Sic Semper Tyrannis

If I look to my right I can see a beautiful full moon through the window. It is tinged orange-gold by the sun rising slowly under the horizon. The house is quiet. The sounds of traffic on the distant highway are a muted reminder I now live in the city. Life continues apace.

The headlines are grim and sad news: shootings, bombings, death, violence. The world is a dangerous place. Don't fool yourself, it always has been. There is a reason that "man's inhumanity to man" remains an enduring theme of art and literature. Do you think life is tough now? Life was cheaper a thousand and two thousand years ago. Man is nature's top predator and always has been since Cain whacked Able.

Do you think Clinton or Trump are any different than a feudal lord who believes his power derives from Devine right? You are no more important than a serf on a manor. You are a body to be used; you grow fodder, you are cannon fodder, you are just votes.

I've been studying on the last days of Rome: the debauched Emperors, the constant change at the top, endless wars. But the Empire chugged on, administered by the bureaucrats, governing while the politicians politicized. In our minds the Roman Empire lasted centuries. It was only a couple of hundred years between Augustus and Commodus (whose name includes "commode" and "odious" for good reason). Don't fool yourself into thinking the last years of the Republic were so great either. Funny, Julius Caesar and almost every ruler that followed vowed to return Rome to its glory days. Cicero was pining for the good old days almost a century before we started numbering the years forwards at zero.

Jefferson and Madison would weep at what their experiment has become. Washington -- a close examination will reveal he liked being large and in charge. Adams was disliked by just about anyone who ever met him. I suspect Trump and Hilary and Cruz were never the homecoming queen or king either. They will get their revenge now on us ignorant peasants.

Instead of baking delicious cakes, Dolly Madison should have made James put in a term limit provision into the Constitution. We would all be better off.