Some say the way we live now mirrors ancient Rome, that we've become a client or pawn society living under the patronage of a degenerate, power obsessed elite. But perhaps this is an exaggeration; here's Seneca describing the behavior of the Divine Augustus' daughter Julia:
The deified Augustus banished his daughter who was shameless beyond the indictment of shamelessness, and made public the scandals of the imperial house – that she had been accessible to scores of paramours, that in nocturnal revels she had roamed about the city, that the very forum and the rostrum, from which her father had proposed a law against adultery, had been chosen by the daughter for her debaucheries, that she had daily resorted to the statue of Marsyas, and, laying aside the role of adulteress, there sold her favours, and sought the right to every indulgence with even an unknown paramour.
Bad Julia, and you can picture her above-the-law antics in the heart of the imperial city. Getting it on on the rostrum itself, no less. She paid for her indiscretions with exile and eventual suicide. So did several of her paramours who were executed or suicided by a vastly irate Augustus.
Can you imagine anything like that going on today, degeneracy, execution and suiciding in the corridors of power? Of course not. After all, you wouldn't want to offend the Clintons would you, and anyway, it's all Trump's fault.
Carry on,
LSP
12 comments:
Quite the zinger, Parson!
I pray for my beloved country.....
Being raised with the concept of omertà, the behavior of people today - in particular their online behavior, is so completely out of my purview as to leave me a bit stunned.
That woman, Hill, is très creepy and looks like she could use a good scrub with a very stiff brush.
Me too, drjim. And to be fair, I was inspired by LL...
Adrienne, I'm no prude but things seem to have gotten pretty... off-hook.
Then there's Hill. Definitely needs a good scrub with disinfectant. Maybe bleach. Beto doesn't look too clean either, come to think of it. To name just one of many.
There is nothing new under the sun, I'm afraid. And who knows what we'd do if space aliens landed. Maybe they'd feel that they landed on the moral equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah? Then they'd destroy the place.
I kind of think it's too late; I've been expecting the bad actors within our body politic to be brought to some kind of justice since the Clinton administration, but nobody seems to be the worse for the wear, other than Webb Hubbell, Susan McDougal, Scooter Libby and Gen. Michael Flynn.
That's it? Sure, a few more nobody's like George Popoudopolis and the creepy porn lawyer (heh heh). We want bigger fish to fry, and we want it now.
And still I wait....
Same behaviors, better information.
Couldn't agree more on the Rome Analogy.
In Hong Kong, people suffering from oppression know and appreciate the value of Freedom - such as it is in Murika. People here have devolved into some pornographic, self-pity, mob-think where they suffer the pangs of knowing some freak of nature has been offended but someone else exercising their free speech. They'd rather be waterboarded than have someone call them a racist for example.
People who suffer for real will eat these morons alive in the years to come and that will be that for the American experiment.
I'm in two minds, LL. They might be shocked at the wickedness and destroy, that's possible. But what if they're evil and controlling our rulers, as if they were puppets? Different means to the same end.
Fredd, we're most definitely still waiting. Sure hope hope Flynn walks away from this, btw.
And WSF, everything we do is against the backdrop of 2000 years of Christianity, the Romans didn't have that. I'd say it makes us more damnable.
"People who suffer for real will eat these morons alive in the years to come and that will be that for the American experiment."
Kid, you have a point and a graphic one.
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