The 19th century was a century of rival kings. Here they are in 1815 carving up Europe, after the defeat of…

The 19th century was a century of rival kings. Here they are in 1815 carving up Europe, after the defeat of Napoleon. “The Cake of Kings.” Most of the two millennia of modern European history were alternating empires and rival monarchies. So…fast forward to today. 1/7 https://t.co/nobKxvd1Aa

Is what we’re seeing with the likes of Putin, Xi and Trump an assault on ‘democracy’? Why would this supposed new form of governance have only emerged in the 20th century? We just got suddenly smarter? Please. 2/7

We see our current lives through the distorting prism of the chaos of the first half of the 20th century. Probably the greatest disruption to human life in history. We came out the other side of it and felt a camaraderie, in the rebuild. We called it democracy. 3/7

But the kings are back. That’s what Putin, Xi and Trump are about. They want to rule kingdoms, not nation States. And in that they’re just repeating the standard pattern throughout all human history. It’s right there in front of us, to read. 4/7

What we called democracy was really just a collapse of the status quo through the catastrophic damage of that early-20th century cataclysm. Suddenly it seemed ‘we’ were all in it together. Because we were, to survive. And we rebuilt. 5/7

And when that was done, the standard social form restored itself. Kings are back, with their courts. It remains to be seen if churches and their leaders will return to the head table as well, where they’ve sat for much of 2 millennia as well. 6/7

None of this is visible to the intense social media status war bubbles we live inside, in societies without clear status hierarchies but fighting to restore them. Zoom out, you’ll see it. Only Kings and Pope-equivalents tame status games. /end