6 January

Et tu, Brute? Caesar’s greatest enemies, the ones that killed him, weren’t the peoples Rome invaded. It was his own team. This is ALWAYS how power works. Even when countries invade other countries, what gets called ‘imperialism’, they’re really just processing domestic rivalries amongst local elites. The fight for status. Invasion gives more room and opportunity for those elites to act and profit, taking pressure off the leader. That’s what we’re seeing with Trump. The US has a proliferation of wealthy and powerful people, all wanting to run the place. At the same time the wider population is getting poorer and more desperate. Those two combine to create social collapse. Rival elites find a receptive audience amongst the angry wider population, generating populist movements, to attack other elite rivals. Caesar himself came to power this way. He led a populust movement opposing the ‘elites’ of the Roman Senate. Sound familiar?