“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” - Thucydides

It occurs to me that Americans arguing about politics, particularly the different kinds of political and economic organizations or ideologies, are really arguing over the arrangement of the Titanic’s deck chairs.

The philosopher Aristotle disdained democracy, and he preferred aristocracy, but he noted that each of his three different political systems had a virtuous version and a corrupt one - Democracy/Mob rule, Aristocracy/Oligarchy, King/Dictator. Despite his preferences, it was the difference between the good and evil versions of each that mattered most.

It seems to me that it the greed, corruption, indeed, the joy of cruelty, that rules our ruling class with its sycophants and minions who have substituted an ethos of Me and Greed for anything else that is what is truly killing us all.

I do not like the political economy of Singapore or China, but they have a governing class that is concerned about their own people and that thinks of the future for everyone even after they themselves are dead. It is strange to envy the citizens of dictatorships because they have good government.

It does not matter what kind of political economy we have if we are governed by monsters, or perhaps even worse, people so hollow that they lack the ability to even understand that they are being monstrous.

(Yes, I am equating modern American society with the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue. Would you do otherwise especially with our elites?)