aristocrat" down to his knees.

The Bush people are basically corrupt politicians like Verres, the governor of Sicily, who looted everything that was valuable in Sicily, then tried to bribe every Roman politician at home with his loot to make sure he was not convicted during prosecution. When he saw it wouldn't wash, he took his loot and went to Marsala (modern Marseilles).

At least we could revive the tradition of driving lousy politicians into exile. At least that would be something. But it takes a really angry public to do such things. We have never sent the likes of our Kissingers or Dick Cheneys, into exile as far as I can remember. Mostly such people spend their retirement on television and earning millions of dollars in "consulting fees" i.e. final payments for services rendered.

Jerry



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