War World is Loot and Plunder
just like in the Dark Ages
There’s a great series by Herbert Bushman running at Quillette all about the famous Dark Ages after the Fall of Rome and the Vandals, the Goths, and the Huns that made it happen. I always knew they were bad, but only in the sense that we all know Hitler is bad.
Of course, it’s much more complicated that that. But then so is 20th century history. The point is that as the Roman Empire started to decline it had a problem getting young men to join the legions. But the tribes on the border were happy to sign up.
But then, of course, the tribes started to get involved in Roman politics.
The Goths, for example, lived in eastern Europe just north of the border, and started getting harassed by the Huns to the north. So they asked to move south within the borders of the empire. Came the day that the Goths — actually the Visigoths — sacked Rome. But later on they just wanted a nice little homeland and eventually got to live in Aquitaine. So Eleanor of Aquitaine was a Goth?
But when you read about all these Romans and Vandals and Goths and Huns you realize that they were all in the same business: fighting each other for loot and plunder. And when you read about them fighting all across western Europe, from Hispania to Gallia to Germania, it all sounds so familiar. What’s the difference between the Huns and the Goths battling it out and the French and the Germans and the Swedes and the Austrians mixing it up in the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648? Or the French and Prussians and Austrians and Brits mixing it up in the Napoleonic Wars? Or the French and the Germans mixing it up in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870? Or the French and the Germans and the Austrians and the Russians and the Brits mixing it up in World War I? Wait! I forgot to add: College President Woodrow Wilson and the Yanks. Boy, did they mix it up with the best of them, just so that Doris Day could do her musical On Moonlight Bay about college boys volunteering for World War I.
But, of course, politics is still about loot and plunder. Here’s Richard Hanania on “Critical Age Theory” about how in America the system is gushing out goodies and free stuff to the old folks like me and how the Kidz have to pay with lower wages and extended education and good luck buying a home. My solution to this problem would be:
Replace Social Security with savings/investment accounts. You retire when you have enough wealth to create a job for a young’un.
Replace 80%+ fixed-rate mortgages with 50% variable rate mortgages. That way home prices stay close to Earth.
End child-labor laws.
End government-regulated health care.
And so on. But hey: much less loot and plunder for politicians to hand out to us geezers.
But, to make the problem bigger, we must understand that nothing has changed. Even the modern politics of the welfare state and race politics is still the War World of loot and plunder: defeating the enemy and sharing out the loot with your pals. Just like it was back in the Dark Ages where the Vandals and the Goths and the Huns were fighting it out and squabbling over the loot.