Quote:
Originally Posted by Sigaba
What I see are the beached ships of the Achaeans. I see Agamemnon trying to convince himself that he's Franklin Roosevelt. I see Achilles preening for an Anne Liebowitz photo-shoot; Thetis, the original helicopter mom, is laying out his clothes. Where are the great tactician, the lord of the war cry, and the tamer of horses when you need them?
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Nice analogy. Unfortunately you left off the part where the Achaeans persisted until they destroyed the most productive city state of the era. Then they returned home to continue goat herding and piracy/raiding for another four hundred (or thereabouts) years until Pericles comes along to usher in a "Golden Age" (which didn't do anything for Troy). I'm afraid this time the barbarians are at our gates. All the Anointed One - or his handlers - needs now is his own Odysseus to commit the final act of clever treachery and open the gates while we sleep. (Oh - wait - we did that ourselves on 4 Nov. The only thing left is for the victors to finish pillaging and burning!) The tactics haven't changed in millennium; it's still about rabble rousing to take from the rich (productive) and give to the poor (unproductive/power base) in order to buy their loyalty. The system works until you run out of rich victims.
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
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