I really, genuinely, sincerely, in my heart of hearts, don't think 1/6 was that big of a deal. The demand for a Threat to Democracy outstripped supply, so the media spent 4 years trying desperately to turn a molehill into a mountain. The fact that it apparently didn't move the needle at all during the 2024 elections just goes to show that most Americans also don't think that 1/6 was that big of a deal.
The key fact about the 1/6 riot is that there was never any path by which they could have actually usurped the government. The US Government does not operate on Capture the Flag rules. It doesn't matter how many people trespass in which government buildings. Taking over a government usually requires cooperation from an armed force like the military, police, a paramilitary militia, an intelligence agency, or something along those lines. 1/6 had some unarmed old people milling about in the capital. An actual Threat to Democracy must have the ability to actually Threaten the Democracy, as in there must be some chance of damaging it in some way. 1/6 was just one of a series of riots in that time period, and not a particularly damaging or violent one at that. The fact that it was targeted at elected officials instead of random innocent civilians makes it, if anything, less morally fraught than many of the other riots that took place in the preceding months.
I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.
"...the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade?"
The Azov Brigade is made up of 900-2,500 soldiers. The Ukrainian Army has 170,000 soldiers. Why, exactly, do you think the Azov Brigade is such a threat? Just because they're Neo-Nazis? That's it? Being Neo-Nazis grants them the superhuman power of the Ubermensch, and with it the ability to sweep aside an army 100 times their size? Do you think that Neo-Nazism is such an appealing ideology that if they ever get the tiniest shred of power then everyone in the Ukraine will instantly convert to become card-carrying Nazis - and, after that, the world, since apparently this is a threat that the US State Department should take seriously?
People who get performatively afraid of the rising threat of Nazism remind me of those homophobic Christians who are obviously in the closet. "Everyone knows that all men are sexually attracted to other men, and the only thing stopping us from getting hot and heavy with those beautiful, chiseled male bodies is the threat of eternal damnation. That's why we can never allow any homosexual sex, ever - it's too tempting! No one could resist the siren song of gay sex if it were an option! It would destroy the family!"
Do you think the only thing protecting us from the overwhelming power and appeal of the Nazi ideology is ruthless, constant suppression? Do you think that Nazism is so appealing, so powerful, so effective, that all it takes is one active Neo-Nazi group and a handful of guns to threaten the most powerful nations on Earth? Because if so I think you might be a Nazi.
I think of Nazism as nothing but a minor historical ideology that held sway for a little more than a decade, in one country, eighty years ago. They were ineffectual rulers who only managed to start and then subsequently lose a war before being deposed. Granted, it was a pretty big war. The thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Nazis doesn't concern me any more than the thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Jacobins.
Caesar was a popular general who'd spent the last decade plundering Western Europe and enslaving Gauls by the thousand. He was the richest man in all of Rome, but that doesn't even do it justice because he was rich beyond modern comprehension. As the general who'd conquered all of what is now France, about 20% of the spoils of the Gallic wars went straight into his pocket. His army was loyal to him above the Republic because he had made them all rich, too. Some of the armies the Republic sent against him defected to his side because they were jealous of how rich Caesar's legions were. He once bribed a legion by promising to give each man his own Gallic slave. When the Senate turned on him he was in the process of serving as the governor of three provinces for a whopping ten-year term, which he was 7-8 years into. To put that in perspective, those three provinces that Caesar was ruling over were: all of modern France, a big chunk of what is now northern Italy, and a big chunk of the Balkans.
Trump doesn't even have an army, let alone an army comparable to the one that answers to the President. He isn't in a position of any political or military power, unlike Caesar who was a proconsul and therefore both a governor and general. He isn't even particularly rich. The comparison just isn't there. What's he going to do, defeat the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a set piece battle? Him and what army?
The Reincarnation of Julius Caesar or: Why So Many People Give Trump a Pass for Corruption
This is partly in response to the post by TheAntipopulist below, but at the same time I'm about to go off on a tangent about Julius Caesar so I thought I'd make this top level.
Donald Trump is, undeniably, the most openly corrupt President in modern US history. What I mean is, no other President has been so corrupt and yet done so little to hide it. He isn't even pretending not to be crooked.
So why do so many people not seem to care?
Let's go back in time 2,000 years and talk about the assassination of Julius Caesar.
To set the stage: Caesar was a charismatic politician in ancient Rome who rose to be the leader of the Populaire faction. As a Populaire he favored redistribution from the rich to the poor, especially in the form of land reform. He also practiced what he preached, giving lavishly to the people of Rome. Notably, he left a huge amount of money to the people in his will, a cash sum to every citizen that was large enough to make a difference in the lives of the poor. And this clause in his will was a secret - people only found out about it after he was assassinated! That means it wasn't just performative or ambitious, he really meant it.
He was also one of the most shameless criminals in Roman history.
As his opponents never ceased to point out, Caesar's conquest of Gaul was built on a series of wars that he illegally started without consulting the Senate. He bragged about how he could get away with anything by bribing judges and politicians. When two of his opponents won both of the two Consular seats (essentially co-Presidents), Caesar bought one of them off with a king-sized bribe and used him to block the other's legislative agenda with his veto power.
I want you to imagine the scope of this with an analogy: A younger Donald Trump gets himself elected to Congress and marches an army into Mexico on a flimsy pretext (invasion of illegal immigrants!). He starts a blatantly illegal war using a combination of US troops and local Mexican auxiliaries, and becomes a trillionaire by enslaving millions of Mexicans and plundering their treasure. Then an unfriendly Democratic government under Bill Clinton tries to attack him by passing a bill condemning his actions. In response, Trump pays President Clinton off with a bribe of 100 billion dollars and Clinton uses his veto to block the bill that he himself just proposed, and, in fact, campaigned on.
That is how corrupt Julius Caesar was.
The thing is, everyone else was also corrupt. Corruption was a load-bearing element of Roman politics. In order to win office, a politician needed to pay out bribes, throw games, build temples, and so on. This usually involved borrowing money or owing favors. It was inevitable that when that politician came to power and those debts came due he would need to leverage his office to repay what he owed. In other words, everyone was corrupt. Literally everyone.
Enter the Optimates, Rome's other major political faction.
The Optimates were against corruption in theory, but in practice they were also all corrupt. What they really wanted was quieter, less disruptive corruption. To keep it at a manageable level. To them, the way Caesar went around flaunting his crimes was the real problem. It was one thing to pay off a few Senators, but buying a Consul was going too far.
The thing is, the Optimates also reflexively opposed all attempts at actual reform. Caesar was the one who passed sweeping anti-corruption legislation that put limits on how much politicians could squeeze out of their offices, and even his opponents couldn't deny that these reforms were necessary.
It was not really a dispute about whether corruption was acceptable or unacceptable. I would argue that the Optimates' desire to sweep it all under the rug was actually a step in the wrong direction. Caesar talked about corruption openly, and having a problem out in the open is the first step to solving it.
Later on, Caesar was serving as proconsular governor of three provinces. This office made him immune from criminal prosecution, so even when his opponents were able to take power he was safe. But the Optimates knew that Caesar would run for Consul again as soon as the mandatory ten-year gap between Consulships expired. They wanted to stop him from passing more reforms or wealth redistribution schemes, and they knew that there was no possible chance that Caesar wouldn't win his election in a landslide, so they decided to find a way to get rid of him.
They found a dubious legal ambiguity that they argued would allow them to take away Caesar's immunity and bring him back to Rome to face trial. After a lengthy debate, the pro-Optimate Senate suspended the law and the Constitution and declared their version of martial law (the Senatus Consultum Ultimum) to force Caesar to step down. Caesar surprised them by marching on Rome with his army, and the rest is history. After a civil war, which Caesar won, and an election, which he also won, his enemies stabbed him to death on the floor of the Senate house.
But when they paraded through the streets declaring that a tyrant had been killed and Rome was free, they were not greeted by the cheers they were expecting. Wasn't Caesar ambitious? Wasn't he corrupt? Wasn't he plotting to make himself a king? Why didn't the people of Rome hate him like the Optimates did? Why weren't they happy the tyrant was dead?
Because the people of Rome were not happy with the status quo. They didn't care about the Republic, because that was just a system for deciding which wealthy aristocrats would get to oppress them. They didn't care about the law, because that was just a system for deciding how the wealthy aristocrats would get to oppress them. They only cared that Caesar had given them games, feasts, and victory over the Gauls, and now he was dead.
Even the Optimates didn't try to deny that Caesar's reforms were necessary. They damned his memory but did not repeal his anti-corruption legislation.
Caesar's assassins did not get to enjoy their victory for long. When Caesar's will was read in public and the people of Rome found out that every adult male citizen had been left a part of Caesar's vast fortune, it started a riot. Caesar's assassins, who had attended the funeral in a show of peace and unity, had to flee the city in fear for their lives.
In the end, the people of Rome would riot to demand that Caesar's adopted son, Caesar Augustus, be installed as king. That's how little they cared about the Republic.
Augustus himself put the rebellion down. He didn't want or need to be king. He had already rigged the vestigial Republic so that he could rule in everything but name. The Roman Empire would go on pretending it was still a Republic for several centuries.
What to take from this? I don't think you can just measure two sides against each other and say, "This side is more shameless and blatant in their corruption, so they should be criticized more harshly." On one hand you could say that defying anti-corruption norms will erode them and make our society more corrupt. But on the other hand, bringing it out into the open might be necessary to kill it.
Now that Donald Trump is openly messing with US tax policy for personal gain with his combination of tariffs and insider trading, maybe that will be the catalyst to finally pass laws against using secret government intelligence to make money trading stocks. Maybe if it stayed at the level of Nancy Pelosi doing it under the table it would have gone on forever, but now that it's so blatant and so offensive it can be eliminated in one chaotic decade.
My intuition is that public crimes are actually less bad than secret ones. I would rather have it all out in the open.
Sunshine
1yr ago
Slavery was abolished in England in the 12th century, replaced by serfdom, and then Elizabeth I freed the serfs in 1574. Some English people practiced slavery outside of England but on the island itself there was no institution of slavery. It's clearly not a purely technological issue.
Slave plantations are less efficient than small farmers. Slavery is just a way of giving the rich a larger share of the wealth at the cost of stifling economic growth.
Sunshine
3mo ago
Trump announced in a post last night that he was considering voiding the last minute preemptive Biden pardons of Fauci, members of January 6 House committee, and others, because an "autopen" was used to sign the pardons. Presidential authority to grant pardons is very broad, and apparently autopen has been used by prior presidents; looks like a losing case if it goes before the Supreme Court.
The version I heard was that the EOs and pardons are being voided on the basis that Biden wasn't aware of them. As in, someone else wrote the pardons and EOs and signed them with Biden's signature without any involvement from the President himself. If true, the autopen is not the source of the issue.
I'd like to point out that in a lawless world of all-against-all OP would probably win a fight against any insane pauper, no matter how burly or experienced with violence. All he would need to do is buy a gun and shoot anyone who tries to get close to him. The homeless man probably can't afford a gun and ammunition.
The advantage of people who are good at one-on-one violence is artificial. It's created by a society that punishes people who win fights by inflicting deadly injury, but doesn't punish people who harass with low-level violence and intimidation.
In every previous era of our species, the military state of the art favored social deadly force over antisocial harassment. Two hundred years ago that dancer would have been sent to a prison or workhouse to die a miserable death. Five hundred years ago he would have been hanged. Two thousand years ago he would have been enslaved by the state and worked to death in a silver mine. Ten thousand years ago a gang of 4-10 men would have encountered him, perceived him as a threat, and thrown rocks at him until he died.
This man's ability to have any power at all in a public setting has nothing to do with his strength and everything to do with our mercy.
Sunshine
1yr ago
Fans can switch to a better show if they don't like the one they're watching, but PR executives and social media managers have to find some way to defend whatever show they work for.
Accusing your critics of being some form of -ist is just another part of the standard playbook now. No sane company would shy away from using this highly effective tactic just because the show they're defending is actually bad.
Idpol can defend a bad position just as well as it can defend a good position. Is it any wonder that so many people with indefensible positions resort to idpol?
Same. This proves what I've always suspected: Musk was trying to use the Republicans to push a bit of fiscal responsibility. Now that it's clear that this isn't going to work, and after presumably fighting against the Big Beautiful Bill behind the scenes, he's calling it quits.
The real mistake was the left wing's decision to alienate Musk. The Democrats really should have seen this coming (since Trump falls out with all his allies sooner or later) and they should have refrained from spending the past few months calling for people to firebomb Tesla dealerships out of spite. If they had just kept their stupid mouths shut they would be in perfect position to welcome the highly influential CEO of Twitter into their camp, with plenty of time before the midterms. Maybe they could even drive Zuck and the rest back into the fold (look what an alliance with Trump gets you, better join the right team while you have the chance!)
If only the Democrats hadn't just spent the last few months proving that they punish their apostates more vindictively than Trump ever could, they might seem like the safer and more reliable ally right now. As it is they just look dangerously unhinged in a different way.
Sunshine
2yr ago
The idea that Cleopatra had Mark Antony wrapped around her little finger was literally a lie that Augustus made up to justify starting yet another civil war. It was important to frame it as a war against that foreign seductress, Cleopatra, rather than what it actually was, a civil war between the two most powerful men in Rome for control of the whole empire (again).
The plan to put Cleopatra's children on the thrones of the East (the "donations of Alexandria") was an administrative strategy that Antony came up with to stabilize the eastern empire by centralizing power in Egypt. It wasn't some wicked scheme of Cleopatra's to usurp Rome.
So, by now everyone has heard about Biden's lackluster performance in the debate.
I don't want to talk about Biden. I want to talk about the fact that everybody has heard about it. There has been very little effort to suppress it.
If CNN, the NYT, and Time Magazine, and the rest had all held ranks and denied everything, this would probably have blown over. Most people didn't even watch the debate. Those who did could be persuaded to remember it differently. The general public isn't reacting to the debate, they're reacting to the reaction to the debate. Let's face it, this isn't the first time Biden has had a senior moment in public. This was unusually public and unusually difficult to edit around, but it's just a difference in scope, not a difference in kind. The media could easily have put the spotlight on Trump's deranged rambling about abortion clinics murdering babies, or that time he said that under his Presidency America had all the H2O.
Instead, CNN started openly freaking out the moment the debate was over. Prominent Democrats were apparently sending frantic texts to prominent journalists even before it ended. The NYT is openly speculating about replacing Biden. Time Magazine's new cover shows Biden wandering off the page with the caption: 'panic'. They didn't have to do this.
What I find interesting about this isn't the fact that Biden made his biggest gaffe yet. What I find interesting is that everyone broke ranks at once.
That's not necessarily surprising. Nobody wants to be the last person trying to hold the line after everyone else has run away. Still, it was so fast it almost looked coordinated. Were prominent figures prepared for something like this to happen? Were certain powerful individuals thinking to themselves, 'If Biden really acts his age during the debate, we might get the chance to replace him'? Could this perhaps have been the reason that this debate was scheduled unusually early - scheduled, in fact, before the convention where Biden is expected to be formally nominated by the party? Perhaps to give them a reason to nominate someone else?
Even if it wasn't, I think it's obvious that a lot of people have been thinking about this for a long time. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have all suddenly found themselves on the same page.
"he might be worth nominating for another term"
Do you sincerely believe that? If Trump had been a gracious loser, would you have personally voted for him? If Trump had been a gracious loser, do you think that would make him a better candidate than Biden? (After all, Biden hasn't been a gracious winner).
If not, I must call this out as a false equivalence. I don't think you're being sincere in this statement.
The fact of the matter is that the small group of American leftists who dominate our media and communications is consumed by its hatred for the right wing. The airwaves and Internet are controlled by a small group of people who cannot restrain themselves from broadcasting their irrepressible hatred for half the population 24/7, and that's exactly why we're all in this mess. There is no peaceful future as long as that nonstop firehose of visceral hatred keeps flowing through every media outlet.
For there to be peace, the media class needs to let go of that hatred.
I don't really agree with your assessment of the minimum deal for women. The minimum deal cannot be "get married" in a world where so many women are single mothers.
Let's leave aside the world of profoundly bad luck outside the scope of what might happen to someone posting on this site, like being drafted into war or dying of leukemia at age 10. I'm just going to look at fairly common Anglosphere life-paths.
A whole bunch of the women who I went to high school with are now single mothers working menial jobs. They work hard all day, then they come home to their kids and work some more. That sounds like a really bad deal to me. Now, you could argue that this could just as easily happen to a man who has kids young and gets roped into paying child support for 18 years. True enough. I could quibble that men are more likely to skip out, or that childcare is harder than child support, or that getting someone else pregnant is a lot harder than getting pregnant so you have a lot more time to reconsider your life choices, but fair enough.
A whole bunch more went into dumb low-paying fields. Their mentors encouraged them to do what they love, hormones told them that what they love is teaching or early childhood education, and now they're precariously employed substitute teachers making barely more than minimum wage. There was a girl who I went to highschool with who was neck-and-neck with me for grades, competing with me for awards and the like. All of her talents are now going to waste in a dead-end job. I am a software engineer. The fact that my teachers and peers were less encouraging to me than her is probably a contributing factor to the fact that I didn't sleepwalk myself into a bad decision like she did. I would not trade places with her today.
You could say that both of these are freely made decisions and therefore don't count. Maybe. But there's a weird interplay here. Yes, if women and men were both perfectly rational robots, being a woman would be an advantage. But humans are not perfectly rational robots. Women, especially young women, seem much more inclined to fall for misguided orthodoxy, like going into debt for a Gender Studies degree and hoping it all works out in the end (a lot of people point out that women go to college more, few mention that this is often not to their benefit).
Honestly, I would not want much of the "help" that women get from the various orthodox authorities. They do not have their patients' best interests at heart.
For men, the roads to Heaven and Hell are both overgrown with thistles and guarded by lions. For women, the road to Heaven might be slightly easier than for men, but the road to Hell is paved, icy, and all downhill. The absolute bottom may be lower for men, but women can literally screw themselves out of a fulfilling life at age 18 in under an hour. At least army recruiters can't have you sign the contract while you're drunk.
Sunshine
9mo ago
Gaza is not a small town, it's a city. It has a higher population than Phoenix, AZ.
I don't think your point is entirely well-formed. This isn't a game of capture the flag, it isn't enough to just "take" Gaza. They're looking for insurgents who are hiding among the general population. It's naturally time-consuming. They could just bomb all 2.1 million civilians into smithereens in about a week, but if they did I doubt that would satisfy either you or the American government.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but when the Roman Republic tried that they descended into a series of bloody civil wars. Once prosecuting ex-politicians was on the table, their leaders realized that letting go of power meant being at the mercy of their successors. The inescapable conclusion was that the only thing to do was to never, ever let go of power. Eventually they emerged as an Empire ruled by a succession of military strongmen.
So that's one reason.
Sunshine
11mo ago
Walking around with a pike is impractical. You can't even fit it through a door. The main advantage of a sword or knife is that you can easily carry it in your day-to-day life. There's a reason Romeo went around with a rapier on his hip instead of a pike strapped to his back.
The pike or spear is a weapon of war. You only bring it with you when you go into battle. The sword is a sidearm, which you carry everywhere just in case you need it.
Marrying a Roman consul to their queen and putting Mark Antony's children on the thrones of all the neighbouring kingdoms would have solidified Roman rule over Egypt. If Egypt had become the lynchpin of Roman rule over the East as Antony intended, that would have meant that Rome would have controlled the East by controlling Egypt - note the part where Egypt gets to be controlled by Rome, not rise to become a co-equal partner. I don't think cementing your overlord's control over your kingdom is normally characterized as "[becoming] the eastern dominant kingdom." The dominant power was Rome. There are no points for being best-in-your-category.
Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy ('s scheming advisors) tried to pull away from Rome and exercise more independence - or at least more obstinance. Cleopatra smuggled herself into the palace and presented herself to Caesar as a more pliable alternative ruler, if he would just put her on the throne. Caesar had Ptolemy put to death and installed Cleopatra as queen. After Caesar died she picked up where she left off with Mark Antony, but that ended in disaster and she was deposed and committed suicide, after which Rome not only annexed Egypt but took it as the personal possession of the Emperor.
Every step she took led to less power for Egypt and more for Rome. Her path ended in the annexation of her kingdom and the end of her dynasty. Again, not seeing it.
Sunshine
2yr ago
My take is that Israel exists by right-of-conquest.
The point of right-of-conquest isn't that it's morally right - often it's morally wrong. The point of right-of-conquest is that at some point wars have to end because the alternative is that wars don't ever end, which is much worse. At the end of the day you have to call a ceasefire, negotiate a treaty, redraw the map, and let everyone get on with their lives. The alternative is to live in a state of neverending war.
The Palestinians have had more shots than most would-be countries get. They could have won their initial civil war, but they didn't. They could have protested nonviolently and kept the moral high ground, like India, but they didn't so they can't win with the moral high ground. They could have lost their war but negotiated a treaty that gave them the freedom to win their freedom, like the Irish, but they refused to accept any treaty so they can't do that. They could have won their independence in a war waged with the help of their foreign allies, like the Polish, but their foreign allies lost that war so that's out, too.
That's it. Like I said, that's more shots than most would-be countries ever get. Sardinia doesn't get to be independent, Quebec doesn't get to be independent, Catalonia doesn't get to be independent, the Confederate States of America don't get to be independent, Wales doesn't get to be independent, Tibet doesn't get to be independent, and now Palestine has unofficially joined the ranks of countries that tried to become independent and failed. That's life.
Independence is a privilege, not a right. At some point, for the sake of those still living, you have to let the war end so that those still living can live in peace. Everyone has land claims. Everyone has grievances against the central government. What everyone does not have is the right to continue a lost war through terrorism.
I expect that the status quo will continue for the foreseeable future, to the detriment of the Palestinians, because the Israelis have no reason to make any more concessions than they already have. The Palestinian people have a choice: Make peace or live in war. They should make peace.
Sunshine
4mo ago
I think you have this backwards. If Eric Adams goes down, it's a reasonable bet the next Mayor of New York will be uncooperative with immigration enforcement. He's not being rewarded for abandoning his duty, he's being extorted into doing his duty because the Feds have dirt on him. If there was no dirt on him then the Feds wouldn't have any leverage.
Elon Musk already took a lot of the available heat. It's an even tougher sell now than it was a few years ago for an advertiser to burn their own revenues to deliberately antagonize both Facebook and the incoming President of the United States out of sheer ideological bloody-mindedness. Doing it now, when you've already seen that the last tech billionaire who faced a boycott like that did not cave in like he was supposed to and instead joined the other team whole-heartedly and is now poised to enact whatever revenge he has in mind using whatever influence he's curried over the last election, would not be a safe investment.
Sunshine
5mo ago
Why should I care more about the fake electors thing than about the practice of rule-by-executive-order, or the fact that the military keeps killing people even though the US hasn't formally declared war since 1942, or gerrymandering, or any of the other sketchy government power shenanigans that have actually succeeded over the past few decades?
It seems to me that there are a lot of actual threats to democracy, and this does not even come close to topping the list.
Sunshine
2mo ago
The pastor is blinded by his preconceptions. These boys aren't crippled by anxiety, they've simply developed class consciousness.
The common logic of the old world was this: "Women will never make the first move, therefore men have to." This is the one-sided logic of the bourgeoisie factory owner who says to his workers, "You need me more than I need you," and deludes himself into believing it. When your negotiating partner refuses to come to the table because they think they hold all cards, the only recourse is direct action.
The boys aren't stunted, they're on strike. Your move, girls.
The USA is not a hive mind, and it is possible to question election results without descending into anarchy. Who is 'we' in this "Should we"? Who is the final judge as to whether an election has "cleared the threshold to being authentic"?
These are not nitpicks. In ancient Rome, the person who decided whether elections were legitimate were the outgoing consuls for that year (consuls are like co-presidents who serve for one year terms, Rome had two). Pompey and Crassus were the consuls overseeing the elections for 55 BCE. When it looked like one of Pompey's enemies would win his election, Pompey would suddenly discover bad omens and cancel the vote. Then his men would go around the voting pens having 'discussions' with people, and when the vote resumed the outcome would be the way Pompey wanted it to be. This wasn't technically illegal. Consuls did have the right to cancel public events when the omens were bad. A partisan in ancient Rome could argue that there was nothing fraudulent about the outcomes of those elections.
A few years later, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched an army into Rome.
Not long after that, Pompey was beheaded in Egypt.
Not long after that, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the floor of the Senate.
Not long after that, a special election was called. A centurion stood at the gate of Rome and said, "If the Senate will not make Octavian* a consul, this will," resting a hand on the hilt of his sword.**
A few years after that Octavian became Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. So it goes.
Octavian wasn't legally old enough to run for consul, but that didn't mean anything anymore. The laws that were supposed to guarantee fair elections had been destroyed in spirit. Elections weren't fair. Given that, who can blame the centurion for demanding his own brand of fairness? Julius Caesar was, to the thousands of men who served him, their man in Rome. He was the only person they could trust to stand up for their interests. The Senate tried to put him on trial for treason, rewrote laws to stop him from running for office, and ultimately assassinated him. Who can blame the centurion for doing with the sword what the Senate had already been doing for years with paper-thin legal justifications, and ignoring Republican tradition to put his picked man into office?
Thus the Roman Republic was destroyed and the Roman Empire created in its place.
*By this point Gaius Octavius had legally changed his name to Gaius Julius Caesar, but we call him Octavian to avoid confusing him with his more famous uncle. We could just as easily call him Caesar II, though. It does highlight the fact that, after the Senate assassinated Caesar, Caesar's army returned to Rome with another Caesar to replace him.
**This exchange probably didn't actually happen. Ancient historians tended to make up speeches and conversations to highlight important events.
Sunshine
2yr ago
Personally, I don't have any objection to what another individual chooses to do with his or her own body. However, even in this hypothetical future, I would have a problem with someone else telling me what I can and can't say. If I want to refer to someone using the pronouns they were born with, that's my right as an independent being. Just as getting whatever sci-fi surgery you want is your right as an independent being.
If there's some kind of punishment for calling a him a him or a her a her, or calling anyone anything, that's where I start to have a problem. Because at that point I feel like it's not about an individual's freedom to exercise control over his or her own body - at that point it's about power. The power to force someone to say something they don't believe in.
You don't even have to go into the future for that. Just look back to ancient Rome, when they forced people to make the libation and acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor as part of the suppression of Christianity. Note how they never bothered to force people to make the libation until they had a heathen religion to suppress. That's what I think of modern trans ideology, with its demands that everyone go around the circle and announce their pronouns - a libation. A forced conversion. A compulsory pledge of allegiance. Havel's Greengrocer. There's a fresh example in every generation.
To borrow a phrase: Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.
The reason this is being done so crudely is because every less-crude attempt made in the past was stopped. If you let them slow you down they'll keep finding reasons to do it until the whole thing grinds to a halt.
There was a limited supply of veto power and it has been squandered on less important issues. Don't blame the bartender for cutting you off, blame yourself for drinking too much.
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