Yes, I'm afraid Oliver > Stone in his brilliant work "JFK" hit the nail on the head. The > assassination of Kennedy (spoiled, reckless, self-indulging fool that > he was) marked a watershed regarding the political landscape of this > nation. We slid, or were rather adeptly guided, into a unique, subtly > instigated plutocracy, run by the shadow fascist, despotic, > Industrialist Billionaire's club.
I have been watching the mini-series 'I Claudius' with my friend Melanie on dvd for the last two Saturdays. I think we've gotten about halfway through the series. The series was adapted from a series of novels that were based in historical fact. One of the main characters in this story about the Caesars of Ancient Rome is the wife of the Emperor Octavian, a Machiavellian lady by the name of Livia. Livia's goal is to make her son Tiberius the successor to Octavian as Emperor. In order to accomplish this she has poisoned her previous husband and at the place in the story we are up to now, she has also poisoned one of her sons, two of Octavian's grandsons and finally Octavian himself. She also succeeds in alienating Octavian from his daughter Julia, prompting him to banish her from Rome and blackmailed her own grand-daughter into betraying another member of the family. I wondered, while watching all of this, if Christianity had had much success in making people more respectful of the value of human life. Then I recalled another movie called 'Queen Margot' adapted from a Dumas novel but also based in historical fact. Catherine de Medici is one of the main characters in this movie and she is another manipulator who employs poison or whatever means she needs to keep her hold on the reins of power. Ultimately she & her sons set in motion the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which Catholic soldiers ran amok through the streets of Paris and slaughtered hundreds of Protestants. I've been thinking about these stories from the pages of history in relation to some of the threads about oil and power and wealth that have been going on lately on the list. I have to wonder sometimes if what Franklin wrote in his post about the leaders of this country and the powers behind them is true. Humans have committed countless atrocities on other humans throughout history for the sake of power and wealth. Why should it be any different now? Are we really any more civilized than the Romans were? Don't we still have ruling classes? And why would they be any less cavalier about the welfare of us 'little people' (remember Leona Helmsley?) than the Medici's or the Julians were? I don't know. I certainly felt that Reagan was a puppet. I've begun to think that Clinton probably was too. And I have no reason to doubt that the same is true about either one of the Bushes. I don't mean to fan the political flames but to be quite honest, I haven't known who to really trust in the political arena for a long time. And I do believe there are people in this country and this world, for that matter, who have way more than they could ever know what to do with and who only seem to want more... Mark E. in Seattle Deep in the night While madmen sit up building bombs And making laws and bars They're gonna slam free choice behind us
