Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is incensed about corruption in America. As in
Stealing billions from California’s unemployment program
“Shoplifting, flash robberies, and rampant crime”
Biden family influence peddling
Hillary emails
FBI lies
For Newt, “The collapse of the core American value of honesty has been startling.”
But then, reading a conspiracy theorist at Unz Review, you encouraged to believe that ‘twas ever thus. Says Rockaboatus:
The late David Hoggan, the historian who became a pariah to the academic establishment because he dared to set the record straight showing that Churchill, FDR, and Stalin were the real warmongers rather than Adolf Hitler (see his The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed and his later work, The Unnecessary War: 1939-1945 Germany Must Perish).
And my current pet peeve is to ask what in the Sam Blazes the US was doing in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson?
In other words, politics is always lies and more lies. And, as I say, it is always about riling up the peasants to go fight the enemy and then doling out the green stuff to your supporters.
I suppose we should think that it is a Good Thing that more and more people are getting red-pilled and starting to see a reality rather different that the one served up by the regime and its various supporters.
And maybe Newt’s problem is that things have got a lot worse than in his day.
But hey, rulers have always thought they deserved it. In The Origins of Political Order Francis Fukuyama writes about how, as tribal society developed out of band-level society, it became important to bury people with the food and drink and support they needed to survive in the hereafter.
[I]n China... the graves of high-status people where filled with bronze and ceramic tripods, food, and the bodies of horses, slaves, and concubines.
For Fukuyama, band-level society was pretty egalitarian. But tribal society, that combined religion and blood relationship, was highly hierarchical.
And really, what is the difference between now and then? Basically, the rulers extract as much as they can. Period. It seems that in band-level society the leaders didn’t have the power to fleece the followers.
I’ve been reading lefty David Graeber, whose shtick is “wow, look how egalitarian humans used to be. If only…”
And I am hardening on a response that is close to: “No, Davy. The lesson of the 20th century is that when the gubmint pushes to make society more egalitarian, it makes it more hierarchical, more dominatory, more corrupt.”
Because once you say: “hey, look at this guy, he should share his riches with the rest of us,” you are basically empowering the government to take whatever it wants from whoever it wants and giving it to its supporters. With 10 percent for the Big Guy.
But, but, but, you say. The Biden administration is trying to undo the mess of the Trump years and is tackling climate change and systemic racism.
No doubt. But the net effect is for the government to ladle out bennies to its friends and relations. Just as governments have always done.