This is Thucydides Night, it seems. I was inspired by pico's diary.
Thucydides wrote a famous account of civil war. It is horrifying--not in bloody details, but in how prophetic it seems. I (re)read this before last year's election and was stunned at how perfect it was as a description of current politics. This is what civil war and civil discord does to humanity, not just what it did in Greece 2500 years ago, but what is happening in the United States today. This is what civil strife is like . . .
. . . as happens and always will happen while human nature is what it is . . .
In many of these passages, most of you will think, "that's George Bush exactly" (witness the line "As a rule those who were least remarkable for intelligence showed the greater powers of survival.").
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